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Crossfire GPU's only getting 40-60% Usage on certain games?

xTommy92 said:
I don't want to believe it, my heart sunk once I read these replies. Only built this PC (first PC) in Jan this year, not sure if to try and return my CPU to Amazon or sell it and put the rest of the money towards an i7. Being a noob to all this I guess we all have to make mistakes to learn! :(
Pointless me sticking to an i5 as I have just bought this new GPU and it would mean I could get the same performance from a single GPU heavily OC.

Tom
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I'm afraid for people that want constant 120fps+, current CPUs can't really do that...except for may be the expensive Sandy-Bridge-E/IvyBridge-E in games that would use 6 cores or more like BF3. Also, for CPU demanding games that use 4 cores or less, having more cores of HT won't help with the situation. It would be even worse for CPU demanding games that use less than 4 cores.

It is the the simple case of "graphic card(s) can do 120fps+, but the CPU can't keep up thus holding it back".
 
Ebay it is!
I'll put a reserve on so it does not go for pittance, having a look around Ocuk at the CPU's and why are the Sandybridge-E and Ivybridge-E soo expensive, is it the fact they have six cores?

Tom
 
I seem to recall when 60fps min was becoming the new enthusiast "standard" people were poo-poohing the idea. Yet here we are. 120hz monitors are affordable now, only thing holding back 120fps from becoming the new sweet spot is Intel's lack of competition (5% boost gen-to-gen last few years) and parallelization (lack of).
 
Well the main reason I bought a new GPU was for the next-gen games as I know a single 7950 will not give me significant frames. Do you reckon most next-gen games will be very CPU demanding or opposite?

Tom
 
xTommy92 said:
Well the main reason I bought a new GPU was for the next-gen games as I know a single 7950 will not give me significant frames. Do you reckon most next-gen games will be very CPU demanding or opposite?
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IMO just keep what you got. Overclocked i5 doing 70-100fps may be bottlenecking crossfire 7950 or 7970 which can fly over 120fps+ in some games at the moment, but with the new consoles around the corner, I think new games will have your crossfired cards dipping their capability down to the same 70-90fps level as your CPU soon enough, thus balancing out the CPU and the graphic card performance. You could always increase the AA level with your spare GPU usage (even if the x8 AA over X4 AA might not be that hugely difference).

Orangey said:
I seem to recall when 60fps min was becoming the new enthusiast "standard" people were poo-poohing the idea. Yet here we are. 120hz monitors are affordable now, only thing holding back 120fps from becoming the new sweet spot is Intel's lack of competition (5% boost gen-to-gen last few years) and parallelization (lack of).
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Tell me about it! I mean for games like Guild Wars 2, overclocked i5 still only managing around 30fps+ on those huge boss battle with an army of players vs boss and minions. And don't even get me started on the GW2 World vs World...
 
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B2 scaling is **** tom, my scaling isn't any better and I'm using a 3770K.

Certain titles don't scale well at all, AC series being the worst offender that I've played that's not uncommon to chug along at 35% at times.

It's down to Nvidia api code in certain titles that is used to specifically run better on Nvidia hardware.
 
Marine-RX179 said:
IMO just keep what you got. Overclocked i5 doing 70-100fps may be bottlenecking crossfire 7950 or 7970 which can fly over 120fps+ in some games at the moment, but with the new consoles around the corner, I think new games will have your crossfired cards dipping their capability down to the same 70-90fps level as your CPU soon enough, thus balancing out the CPU and the graphic card performance. You could always increase the AA level with your spare GPU usage (even if the x8 AA over X4 AA might not be that hugely difference).

Ummm, see what you are saying but wouldn't a i7 still boost the performance?

Tom
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Is ULPS on?
Even with it *just* being an i5, the bottleneck shouldn't be that huge.
When PGI tested BF3, he was getting 80% usage each using his i5'ed 3820.

I used a 7950 Crossfire ages ago with a 4.8GHZ 2500k, I don't play BF3 because I think it's crap, but I didn't find any real bottleneck, there's still only a handful of games that need the i7 to take full power of the 7970 Crossfire (BF3/Crysis 3, and I'd hope people play more than 2 gams), other games need a CPU that doesn't yet exist (Any Total War game ;) etc)

That said, if I went dual GPU, I'd probably go i7, as it's not much more given the budget on GPU's.

I'm tempted to go for an i7 4770K from my 4670K myself, just for encoding.

In newer engines, we're probably going to see the i7 being needed more to max out two GPU's though, especially as CPU progression is.... Lame
 
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Got ULPS disabled in Afterburner so that's not the cause but like you said next-gen is going to require an i7 to take full advantage of a dual setup. Also when you mean CPU progression is lame, do you mean they could be making something so much more powerful?
That's the one thing I do not understand, before I bought the second GPU I researched into finding how much of a bottleneck there would be on CPU heavy games like BF3, people were getting 80% out of i5's so why is it that I am all the way down at 40-50%! Big difference!

Tom
 
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CPU progression seems to be pretty lacklustre.

In a game which only uses 4 cores for example, and you're CPU bottlenecked, there's nout you can do other than try and get the best clocking Haswell chip you can find :p
 
xTommy92 said:
Ummm, see what you are saying but wouldn't a i7 still boost the performance?

Tom
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It would IF the game use more than 4 cores/threads (which Borderland 2 ain't). I just thought it ain't worth the hassle of having to sell your i5 to change to a i7. It's definitely worth considering, but only if you can find a i7 for cheap enough, and you don't mind going through the trouble of selling your i5.

For Borderland 2, the thing that you can do that will give you most immediate gain ain't switching to i7, but to overclock your 3570K higher (which you might need to start looking into delidding the CPU for reduce the temp further). Switching from a i5 3570K to a i5 2600K is a downgrade for games that don't use more than 4 cores.
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
It would IF the game use more than 4 cores/threads. I just thought it ain't worth the hassle of having to sell your i5 to change to a i7. It's definitely worth considering, but only if you can find a i7 for cheap enough, and you don't mind going through the trouble of selling your i5.

If it was me for the sake of 120/144Hz monitor, I would go all out going IvyBridge-E 6 cores if money is not an issue.
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Was looking at those Ivybridge-E CPU's, tempting but a lot of money. I would also have to buy a new Mobo as mine is a 1155 Socket. To be fair, I need to sell a bike I have which could get me some money together!
How much of a performance boost would I see with a 6 core CPU Next-Gen?

Tom
 
xTommy92 said:
Was looking at those Ivybridge-E CPU's, tempting but a lot of money. I would also have to buy a new Mobo as mine is a 1155 Socket. To be fair, I need to sell a bike I have which could get me some money together!
How much of a performance boost would I see with a 6 core CPU Next-Gen?

Tom
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I take back my suggestion of IvyBridge-E, as having more cores still won't benefit if games don't use more than 4, unless FPS by EA are all you play.

You have to also bear in mind that only handful of games uses more than 4 cores, as mentioned above by Martini. For now, just focus on overclocking your i5 3570K as I mentioned above.
 
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You should also expect a lot more games to start using more than 4 threads because both the new consoles will have 8 cores as standard.
 
LtMatt said:
You should also expect a lot more games to start using more than 4 threads because both the new consoles will have 8 cores as standard.
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Yea that's was my initial thinking when I mentioned the IvyBridge-E 6 cores (but they sure are/will be dam expensive), but looking back OP is only talking about Borderland 2 specifically, so I removed my suggestion.
 
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