Avoiding CPU bottleneck: i5 750 & GTX 970

Altae

Altae

Altae

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Joined
14 Apr 2012
Posts
13
Hi folks,

Slowly upgrading my current system starting with a GTX 970 to replace my trusty HD 5850.

I currently run a i5 750 at 3.2GHz, and I've seen various comments on the boards suggesting people with similarly old CPUs overclock to avoid a bottleneck.

Can anyone tell me if this is necessary and, if so, what the minimum effective overclock might be to avoid hampering a GTX 970?

Thanks! :)
 
The only way to know if your CPU is bottlenecking your GPU is to run some programs that monitor your CPU and GPU load whilst playing the games you play.

Set up afterburner program to overlay this info, here is a link on how to set it up (scroll down a little)
 
The amount that your cpu will bottleneck the system is dependant on what you're using it for. If you're playing games then on the whole the 750 shouldn't cause a problem unless it's a particularly cpu intensive game such as arma3, even so once it's overclocked to 4+ ghz it pulls its weight.

As above run afterburner and compare the cpu/gpu usage, most modern games are more reliant on gpu so suck it and see. They're easy to overclock anyways if you do find that it's a bottleneck :)
 
Thanks for the tips, all.

I do play Arma 3 and Battlefield 3, so I'll use those as a bit of a milestone. It's good to hear more modern games are focused on the GPU; I was getting a little worried my system was aging more than I had thought.

As for overclocking, I'm hoping to get a good price on a second-hand Noctua D14, so combined with my also-second-hand FT02, I'm hoping I can hit 4GHz with some trial and error!
 
I recently upgraded my i3 [email protected] to an i5 750 specifically to play arma3, it clocks to 4ghz without a sweat. Currently stress testing 4.2 (20x210) with 80°C peaks in prime95.

I get 50fps in the altis benchmark at 1080p all settings very high with 3k view distance/2.5k objects, 4x fsaa, ultra fxaa. That is with a stock gtx660, so it is far from gpu limited.
 
I have a 290 (at stock clocks, similar to the 970) and i5 750 at 3.6 (goes to 3.8 with turbo) and in all honesty, there are only a few games where I notice the bottleneck i.e. crysis 3, bf 4 (which is solved by using mantle API), cod aw. Anything else plays very nicely on max settings

I am looking at upgrading my CPU + mobo (i5 4690k) currently but really, I'm having a hard time justifying the outlay of £300+ on something where I will only see a "noticeable" difference in a handful of games so now I'm just thinking of getting a better CPU cooler and overclocking a bit more and holding on until skylake....
 
My i5 750 @ 4.1 and 970 @ 980 speeds doesn't suffer from bottlenecking, from what I have seen.

This is @ 1440p. All the games I've looked at are on 99% gpu utilization. This would possibly change at 1080 at refresh rates higher than 60hz though.
 
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