i5 and the 1080

oaksmokedbacon · 20 Jul 2016 at 18:40

hi all

my system is a i5 4690k currently overclocked slightly to 4.2. Would this hinder the performance of a 1080?

I'm debating over the 1070 and the 1080 as it is bonus season but if my pc is going to hold back the card I'd rather not waste my money and get the lower spec 1070.

any thoughts welcome.

thanks

pastymuncher · 20 Jul 2016 at 19:00

No, not at all.

VEGACORTEZ · 20 Jul 2016 at 20:41

If i had a high hz 1080p monitor with a gtx 1080 i'd want to run it with an i7 6700k at 4.5-4.6ghz and 3000-3200mhz ram to maximize fps. On certain AAA games now ram speed and having a skylake i7 make a difference. Depends what games you play but i would not pair a 1080 with an i5 as some games will bottleneck. Their are plenty of articles and youtube videos on the subject.

Griffildur · 20 Jul 2016 at 20:47

VEGACORTEZ said:
If i had a high hz 1080p monitor with a gtx 1080 i'd want to run it with an i7 6700k at 4.5-4.6ghz and 3000-3200mhz ram to maximize fps. On certain AAA games now ram speed and having a skylake i7 make a difference. Depends what games you play but i would not pair a 1080 with an i5 as some games will bottleneck. Their are plenty of articles and youtube videos on the subject.

using a 1080 card in 1080 resolution is a waste imho. That i5 clocks higher than my i7-3930K and it should be good enough. Still a waste in 1080 resolution, it doesn't do it justice.

setter · 20 Jul 2016 at 21:31

Will be fine. Cpu performance has stagnated so much with the intel mainstream chips. The latest skylake offerings arent much faster than haswell chips that they replaced.

oaksmokedbacon · 20 Jul 2016 at 22:01

thanks for the answer guys.

with regard to the 1080 monitor, I am planning to upgrade that next so this is about future proofing as best I can to allow me to make a jump to a 1440 or above monitor.

C6ckneyGeezer · 20 Jul 2016 at 22:10

Just hi-jack the thread slightly....

My 3570k @ 4Ghz won't bottleneck my Zotac AMP Exteme GTX 1070 then? Im talking about games like BF4, CSGO, DOOM, Witcher 3 etc at 1080p?

Cheers

VEGACORTEZ · 21 Jul 2016 at 07:07

C6ckneyGeezer said:
Just hi-jack the thread slightly....

My 3570k @ 4Ghz won't bottleneck my Zotac AMP Exteme GTX 1070 then? Im talking about games like BF4, CSGO, DOOM, Witcher 3 etc at 1080p?

Cheers

If you are playing above 60hz then yes there will be a bottleneck. On Witcher 3 even a devils canyon i5 @4.4ghz can slightly bottleneck a gtx 970 in novigrad city. Check out this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWJt7N6ERaE

VEGACORTEZ · 21 Jul 2016 at 15:06

Found this which would be a good way to estimate a cpu or ram bottleneck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW3dNjGaaBg

greatash · 21 Jul 2016 at 15:33

C6ckneyGeezer said:
Just hi-jack the thread slightly....

My 3570k @ 4Ghz won't bottleneck my Zotac AMP Exteme GTX 1070 then? Im talking about games like BF4, CSGO, DOOM, Witcher 3 etc at 1080p?

Cheers

BF4 and Witcher 3 will see a bottleneck.

A 1080 or 1070 paired with an i5 will always see a bottleneck on CPU heavy games at 1080p.

Tropicocity · 21 Jul 2016 at 15:35

Ram speed doesn't affect framerates by the way, not on a dedicated GPU and certainly not at the level of power a 1080 provides..if you had an APU then that's a different story entirely

MooMoo444 · 21 Jul 2016 at 16:14

GTX1080 for 1080p lol

Commute in a Lambo also?

OCPete · 21 Jul 2016 at 16:24

MooMoo444 said:
GTX1080 for 1080p lol

Commute in a Lambo also?

Or maybe someone likes running the latest games on ULTRA settings and has a 120/144Hz screen?

VEGACORTEZ · 21 Jul 2016 at 16:54

Tropicocity said:
Ram speed doesn't affect framerates by the way, not on a dedicated GPU and certainly not at the level of power a 1080 provides..if you had an APU then that's a different story entirely

I've seen multiple websites and videos which prove ram speed makes a large difference in fps on many modern titles using the same cpu. That is some old school thinking, times have changed.

oaksmokedbacon · 21 Jul 2016 at 17:11

OCPete said:
Or maybe someone likes running the latest games on ULTRA settings and has a 120/144Hz screen?

this is me

however I will get a 1440p monitor shortly.

