GTX 560 Ti - bottlenecked by QX6700?

[Saundie]

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!

 

[Saundie]

Overclocking to 3.2GHz shouldn't be a problem, will it really make that much of a difference, though?

 

[Saundie]

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.

 

[Saundie]

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!

 

[Saundie]

I attempted to overclock my CPU yesterday in anticipation of my graphics card arriving today, unfortunately I was less than successful. In order to get it to run at 3.2GHz with any sort of stability I had to increase the voltage to 1.35v, which resulted in idle temperatures jumping to ~60C on each core. I was previously running it at 1.2v at stock (2.66GHz). It seems that my ancient Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro isn't up to the task of cooling this notoriously inefficient Kentsfield CPU. The lack of airflow in my Lian Li PC-A05B probably doesn't help matters.

On the plus side, the GTX 560 Ti arrived this morning, and I've spent a couple of hours trying it out in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I did not notice a difference initially, the frame rate was roughly the same as the GTX 275. I decided to start the Task Manager and noticed that the game was fully utilising all four cores, which seemed strange to me. I stumbled across a review that demonstrated DirectX 11 results in far less demand being placed on the CPU over DX9, so I switched it over. The game no longer suffers from very low fame rates when there's a lot going on, and CPU usage has dropped significantly.

I would imagine that any game able to utilise DX11 would demonstrate a similar sort of benefit on a system such as mine. I'm going to try cranking up the eye candy this afternoon to see how much better the GTX 560 Ti performs. I hope other people find this information useful and/or interesting. Thanks again for those who responded with advice and insights

 

[Saundie]

QX6700 is fine, your graphics card is just getting old.

Thanks for reading the thread in all it's glorious detail.

 

[Saundie]

Both the Q6600 and Q9650 have a lower TDP than the QX6700 - 105w and 95w respectively - which goes some way to explain the different overclocking experiences. If I were going to keep the QX6700 for a while I'd consider reseating the heatsink etc but as it stands I plan to replace it in two months, and I'm sure it'll cope until then. At stock speeds running at 1.2v it idles at 40C, which I can live with.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate your insights but at this stage I'm just keen to move on from the old workhorse

How can you say its all down to the graphics card?
yes its a little old now compared to newer releases etc.

But even BF3, which is obviously not even out yet will be requiring that exact card for recommended specs.
It cant be that old and useless to create a bottleneck.

Strife212 was talking about the GTX 275, but you seem to be talking about the GTX 560 Ti... so I'm afraid I don't follow your reasoning.