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GTX 560 Ti - bottlenecked by QX6700?

Saundie

Saundie

Saundie

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I'm considering upgrading my graphics card to a GTX 560 Ti, however I'm concerned that my QX6700 is going to hold it back. I am running the processor at the stock speed, and I run my games at 1920 x 1200.

I currently have a GTX 275 which is struggling in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and I expect it to have even more difficulty with Battlefield 3 and Skyrim. Are my fears well founded, or is the QX6700 going to be able to keep up? If it is going to hobble the new graphics card, will over clocking help matters at all, or is it a lost cause?

Thank you all!
 
I am planning to hold onto the QX6700 until Sandy Bridge-E is released, and then replace my CPU\RAM\motherboard in one go. What I'm having difficulty in deciding is whether or not it's worth getting the GTX 560 Ti, with a view to use it in the new Sandy Bridge-E system, or if the QX6700 is going to hold it back too much. If the QX6700 is going to cripple the 560's performance then there's not much point in upgrading, and I may as well wait until November/December to buy a new GPU.

I guess I have nothing to lose by overclocking the QX6700 now - it may even improve performance in Deus Ex.
 
Hi guys don't mean to steal the thread but I don't think there is any point in starting a new thread. I have a 955 at stock, would I need to overclock it to reduce any bottleneck from the upcoming 7 series cards? If so what speed?
 
Most games at a decent res (1080p) with eye candy cranked up don't need much past a 3.2GHz CPU to pretty much top out any GPU (bar multi gpu solutions).

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-hd5870-cpu-scaling.html

Have a gander at that article, you'll see that once you start adding AA, AF, and taking the res up the CPU quickly falls away as the limiting factor.

Obviously modern GPU's are faster than the 5870 was in that article, however, the article also shows that even a 3.2GHz CPU has performance to spare when gaming.

So you shouldn't be worrying about bottlenecking your GPU unless you are running a dual card setup, or gaming at a very low res with all the good stuff turned off :D
 
Interesting article; thank you for the link, HeX. It would seem that my fears have been allayed, and I can go ahead with upgrading :)

Edit; ordered a GTX 560 Ti, will get it on Saturday. Thanks for the advice, all!
 
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HeX said:
So you shouldn't be worrying about bottlenecking your GPU unless you are running a dual card setup, or gaming at a very low res with all the good stuff turned off :D
Click to expand...
...or CPU intensive games that don't use all four cores.

Take Crysis for example how everyone was how graphic intensive it is...but for me when I was recently playing on it at 1920 res on 4xAA, the time that I got the lowest frame rate was due to my Q6600 at 3.6GHz bottlenecking my overclocked 5850, with the GPU usage dropping from 100% down to 70~80%. This is because Crysis is only a two-cores game.
 
Marine-RX179 said:
...or CPU intensive games that don't use all four cores.

Take Crysis for example how everyone was how graphic intensive it is...but for me when I was recently playing on it at 1920 res on 4xAA, the time that I got the lowest frame rate was due to my Q6600 at 3.6GHz bottlenecking my overclocked 5850, with the GPU usage dropping from 100% down to 70~80%. This is because Crysis is only a two-cores game.
Click to expand...

Crysis is a strange engine though, and isn't really comparable to any other game.

Most games that are CPU bound are RTS's. FPS on the whole are usually GPU limited.
 
HeX said:
Most games at a decent res (1080p) with eye candy cranked up don't need much past a 3.2GHz CPU to pretty much top out any GPU (bar multi gpu solutions).
Click to expand...

I would disagree with that - after going from a Q9550 OC 3.8 to an I7 with a single GTX580 I could tell straight away the card was being held back before.

this is not something fraps will necessarily show you with a score - its actually what you see / how it plays.

I did a test with my cousin he was getting similar scores to me with Fraps on BC2 his rig Q9650 - GTX 480 against my I7 GTX 580.
However when he came round and had a play and noticed how much smoother everything was he then upgraded his platform to an i7.

This has been the case with the majority of the games I have played since - you can tell the GPU is holding back games now - whereas the system wasnt keeping up before. I think its likely the platform design rather than the cpu themselves

Its not the placebo affect at all - I wasnt expecting there to be such a difference until I went SLI However it was apparent immediately and I have read several other threads where people have said exactly the same

just my 2 pennies worth
 
There is people here with dual SLI and CFX setups on 775 quads at 3ghz+ and are not finding any problems with performance. Just make sure to clock the cpu to 3ghz+ and you will see all the benefits of the latest cards. Check roffs sig, he has a dual 470 setup and there are some here with dual 480 setups, 6950's 5870's etc all on 775 systems at 3ghz+ and not showing any major performance drops.

