finding the bottle neck / should i get a second 6970

locrieth · 10 Sep 2013 at 21:55

ok so I'm looking for a little advice, i've currently got a q6600 @3.3GHz on a asus p5q deluxe, 8gb of ocz platinum 1066mhz ddr2 ram, a powercolor 6970 and a corsair tx850 psu all running on a 120gb vertex turbo. I currently play a lot of BF3 and hoping to get BF4 when it comes out as long as i can play it reasonably on this hardware. I play on 3 x iiyama Prolite E2273HDS in Eyefinity running 5760 x 1080. would i see any benefits to getting a cheap(ish) second 6970 and crossfiring or is my cpu going to bottleneck it?
On the other hand i also have an i3 530 @3.4Ghz on a intel dh55tc with 4gb of 1333mhz ddr3 ram, would i be better off moving the gfx, ssd and psu to this pc? Only issue is i wouldn't be able to crossfire on this board...

Any thoughts...

Cheers

Locrieth

Doomedspeed · 10 Sep 2013 at 22:02

Your Q6660 rig will bottlneck a second 6970 quite badly, in my eyes not worth the money..

The i3 rig will be no better (may even be worse) than your Q6660 rig.

Can you overclock you Q6660? This will give you a nice little boost in performance.

locrieth · 10 Sep 2013 at 22:05

the q6600 is overclocked from 2.4GHz to 3.3Ghz (3.4GHz was a little unstable)

Doomedspeed · 10 Sep 2013 at 22:09

Ohh yeah, i missed that sorry.

I think the CPU will be/is your bottleneck. Runing Eyefinity is quite GPU and CPU demanding.

another 6970 will give you a great boost but only if you have a CPU which won't bottleneck it.

locrieth · 10 Sep 2013 at 22:11

i suspected it may do thanks for the advice anyway, looks like i may have to start saving up for the inevitable upgrade!

Doomedspeed · 10 Sep 2013 at 22:33

locrieth said:
i suspected it may do thanks for the advice anyway, looks like i may have to start saving up for the inevitable upgrade!

Sorry..

what am i saying, you love it.

cmndr_andi · 10 Sep 2013 at 23:03

Considering your massive resolution, you probably would see a decent performance increase going up to a second HD 6970 (since most modern games will be still bottlenecked by your huge 5670x1080 res on a single HD 6970 card). For example it will allow you to take a game that is currently chugging along at 25FPS and get up to maybe 35-40FPS.

However, there will be situations where your CPU is bottlenecking performance and a modern i5 would be able to give you a much higher framerate (for example in a 64 player BF3/4 server).

Considering your PSU and motherboard is up to the job and a second hand HD 6970 will cost around £90 then I would probably be tempted to give it a go (since making a worthwhile upgrade to your motherboard and CPU will cost at least double that).

locrieth · 11 Sep 2013 at 00:34

Doomedspeed said:
Sorry..

what am i saying, you love it.

I do love the upgrading! Just gotta pay off the wedding and start saving

locrieth · 11 Sep 2013 at 00:36

cmndr_andi said:
Considering your massive resolution, you probably would see a decent performance increase going up to a second HD 6970 (since most modern games will be still bottlenecked by your huge 5670x1080 res on a single HD 6970 card). For example it will allow you to take a game that is currently chugging along at 25FPS and get up to maybe 35-40FPS.

However, there will be situations where your CPU is bottlenecking performance and a modern i5 would be able to give you a much higher framerate (for example in a 64 player BF3/4 server).

Considering your PSU and motherboard is up to the job and a second hand HD 6970 will cost around £90 then I would probably be tempted to give it a go (since making a worthwhile upgrade to your motherboard and CPU will cost at least double that).

See now that was what I was originally thinking, if I could get myself a bargin on a second 6970, then when I've got a bit more cash I can do the whole mobo, CPU and ram upgrade