Best CPU for GTX 980

element059

element059

element059

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Joined
20 Oct 2005
Posts
77
Hey,

I recently purchased a GTX 980 to play Far Cry 4 and Watchdogs but I've been getting poor frame rates (between 40 - 60fps on Ultra Settings).

I would have expected a little more from Nvidia's latest card and I've seen online benchmarks with the same graphics card which reach frame rates between 60 - 70.

The rest of my current setup is quite old (about 5 - 6 years). I'm using the following setup:

Asus Rampage II
Bloomfield i7 clocked at 3.2ghz
6GB's DDR3
Windows 7 64bit
Latest Nvidia drivers and Far Cry 4 patch
No background running programs (Anti-virus disabled etc...)

I checked my system monitor when running the game and it's only using 60% of my CPU and 4GB's of my 6GB's memory, despite the recommended specs suggesting 8GB's for system memory.

Is my system likely causing a Bottleneck for the graphics card? Am I missing something?

Thanks,

Laurence
 
Watchdogs is just a ****ily built game so you're gonna get comparatively poor frame rates in comparison to other games. As for Far Cry 4 I would guess that because it is new Nvidia haven't released drivers that compliment it as they usually do a few weeks/months down the line.

Maybe the full 8Gb of ram would help, also what speed is the ram?
 
As someone said it could be vsync still on, turn it off :)

My main point is though, get an aftermarket cooler and overclock that CPU. You should be able to hit 4.0Ghz easily enough and the i7 extra threads will help too :)
 
Hey,

Thanks all for your responses. V-Sync is switched off and I'm using 1920x1080. I already have an aftermarket cooler but it's not water-cooled. Still, i'll try pumping up the hz a little more. It's quite an old CPU so I might as well push it as hard as I can.
 
Loads of people have been having issues with the frame rates on Far Cry 4. I'd suggest waiting for the new drivers before shelling out.

In the mean time I'd suggest running EVGA Precision in the background and taking a look at the GPU usage during gameplay. That will give you a good idea on how CPU bottlenecked you are.
 
Hey all,

thanks for your comments. I cranked up the CPU to 3.6 hz and it's running pretty well at around 67C. I reckon I could probably get away with pushing it a bit further to 3.8-4 but already the game seems to be performing a bit better.

I'll try EVGA and see what results I get.

If the game can run on recommended specs of an i5 my i7 should be ok...
 
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