Go for it mate it's a good upgrade and you will enjoy the system more for gaming.

Also check some reviews with cpus and games, you will see in most cases it's a few frames difference.. Your system is still good for the latest cards and games. Only games that will see a true benefit if you upgrade the cpu are the cpu limited games like FSX others it's a small difference that you won't even notice in real use.

Have a read of some of these articles here

http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_categories/default.html
 
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@EllisDJ

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?257528-MSI-GTX480-review-with-CPU-scaling

980X @ 3.3 and 5.0 using a single GTX480, both stock and OC'd (so close to 580 speeds).

Notice how the CPU OC (red vs green bars) does practically nothing.

The only game that gets any real benefit is FSX, which is a notoriously CPU bound game. The rest, 2fps if you're lucky from your 1.7GHz OC.



As for BC2, it's a very optimised game for multi core, and you really shouldn't have been having slowdown with a 3.8 Q9550. I've got a 3.9 965BE and it's smooth as a baby's buttocks with a 560Ti @ 1080p 4xAA 16xAnniso...

eftJc.png

As you can see the difference between ~3.2-3.7 isn't massive. And that is only using 2xAA and 4xAnniso. Had they used the more common 4xAA and 16xAnniso the difference would have been practically non-existent.

http://www.techspot.com/article/255-battlefield-bad-company2-performance/page7.html
 
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HeX said:
As you can see the difference between ~3.2-3.7 isn't massive. And that is only using 2xAA and 4xAnniso. Had they used the more common 4xAA and 16xAnniso the difference would have been practically non-existent.
Click to expand...
I won't say a overclocked Core2Quad is a bottleneck, but having a new architecture CPU does make quite an impact on the frame rate.

In the above example you are quoting 3.2-3.7GHz on a i7 920, which is not relevent to Core2Quad at the same clock speed, as a C2Q9550 at 3.8GHz is only roughly as fast as a i7 920 at 2.80GHz, so a i7 920 at 3.0GHz+ shouldn't be lumped together with C2Q at 3.0GHz+. For the chart above, to compare a C2Q9550 at 3.8GHz to a i7 920 at 3.70GHz, one should really be looking at comparing between i7 920 at 2.77GHz and i7 920 at 3.7GHz.

With that say, the OP is fine with to just overclock his 6700 and pair it with the GTX560Ti. Is it gonna be as good as on newer platforms? The answer would be No. But is it 'good enough' consider the money saved for not needing to upgrade the rest of the rig? The answer would be yes- Considering fps passing 60fps don't make a difference normal monitors, and while a new platform with the CPU overclock would give may be around 5-10fps extra on the minimum frame rate, but not really worth the cost of around £300 for upgrade.
 
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Purgatory said:
Real World Gameplay CPU Scaling

Four processors; Intel Core i7 920, Intel Core 2 QX9650, AMD Phenom II X4 810, & AMD Phenom II X3 720 BE. Seven games. REAL WORLD GAMEPLAY at stock clocks and all overclocked to 3.6GHz, head to head, & apples to apples.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/05/19/real_world_gameplay_cpu_scaling/7


The Intel Core 2 QX9650 was actually the fastest CPU for FSX ;)


1st page of the article here

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/05/19/real_world_gameplay_cpu_scaling/1
Click to expand...
No offense, but I don't think a 4870x2 (which is actally pair of 4870 in Crossfire) and 2560 res would be a good representation. Cause there's the issue of:
1. Crossfire scaling and its effectiveness/performance difference on each platform (CPU/motherboard)
2. 2560 res
3. Lack of VRAM (4870x2 only has effectively 1GB of VRAM)- this alone invalidate the result of this test


And then wasn't there the thing with Nvidia card being better than ATI card for FSX?

Anyway for a realistic test, it should be done on something like a GTX580 3GB.
 
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Yes its an old test but a good one too if you are into FSX. They were only using 4870x2 in crossfire in that test and yes nvidia are better for FSX then ATI and thats only because their drivers can be tweeked more for FSX.
 
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