• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

bottlenecking

lets start by saying there isn't a single program that by itself will come up and say "your bottleneck is x"

next, you need to decide what a bottleneck is to you, in terms of GPU bottleneck I tend to go with the basis that if your CPU is at 100% and your GPU is not, then your CPU is a bottleneck (or vice versa)

some people go with the definition that if you have X GPU and Y CPU, you get 60FPS, but if you switch to Z CPU you get 70FPS so the CPU is the bottleneck, even though your GPU is at 99% and your CPU not at 100% constantly

this is lightly wonky thinking, particularly if this is at low resolution and you get identical FPS from CPU Y at a higher resolution as clearly your GPU limited and not so much CPU limited (e.g. CPU upgrade gives you no discernible improvement to FPS and doesn't allow you to run higher settings)

a quick way to check if you are CPU or GPU limited is to load up something intensive like BF3 or Heaven at the highest resolution and settings you care to and then look at both GPU usage and CPU usage - if your CPU usage is low and your GPU usage is high then you are GPU limited... if your GPU usage is low and your CPU usage is 100% then you are CPU limited and bottlenecking your GPU

to check CPU usage you can have task manager running on the performance tab and to check GPU usage you will need something like MSI Afterburner / EVGA Precision

I hope this helps
 
Last edited:
yes, your GPU is your limiting factor

something like a GTX580 you would see no bottleneck, something like a 7970/680 you might see a small one depending on what resolution/games you game with

what is your budget for a new card?
 
Marine-RX179 said:
With a Phenom II or Bulldozer CPU, I wouldn't bother too much going any higher than GTX480/GTX570/6970 level cards.
Click to expand...

why? a GTX 580 won't bottleneck and a 680 might only just and he's planning on going to ivybridge soon anyway so the 680 will be able to stretch it's legs then

@OP, if you can find a 680 for a good price I would get one of them (or a 7970 if you are of a red persuasion and find one free in a packet of cornflakes or something)
 
andybird123 said:
why? a GTX 580 won't bottleneck and a 680 might only just and he's planning on going to ivybridge soon anyway so the 680 will be able to stretch it's legs then
Click to expand...
Didn't notice the part which the OP said he's planning on going IvyBridge...

Anyway, vast majorty of the games are not using 4 cores or more...and with Phenom II and Bulldozer CPU, it is very easy to not able to hit 50-60fps while the GPU usage is far from max on the high-end card in games that are CPU damanding but only uses 2-3 cores.

It is very simple really...it doesn't matter if the graphic card can hit 80-90fps...if the CPU can only deliver around 40fps, then the frame rate in games will still be 40fps...which is what people generally refer to as a case of CPU holding back the graphic card. So it is really worth spending £100-£150 more on graphic card that would only benefit is a few rare games that actually make use of 4 or more cores? hmmmm....

But if the OP is certain he will be going IvyBridge when it's out, then it would probably not be an issue with going for new high-end card. But then again, by the time that IvyBridge is out, there might be changes on the graphic market as well, may it be the price, or the possibility of a better version of the GTX680 as people rumoured...
 
http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-7970-cpu-scaling-performance-review/6

phenom x4 and bulldozer 8150 both get the same FPS (alongside 2500k) to within a very small percentage... the OP's CPU is definitely not a bottleneck in any vaguely recent game

the "go to" game for showing the 2 core bottleneck you are talking about is starcraft 2 which is what... 2 years old? are we really making purchasing decisions based on 2 year old games still?

the only time an AMD CPU is a bottleneck is when you're talking the difference between 110 and 180 FPS which is irrelevant as it's at a stupidly low resolution that you wouldn't be buying a 400 quid GPU for anyway
 
Last edited:
andybird123 said:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-7970-cpu-scaling-performance-review/6

phenom x4 and bulldozer 8150 both get the same FPS (alongside 2500k) to within a very small percentage... the OP's CPU is definitely not a bottleneck in any vaguely recent game

the "go to" game for showing the 2 core bottleneck you are talking about is starcraft 2 which is what... 2 years old? are we really making purchasing decisions based on 2 year old games still?

the only time an AMD CPU is a bottleneck is when you're talking the difference between 110 and 180 FPS which is irrelevant as it's at a stupidly low resolution that you wouldn't be buying a 400 quid GPU for anyway
Click to expand...
You do realise majority of the new games, not just slightly older games don't use 4 or more cores, due to lazy console porting or lazy coding?
Skyrim, F1 2011, Civ 5...the list goes on. In fact, you would struggle to even find a quarter of the new games that actually use 4 or more cores. On games that are actually CPU demanding, 2-3 cores of Phenom II or Bulldozer won't keep up with GTX580 or above.
 
Last edited:
The link andybird provided showed phenoms and bulldozers keeping up just fine, using a 7970, in Metro 2033 among other games (like Battlefield 3).
 
MeMeMeMe said:
The link andybird provided showed phenoms and bulldozers keeping up just fine, using a 7970, in Metro 2033 among other games (like Battlefield 3).
Click to expand...
That's because Metro2033 is one of the few rare games that would use 6 cores like BF3. Also, benches that only shows average frame rate and without minimum frame rate doesn't tell the whole story.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom