I am looking at a 980 GTX but..

NoiseKraft · 2 Jan 2015 at 15:07

Hello and a happy new year!

I have a question for those in the know...

My current system is:

Intel Core i7 920 @ 2.67GHz
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R
MSI GTX 560Ti 1280MB
6 x 2GB Patriot 1600EL Series (DDR3 Triple Channel)
700W PSU
240GB SSD

My question is...

Am I OK to just buy a GALAX GeForce GTX 980 "Hall of Fame Edition" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card and stick it in my PC as is?

Or is that like putting lipstick on a bulldog?

Many thanks in advance,

opethdisciple · 2 Jan 2015 at 15:08

Your be ok, but your CPU needs overclocking otherwise it will bottleneck the card.

NoiseKraft · 2 Jan 2015 at 15:14

Oh okay thank you.

I have no idea how to do that unfortunately. A while ago I did look in to it but it all looked far too scary.

ginjaninja · 2 Jan 2015 at 15:28

opethdisciple said:
Your be ok, but your CPU needs overclocking otherwise it will bottleneck the card.

im not so sure what bottlenecking will be going on...

Minimum framerates are typically gpu bound rather than cpu bound...if its the gpu bang for buck thats right for you...i wouldnt worry about your cpu..
certainly not worth upgrading pc for gaming...just upgrade the gpu...

Tonester0011 · 2 Jan 2015 at 15:32

If you're not going to overclock then you might as well get a 970.

cjgardens · 2 Jan 2015 at 15:35

Best thing to do is google overclocking I7 920 and ud3r there will be loads of guides so just copy them.

I always do that. Sometimes you may need to up the volts a tiny bit but you will soon get the idea.

When you get a BSOD just Google the code and tweak it a bit.

opethdisciple · 2 Jan 2015 at 15:39

ginjaninja said:
im not so sure what bottlenecking will be going on...

Minimum framerates are typically gpu bound rather than cpu bound...if its the gpu bang for buck thats right for you...i wouldnt worry about your cpu..
certainly not worth upgrading pc for gaming...just upgrade the gpu...

My 3570k even at 4.5Ghz is a bottleneck in some games with my 970.

cjgardens · 2 Jan 2015 at 15:49

Could get another card for sli very cheap and decent upgrade especially if you buy the card used. But you will need decent cooling

ginjaninja · 2 Jan 2015 at 15:56

opethdisciple said:
My 3570k even at 4.5Ghz is a bottleneck in some games with my 970.

does it bottleneck minimum frame rates or maximum framerates? what are you using to measure..

opethdisciple · 2 Jan 2015 at 16:03

ginjaninja said:
does it bottleneck minimum frame rates or maximum framerates? what are you using to measure..

Ok. Not scientific AT ALL. But, I was happy up untill a week ago with my cpu at stock.

As it was xmas and had the time off, decided to overclock it. It was only then I realised how much of a bottle neck it was in a game such as AC Unity and Watch Dogs.

Started investogating if a 3770k would also max out at 100% on all cores with a 970 and from You Tube videos it seemed that the 3570k would be a 100% on all cores whilst the 3770k wasnt. Meaning the 3770k was lifting the bottle neck and placing it more on the gpu.

Still playable (and a great experience). I was just using that as a example to show that a 3570k even at 4.5Ghz will bottle neck a 970 in certain games.

almighty15 · 2 Jan 2015 at 16:06

ginjaninja said:
im not so sure what bottlenecking will be going on...

Minimum framerates are typically gpu bound rather than cpu bound...if its the gpu bang for buck thats right for you...i wouldnt worry about your cpu..
certainly not worth upgrading pc for gaming...just upgrade the gpu...

It's actually the other way around.

setter · 2 Jan 2015 at 16:08

Tonester0011 said:
If you're not going to overclock then you might as well get a 970.

This tbh, but id still suggest oc'ing the CPU. 4ghz is practically a given on a 920 DO stepping. They're pretty easy to oc compared to newer chips if you take your time and read up on it a bit.

ginjaninja · 2 Jan 2015 at 16:09

opethdisciple said:
Ok. Not scientific AT ALL. But, I was happy up untill a week ago with my cpu at stock.

