i7 870 (@3.8Ghz) bottleneck for new GPU?

[Scania]

I'm looking to upgrade in the new year with some Christmas money I have coming, I'm currently running a 3Gb 780ti but have 3 monitors and a resolution of 5760x1080 to drive.

Initially I was going to get another 780ti for SLI but the resolution I run at is going to hamper me with my limited VRAM so, I'm now considering either a 980ti or perhaps a 1070

Thing is, from what I've read I think my current i7 is most likely holding back my 780 so I'm assuming I wouldn't get the best from a 980ti or 1070,or, would the performance boost of either over my 780ti still be noticeable despite my aged CPU?

At 1080p the 780ti still rocks and I can max out most of my games with ease but it certainly suffers once I utilise the resolution I can run at, seems a bit daft not to use all three screens in surround but an upgrade seems the only way to get the best from my current setup.

Or, do I hang on to the 780 for now and upgrade my CPU (and motherboard) and if so, what should I opt for with my budget which will be ballpark £360.

Cheers.

 

[AiiR]

You'd get more of a boost by getting a 1070 than a new cpu and chipset, despite the bottleneck.

 

[Dave2150]

You'd get more of a boost by getting a 1070 than a new cpu and chipset, despite the bottleneck.

A 1070 would be wasted with such a old/slow CPU.

 

[arc@css]

Wouldn't the resolution he's running help to minimize the bottleneck, though? I thought the higher the res you go, the more gpu limited you are - game depending, of course.

 

[Confused Stu]

Good to see a fellow 3-screen gamer around these parts.

As the others have said, ideally you'd be looking at upgrading the CPU and the GPU. However, if I had to choose one OR other for your situation, I would upgrade the GPU first, to something like a 1070 if you can stretch the further £30.

While the GPU won't be able to fully stretch its legs with that CPU, the fact that you say your current CPU runs all the games you want to fine at 1080, I think your CPU won't hold you back if you up the resolution as your GPU definitely starts to be more likely to be the limiting factor at 3x1080 in my person experience. There will be some games that changing CPU & motherboard will provide more of a boost than changing your GPU, but I think the majority of them will get more of a boost with a GPU change than a CPU change.

 

[Scania]

Thanks for the replies, indeed, as I say, @1080p it rocks - 100+ fps in BF4, BF1 and Battlefront ,all at ultra (but no AA) as soon as I enable surround the fps rate halves and I have to lower texture settings on BF1 and Battlefront or I run out of VRAM.


Interestingly FSX (which is far more CPU than GPU bound) runs superbly in surround, same can be said for Project Cars, GTA V is the only one that I can't max @1080p never mind surround!

Eventually I will change the CPU & board but am reluctant to at the moment as it still seems more than upto current games, certainly @1080p anyway.

Just have to choose between a £250ish used 980ti or a new 1070 now....

 

[orbitalwalsh]

I'll be rocking a i7 860 with a 980 Ti, hoping to see is DX12 actually works which such old CPUs as all recent tests are on 4000/6000 series .
also have a 1080 to test as well, if i can get the new cooler to mate with current ekwb backplate =/

am running @ 4.5ghz and 1440p

 

[Nexus18]

i7 870 is still a good chip, get it OC to at least 4GHz.

I am still running an i5 750 @ 4GHz and there are only a few games where a CPU bottleneck is really obvious i.e. the division and GTA 5 (still get 60FPS locked more or less with max settings except grass and no AA) are the main ones (my GPU is a 290) IMO, paying £300+ is not worth while for a CPU etc., it is not anywhere as worthwhile as a new GPU especially since you are running a very high res.

Plus, dx 12 + vulkan help massively with high end GPUs and older/less powerful CPUs, although this seems to only really be the case for AMD cards and "somewhat" pascal cards.

 

[Stu]

I'm running an X5650, and I've just upgraded to a 1070 with fantastic results. I'm running a single monitor at 2048x1152. Also, I've not had time to check overclocking since I swapped from a 920, so I am currently running the CPU at stock (~2.6 I think).

Generally speaking, an old i7 clocked to around 4GHz can easily keep up with a 1070, and most likely a 1080. Of course there will be some games that are more CPU intensive, but with new games there are almost always some graphical setting you can select to bring a new gfx card to its knees (even if only upscaling).

Search around the web and you'll find lots of people that have run tests with old i7 CPUs, and they are generally not CPU bottlenecked provided you have a decent overclock on the CPU. Go check the extensive x5650 Xeon thread in the CPU forum... there's been plenty of discussion about upgrading graphics.
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18618052&page=86

As said above, you will certainly see more of an improvement from upgrading gfx rather than cpu/mobo.

 

[philo-sofa]

The higher the resolution you're running the less your CPU matters, as the GPU tend to become the bottleneck. Also an 870 isn't a bad CPU, at 4GHz it'd be equivalent to a Skylake at a shade under 3GHz. Having owned an i7 860 for several years I know they can hit 4.0 reasonably easily, so I'd give that a go, and as seems to be the consensus would spend the £ on a GPU upgrade.

 

[Terrorfirmer]

Actually at that high resolution and with that hefty overclock, I don't think the CPU would bottleneck much at all despite it's age.

I have a stock 870 and even that copes pretty good with Battlefield 1, it does bottleneck GTX1070 pretty significantly at 1080p though but it's performance surprised me for a CPU from 2009 at stock speeds.

 

[Th3D0n]

good to know im going to get a rx480 and i have a i7 920

 

[wedrum]

OP the i7 is indeed still plenty. Try overclock it a tad more.
I would just go for the 1070 it will be a nice upgrade.
The 780ti is no slouch though Either I am still running one myself.

 

[Scania]

OP the i7 is indeed still plenty. Try overclock it a tad more.
I would just go for the 1070 it will be a nice upgrade.
The 780ti is no slouch though Either I am still running one myself.

I have had it @4.0Ghz and it handled it fine but my CPU temp was up in the mid 80's when benching and running Battlefront (yet in the 60's running FSX???)
I guess I'll need a better cooler (and bigger case to help with airflow)

Just deciding which 1070 to opt for now, I'm assuming a blower type design that exhausts out of the case is the way to go temperature wise? - my current 780ti is a Gigabyte Windforce which just blows lots of hot air into the case... :/

 

[Stu]

Even though blowers push the air straight out the case, the coolers themselves tend to be inferior to non-blower designs.

Generally speaking, people go for non-blower designs and ensure general case airflow is adequate.

As to what model to get, there are a few lemons around, but I recommend focusing on price because the differences in performance are often negligible. After a quick look on OcUK, I think prices may have gone up £10-20 over the past couple of weeks. I would certainly aim to pay less than £380.