bottleneck

[paradisiac]

is the a formula/rule of thumb for bottlenecks?
reason i ask is, im thinking of possibly adding 2 HD5770s and wondered, is there anything in my system that would cause a bottleneck?

 

[paradisiac]

expensive ram??? it was £123, it was cheaper than the slower ram which is why i bought it, i did everything on a budget, and over time. i have no intention of using it to show off, i just want to get the most out of what i have got.
my tv is 1080p if that makes a difference.

 

[paradisiac]

£123 for 1866mhz stuff? I stand corrected, that's a brilliant deal, I've paid well over that for 1600mhz.

Higher resolution means the graphics cards will be worked hard, meaning they'll definitely be the bottleneck. Well, ignoring the hard drive, levels wont load any quicker with the new cards.

What timings/frequency is your ram running at? Curiosity, it's nothing to do with the OP.

its running @ 1600MHz 8-8-8-20-1T. we deal with team elite at work so we get good deals on them. but like i said, its cheap ram so not the quickest/best.

 

[paradisiac]

if the cooler and case are the issue, and you dont think i will require 4GHz then might clock it back to 3.5GHz or would stock be more than ok?

 

[paradisiac]

It's difficult to measure bottlenecking without performing some kind of benchmarking excercise of similar systems but there are plenty of resources available on the web any way.

If you take your system for example and benmark the same set-up with a mid-range graphics card and a high end card and the results are the same, it's a fair bet the CPU is bottlenecking the high end card because it's not pushing data to the card fast enough. Although this is very unlikely with you i7 d0..

Another test is to overclock the card with stock CPU settings.. If the results are fruitless then again, there's most likey to be a bottleneck for the same reason above. A card will only prcoess what it's given.

Bottlenecking appears to be a a bit of a buzz word at the moment and nothing a bit of overclocking can't sort out.

ok cheers for that. i have just ordered my HD5770s so hopefully i wont notice any ill effects from other components. although, im sure even with some bottlenecking, im sure they will still outperform my 9800GTX+

 

[paradisiac]

You probably didn't need i7 in the first place as it's total waste of cash for gaming (unless you game at 2560x1600 with 24AA and 16A and have 5970 to match it with) and offers almost no increase in fps over 60quid CPUs but if you already have it it's a shame to have i7 without good cooling, case and an SSD !

If you wanna top end pc, get all top end parts not just CPU/mobo. Well unless it's for tasks that require only CPU power but then you won't be buying 5770s if you weren't gaming so I guess that's your main concern.

i do gaming, watch films, listen to music and convert home video to dvd and do a bit of editing, which is mainly why i went for the i7. i probably would have got away with the i5, but then whos to say in the next 12-18months more video apps dont come out that will utilise my cpu better?

 

[paradisiac]

yeah the tv is full hd, been using the 9800GTX+ at 1920x1080 without issues.

not got lots of cash, i sold my ps3 so wanted something that would be good enough to replace that, and sold my Q8300 system to fund my gfx cards.