Caporegime
A 7850 isn't going to bottleneck anywhere near like a 690. Not sure what you are out to prove but telling the OP to only get a max of a 650TI or a 7790 is poor advice.
Ohhh and Tomb Raider on a I3 2100 with a 7970 looks fine to me.
If a bottleneck is possible as previously tested on a 7850 when using an i3 3220 with Hyper Threading giving 4 threads then you can be sure it will be even more noticeable on an older gen i3 with only two cores. 40% gpu usage missing from skyrim and 30% missing from Sleeping Dogs which is a gpu dependant game. You can probably expect even lower usage with an older gen cpu with less cores/threads. In this instance unless he is planning to upgrade or only play older games that benefit from two cores he would be better spending his money elsewhere than buying a gpu that his cpu will not be able to keep up with. You should try playing bf3 64 player with an i3. Expect 30 fps a lot.
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