As it was xmas and had the time off, decided to overclock it. It was only then I realised how much of a bottle neck it was in a game such as AC Unity and Watch Dogs.

Started investogating if a 3770k would also max out at 100% on all cores with a 970 and from You Tube videos it seemed that the 3570k would be a 100% on all cores whilst the 3770k wasnt. Meaning the 3770k was lifting the bottle neck and placing it more on the gpu.

Still playable (and a great experience). I was just using that as a example to show that a 3570k even at 4.5Ghz will bottle neck a 970 in certain games.

fair enough..if youve saved your pre and post overclock bios..would be interesting to see benchmarks of minimum frame rates before and after...
i suspect that there will less than margin of error difference.

Heisenberg · 2 Jan 2015 at 16:17

opethdisciple said:
My 3570k even at 4.5Ghz is a bottleneck in some games with my 970.

I have a 2500k at 4.4Ghz that hasn't even come close to bottle necking my 970. Every game i've tried fully max's out gpu usage with cpu usage in the 80's.

almighty15 · 2 Jan 2015 at 16:24

Heisenberg said:
I have a 2500k at 4.4Ghz that hasn't even come close to bottle necking my 970. Every game i've tried fully max's out gpu usage with cpu usage in the 80's.

No it doesn't.... you put Crysis on matey and watch your GPU usage drop as the action heats up....

I had a 2500k at 5.5Ghz and in loads of games it couldn't peg my GPU at a constant 100% load.

So you either don't know what you're looking at or measuring it wrong.

setter · 2 Jan 2015 at 16:26

Is that Crysis 1, iirc it doesn't use four cores. But c3 is a bit better on an i7. Particularly with sli.

Davedree · 2 Jan 2015 at 16:27

opethdisciple said:
Ok. Not scientific AT ALL. But, I was happy up untill a week ago with my cpu at stock.

As it was xmas and had the time off, decided to overclock it. It was only then I realised how much of a bottle neck it was in a game such as AC Unity and Watch Dogs.

Started investogating if a 3770k would also max out at 100% on all cores with a 970 and from You Tube videos it seemed that the 3570k would be a 100% on all cores whilst the 3770k wasnt. Meaning the 3770k was lifting the bottle neck and placing it more on the gpu.

Still playable (and a great experience). I was just using that as a example to show that a 3570k even at 4.5Ghz will bottle neck a 970 in certain games.

The situation is the poorly coded game engines which both are ubisoft.
If you've never played the other Assasin creeds, then you wouldn't be aware of the poor cpu support in the anvil engine, especially in the early games.

opethdisciple · 2 Jan 2015 at 16:30

Davedree said:
The situation is the poorly coded game engines which both are ubisoft.
If you've never played the other Assasin creeds, then you wouldn't be aware of the poor cpu support in the anvil engine, especially in the early games.

I've played them all.

Heisenberg · 2 Jan 2015 at 16:33

almighty15 said:
No it doesn't.... you put Crysis on matey and watch your GPU usage drop as the action heats up....

I had a 2500k at 5.5Ghz and in loads of games it couldn't peg my GPU at a constant 100% load.

So you either don't know what you're looking at or measuring it wrong.

I do know what i'm looking at thank you. Why do some people feel the need to condescend? Crysis 1 do you mean? I've had my 970 for a couple of months and i repeat, every game i've tried, my CPU has not bottlenecked the card. Every game being, COD AW, Metro last light, Shadow of Mordor and AC unity. I mostly play with V sync on as i hate tearing but have tested in all the above games as i was thinking about upgrading the 2500k but don't really feel the need to.

Davedree · 2 Jan 2015 at 16:36

opethdisciple said:
I've played them all.

Then you'll remember the the early games suffered dire multi-threaded support,
and inefficient thread loading, similar to crysis 1 etc.

Yeah the recent ubisoft games are cpu bound at certain situations which is what you noticed, but other game engines are more gpu bound or on the whole more efficient. Watch dogs was just utter turd.