Stealthploit · 21 Jul 2016 at 17:36

no it wont as for the monitor i would recomend ASUS VG248QE 144hz 1ms response

Omaeka · 21 Jul 2016 at 18:05

VEGACORTEZ said:
If you are playing above 60hz then yes there will be a bottleneck. On Witcher 3 even a devils canyon i5 @4.4ghz can slightly bottleneck a gtx 970 in novigrad city. Check out this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWJt7N6ERaE

I've actually removed the natural boost and dropped my 3570k to 3.4Ghz manually in the BIOS to test and I get 60fps in Novigrad with a 1070, I'd wager that 970 was running into the vRAM issue those cards had.

I should uncap it really and see how high the fps goes. I'm pretty sure that any Intel from the last 5 years is still ahead of the GPUs out there, one day we'll need an upgrade.

Though I am aware that the 6600k i5 vastly outperforms the 3570k i5 in basically anything, but that isn't because the 3570k is bottlenecking any GPUs, that's because the 6600k just has a ton of power over the 3570k. You'd only ever have to worry about bottlenecks above 1440p, heck people with 2500k processors are running 1070/1080s just fine.

Though if you want 144hz 1080p you might need a better processor, but there is no reason to buy an i7 of any kind unless money is not an object, the 6600k is the current price/performance king.

VEGACORTEZ · 21 Jul 2016 at 18:30

Omaeka said:
I've actually removed the natural boost and dropped my 3570k to 3.4Ghz manually in the BIOS to test and I get 60fps in Novigrad with a 1070, I'd wager that 970 was running into the vRAM issue those cards had.

I should uncap it really and see how high the fps goes. I'm pretty sure that any Intel from the last 5 years is still ahead of the GPUs out there, one day we'll need an upgrade.

Though I am aware that the 6600k i5 vastly outperforms the 3570k i5 in basically anything, but that isn't because the 3570k is bottlenecking any GPUs, that's because the 6600k just has a ton of power over the 3570k. You'd only ever have to worry about bottlenecks above 1440p, heck people with 2500k processors are running 1070/1080s just fine.

Though if you want 144hz 1080p you might need a better processor, but there is no reason to buy an i7 of any kind unless money is not an object, the 6600k is the current price/performance king.

I turned off hyper threading in rise of the tomb raider at pretty much max settings, unlocked framerate and each core in geothermal valley was running at about 100% so that's pretty much at breaking point for an i5, not very future proof it seems to me, although hyper threading gained nothing really but it stopped the cores maxing out. This is with the i7 6700k. Dropping settings a lot to to increase fps with hyper threading on i saw the 8 threads have sudden 80% or so usage. It seems that gaming at high hz does need a lot of cpu power on some games, i might retry this with hyper threading off to see what happens. As you say for 60hz the skylake i5 would suffice.

Out of interest what ram speed do you have?

greatash · 21 Jul 2016 at 18:39

I have a 2500k @ 4.3 and a 980 @ 1500 and in some games it does bottleneck. i5 goes to 100% cpu usage on the regular.

Even at 4.6+ I dont see how you can run a 1080 or 1070 with an older i5 at 1080p, its gonna bottleneck massively. 6700k doubles the minimum framerates compared to an older i5 with a modern high end gpu.

I'm running at 120hz so I just cap at 120 which most games dont reach when maxed out, 60hz it may be fine as others have said since you can just cap to 60fps for less cpu stress.

I think if you're gonna splash that much on a GPU though give it a good i7 to go with it or go 1440p for less cpu stress.

Omaeka · 21 Jul 2016 at 18:46

VEGACORTEZ said:
I turned off hyper threading in rise of the tomb raider at pretty much max settings, unlocked framerate and each core in geothermal valley was running at about 100% so that's pretty much at breaking point for an i5, not very future proof it seems to me, although hyper threading gained nothing really but it stopped the cores maxing out. This is with the i7 6700k. Dropping settings a lot to to increase fps with hyper threading on i saw the 8 threads have sudden 80% or so usage. It seems that gaming at high hz does need a lot of cpu power on some games, i might retry this with hyper threading off to see what happens. As you say for 60hz the skylake i5 would suffice.

Out of interest what ram speed do you have?

Rise of the Tomb Raider is one hell of a game though, pushing a 6600k to it's limits would be down to optimization really, latest i5s are always good for 4-5 years and with the performance jump the 6600k had 5 years after the last i5 being pretty huge. Of course a 3570k would not be fit for 2160p+ and would only perform fully at 60hz 1440p not 144hz. Though on a budget i5s will always suffice up to 2k I'd wager.

My RAM is 1600Mhz I believe