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Asus GTX 295 SLI Upgrade Suggestions

Soldato
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I am currently running this card with a Q6600 @ 3.33Ghz + Dark Power 850W PSU and I am looking for upgrade suggestions. My monitor is 24" so I usually game at 1900 x 1200. I've lost track of whats the latest and greatest, best bang for the buck etc. Will be playing BF3, Black Op's II etc. So what do you O'clockers recommend for me?
 
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Be careful with your cpu bottlenecking. Also what mobo do you have? I had trouble with 3x 7850s working nice with mine.

On the other side theres the 660 as its around same price as a 7850 not always on OCUK however.

Still id say the 7950 is the overall best card out atm its priced so good and has a nice game bundle with it.
 
Caporegime
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I have been doing a fair bit of looking into bottlenecks and I have found that it only effects the max fps in most games and not the avg/minimum.

4) CPU bottleneck?

In a CPU bottleneck situation you are most afraid of the minimal frame rate drop (i will explain and proove that statement in my other CPU dedicated benchmark) and don't care that much about maximum frame rate.
How much FPS would drop if i lowered the Core i7 3820 to 4 GHz?
Without bothering you with new charts, i will just state the difference in minimal frame rate going from 4000 MHz to 4550 MHz in %.

Alan Wake - 0 %
Aliens vs. Predator - 0 %
Avatar - 2 %
Cryostasis - 0 %
Crysis 2 - 0 %
Deus Ex Human Revolution - 0 %
Formula 1 - 3,5 %
F.E.A.R. - 0 %
Hard Reset - 7 %
H.A.W.X - 21 %
Homefront - 0 %
Lost Planet - 2 %
Necrovision - 0 %
Red Faction Armageddon - 1,5 %
Serious Sam 3 - 1,5 %
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky - 0 %
Syndicate - 0 %
World In Conflict - 8,5 %

CONCLUSION: there is almost no bottneck for GTX670 when CPU speed is 550 MHz lower. Only Hard Reset, World In Conflict and H.A.W.X would benefit from CPU OC.

Seems only sims (obviously) are effected with lower fps or I should put it as heavily CPU dependant games suffer with lower fps in a bottlenecked situation.

Hold onto those older CPUs unless you are a big sim fan :)
 
Soldato
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Cheers for your advice so far guys. I have the Abit(RIP) IP35 Pro motherboard. I've always had nVidia cards with this mobo. I believe it can do crossfire?? Not fully sure how that would work with the newer cards. I'm no big Sims fan so thanks for that gregster. If I can get a year or two more with just a GPU upgrade that would be ideal.
 
Soldato
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I'd stick to a single card Bony - as far as I'm aware the IP35 Pro with dual 16x slots actually only runs in 16x and 4x confirguration with two cards installed.

I remember running dual HD3850's on a Gigabyte P35 board with an identical slot configuration and performance from the second card running at 4x speed seriously crippled performance.

Like others have said I'd aim for a 7950 if funds allow... past that consider a 660 or 7850. :)
 
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I have been doing a fair bit of looking into bottlenecks and I have found that it only effects the max fps in most games and not the avg/minimum.



Seems only sims (obviously) are effected with lower fps or I should put it as heavily CPU dependant games suffer with lower fps in a bottlenecked situation.

Hold onto those older CPUs unless you are a big sim fan :)

Nice one greg this has made me a little happier, i dont care for anything above 60 fps, so if i do grab a 660 i should see minimum fps go up for sure?
 
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This has made me feel a bit better and made me certain the 7850s were failure cards/my pc bad.

If the 660 does not go up then im sure its the system, either way its a win for me as i know ill have to shift this computer to someone else. Shame its hard to sell a pc with no case lol!!

I dont wanna sell my Cosmos S case its just too good.
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Feb 2010
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14,591
I have been doing a fair bit of looking into bottlenecks and I have found that it only effects the max fps in most games and not the avg/minimum.



Seems only sims (obviously) are effected with lower fps or I should put it as heavily CPU dependant games suffer with lower fps in a bottlenecked situation.

Hold onto those older CPUs unless you are a big sim fan :)
Can't use a i7 as representation for identifying CPU bottleneck for old architecture CPUs, especially considering a Q6600 at 3.6GHz is only around close to as fast as a i3 2100 (and that's provided that the games actually use all 4 cores of the Q6600).

With my old Q6600 at 3.6GHz, it was seriously bottlenecking even my 5850 in mmos that I played, with GPU hovering between 40-80% usage and frame rate dropping to low 20s frequently; upgraded to i5 2500K overclocked to 4.5GHz, it became pretty much constant 60fps despite on the same 5850.

But for single player linear games, the CPU bottleneck shouldn't be anywhere as bad as mmos or other online games.
 
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Caporegime
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Can't use a i7 as representation for identifying CPU bottleneck for old architecture CPUs, especially considering a Q6600 at 3.6GHz is only around close to as fast as a i3 2100 (and that's provided that the games actually use all 4 cores of the Q6600).

With my old Q6600 at 3.6GHz, it was seriously bottlenecking even my 5850 in mmos that I played, with GPU hovering between 40-80% usage and frame rate dropping to low 20s frequently, upgraded to i5 2500K overclocked to 4.5GHz, it became pretty much constant 60fps despite on the same 5850.

Of course not and I was just using that as an example which was clear. I would hate to see people swapping out perfectly good CPUs though for a couple of fps. Better to see how it goes in the games that are being played first and MMO's are CPU intensive mostly?
 
Soldato
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Of course not and I was just using that as an example which was clear. I would hate to see people swapping out perfectly good CPUs though for a couple of fps. Better to see how it goes in the games that are being played first and MMO's are CPU intensive mostly?

Sorry, didn't get the chance to add the additional comment before you replied :p
 
Caporegime
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Sorry, didn't get the chance to add the additional comment before you replied :p

:)

The worst apps invented are bloody fps/gpu usage/cpu usage monitoring tools...If it wasn't for them, we would be happy with the older tech as we wouldn't generally know what the fps are when they are above 45/50.

When I was benching games at 5760*1080, I was getting around 35 fps in Alan Wake and it felt real smooth, no stutters or judders. It was only after checking Fraps after the bench had finished that I could see how low the fps were.

BF3 felt real bad and yet gave me more fps...Crazy :)
 
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