My current setup is an i5 760 @ 4.2GHz, a P55 1156 motherboard and an single HD7590 all under water. I'm looking to add a second HD7950 but I'm concerned that I'm going to be bottle necked by both my weak processor and also by my two 8x PCI-E 2.0 slots? Would I be best putting my money on a 4770K and an appropriate motherboard?
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Am I going to run in to a severe bottleneck?
- Thread starter Princey
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If you get the gpu first with the plan to upgrade the cpu shortly after then that will be ok. If you can't afford to do both then adding a second gpu won't give you much extra performance though because of the cpu bottleneck.
Cool, well I can't quite stretch to a 4770K and a Z87 motherboard so how would the below clocked to 4.5GHz fair with two 7950s?
- Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W)
- Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
What is your budget?
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Could always get a second hand 3770K, probably get one for 140ish.
Then a Z77 board, and a 7950.
That said, you can get a Z87 board and 4770K for 370 ish.
Then a Z77 board, and a 7950.
That said, you can get a Z87 board and 4770K for 370 ish.
Would the OP not be able to save some a lot of money by grabbing a used i7 8xx as a stop gap and clocking that up? or would a pair of HD7950's bottleneck on that too? (wouldn't of thought so as the 8xx is just as good if not better than the 9xx and when clocked will match a stock 2600K, but /meh)
The second hand route might not be a bad idea. An i5 will do you well, but even that will bottleneck the gpu's in games like Battlefield 3 a bit. If you can stretch your budget slightly or go second hand to get an i7 then that would be the best solution. If you don't mind a slight bottleneck in a few games then don't worry about it and go with an i5.
i7 920 @4ghz will still bottleneck similar to what a i5 current gen would. Only the i5 would have higher minimums. Tested on battlefield 3 by Setter and Angst. A sandy i7 or higher is what you want really.
i7 920 @4ghz will still bottleneck similar to what a i5 current gen would. Only the i5 would have higher minimums. Tested on battlefield 3 by Setter and Angst. A sandy i7 or higher is what you want really.
Good suggestion, you could pick up a decent sli/xfire capable mobo for sub £100.00. Recently sold my Asus P8 Z77 V Pro and 3770k for £220.00 on members market. The cpu wasnt a great clocker, but it eliminated the bottleneck with sli that i had on a 3570k. Both chips at 4.5ghz. Typically in bf3 max gpu usage with my 670's was 80%, 70% on my second system which is an x58 i7 930 at 4.0ghz.
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My 3770k is @4.3 and have never run into a bottleneck ever.
True, much cooler running chips too.don't rule out a 2600k/2700k chip and p67/z68 board either
As the 3770k is an ht chip, even at stock speed it's much better than an i5 in bf3 especially with sli/xfire. This game really does benefit from the extra threads with multi gpu. The majority of other games though theres no discernible difference between a 3570k and a 3770k.
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asus p8z77-i
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silent prom 600w
I have evga oc
Battlefield 3, 64 player server. Try Caspian as you leave the us base, look across the whole map. Or firestorm as you leave the russian base, look across the whole map. Watch gpu usage drop a bit from 99%. Noticed even with my cpu at 4.8ghz which is faster than yours at 4.3ghz. Probably just Battlefield 3 with crap cpu optimization, but still. For 99% of other stuff though a light oc on an i7 is plenty.
Pray tell me where...
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