GTX 560 Ti - bottlenecked by QX6700?

[Marine-RX179]

Depends entirely on the games your playing, crank on a hardcore RTS with a few bots or similar, your cpu will be your bottle neck.

Agreed. And then there's mmos....lots of people/characters in the same area, with the darn game not optimised for quad is REALLY annoying.

 

[EllisDJ]

@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...



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

If you read what I read I said the benchmarks in fraps or whatever dont actually show the results you experience!

You find somone who has posted that they have seen no difference in gaming performance going from a Core 2 Quad to an I5 or I7 - the difference is instantly noticeable!

You then realise even though fraps is saying something similar its like frames were being missed out before - thats the best way I can describe it.

You are not getting the best from a decent GPU with a Core 2 Quad setup - when you upgrade- which you definatly will at some point you will see what I mean.

I umm'd and arr'd for ages as to whether to upgrade and doubted the decision as did my cousin based on articles like that above!!
Dont believe it! your GPU can only draw what it can draw - you wont see a doubled frame rate by upgrading to a Sandybridge!!

BUT what you will see is such an improvement to way games play you will realise there was definately a bottleneck of sorts there before!
I am not trying to sell anything I couldnt care less - But I am telling you the truth based on my experiences - games have never run better - even older games!

Problem now is finding good ones to play

 

[EllisDJ]

£300 upgrade to get a sandybridge - £££ well spent - you find someone who disagrees, especially for that money !

 

[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

 

[Strife212]

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

 

[Saundie]

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

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

 

[EllisDJ]

60.c idle is crazy and sounds like something is wrong with the cooling, maybe air bubble and needs reseating.
maybe push pull will help if you do not have it but it usually only get you a few degrees off.
my cousin ran a Q9650 at 1.38v and only had 35c idle temps using the socket 775 (I think thst right) noctua cooler with push pull
is your case very small, are you getting good overall airflow into it?

 

[HeX]

Indeed, you should be no where near 60C idle at 1.35V...

You need to invest in some better CPU cooling ASAP.

I used to run a Q6600 @ 3.6GHz on 1.475V on a TRUE + 1000RPM Fan and it never broke 70C under LOAD :|

 

[gamerdude1989]

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

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.

just my two cents

 

[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.

 

[gamerdude1989]

ahhhh that would explain it i was very confused.
My apologies fella.

 

[Marine-RX179]

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

Just thought to give you an idea...before I upgraded to my current Silver Arrow CPU cooler, I was using Arctic Freezer 7 Pro (with MX-3 paste) as well, and that managed to keep my Q6600 overclock to 3.6GHz on 1.48v at 70-72C max in prime95 in my CoolerMaster 690II with 8 fans in it (not counting the one on the Freezer 7 Pro). So CPU cooler aside, you should probably have a consideration toward the case and airflow as well.