how much CPU limited?

yannis76 · 22 Jun 2013 at 11:21

I currently have an Athlon x4 740 with a 7790, which serves me quite ok for an htpc.
However since i do compromise some quality settings I was thinking which way would give me the biggest upgrade:

New gpu or
New cpu

I am leaning towards the gpu route which is much more financially feasible.
For my 430psu and gd04 case which would be the best card to put? Max length: 11inches

Antowns · 22 Jun 2013 at 11:33

When playing games does your CPU usage cap out?

mickyflinn · 22 Jun 2013 at 12:47

Do you have a budget ?

yannis76 · 22 Jun 2013 at 15:09

Of course I have and its quite limited.
From my research, reverting to the Intel path I would be need about 150€ taking into account also that I would sell my A85+A4 740 for around 100€.
Upgrading the GPU would cost me around 70€ if I sold my 7790 for around 100€.
I was thinking for a GTX660...

melvis · 22 Jun 2013 at 16:16

7790 to 660 isnt much of an upgrade tbh

yannis76 · 23 Jun 2013 at 01:51

melvis said:
7790 to 660 isnt much of an upgrade tbh

no? I suppose then also a 7850 wouldn't be any upgrade, correct?
Please bear in mind that is for an HTPC with a 430W PSU playing at 1080p

yannis76 · 6 Jul 2013 at 16:25

Just decided to test the 7790 with an Intel i5-3570 cpu...It seems that GPU speed is indeed more important than CP in 1080p:

Hitman Absolution 1080p high/ultra average fps:
i5-3570: 42/37, x4-740:26/24

Tomb Raider 1080p ultra/utimate average fps:
i5-3570:38/22, x4-740:37/19

Sniper 2 elite benchmark:
i5-3570:22, x4-740:21

As you can see ut clearly depends on the game whether you are CPU or GPU bound, but it seems that even a humble Athlon x4 740 is enough if coupled with a good GPU...

Marine-RX179 · 6 Jul 2013 at 16:59

yannis76 said:
Just decided to test the 7790 with an Intel i5-3570 cpu...It seems that GPU speed is indeed more important than CP in 1080p:

Hitman Absolution 1080p high/ultra average fps:
i5-3570: 42/37, x4-740:26/24

Tomb Raider 1080p ultra/utimate average fps:
i5-3570:38/22, x4-740:37/19

Sniper 2 elite benchmark:
i5-3570:22, x4-740:21

As you can see ut clearly depends on the game whether you are CPU or GPU bound, but it seems that even a humble Athlon x4 740 is enough if coupled with a good GPU...

I don't see how being only on average 20fps across all games on the the X4 740 being "enough". The thing is if the CPU is already limited the frame rate in the 20-40fps range, even getting a GTX780, you still won't get higher frame rate than that. The important thing to get decent performance (frame rate) is balancing between the CPU and graphic card.

It's depending what you want really. Upgrading graphic card would give you much more room to play with increasing the graphic settings, but frame rate won't increase much over what you currently have due to CPU limitation (would still be in the 20-40fps range on average); upgrading CPU would remove/reduce the CPU limitation, thus give you the option to trade graphic quality off for better performance (i.e. use medium/high settings instead of ultra on the 7790, but you get can get consistance 35-60fps+ for example).

WingZero30 · 6 Jul 2013 at 17:26

Marine-RX179 said:
I don't see how being only on average 20fps across all games on the the X4 740 being "enough". The thing is if the CPU is already limited the frame rate in the 20-40fps range, even getting a GTX780, you still won't get higher frame rate than that. The important thing to get decent performance (frame rate) is balancing between the CPU and graphic card.

It's depending what you want really. Upgrading graphic card would give you much more room to play with increasing the graphic settings, but frame rate won't increase much over what you currently have due to CPU limitation (would still be in the 20-40fps range on average); upgrading CPU would remove/reduce the CPU limitation, thus give you the option to trade graphic quality off for better performance (i.e. use medium/high settings instead of ultra on the 7790, but you get can get consistance 35-60fps+ for example).

Indeed.

Just to give my example to OP;

Before upgrading from 5850 to 7950, in BF3 my Q9650@4Ghz enabled 5850 to reach 95-99% gpu usage most of the time and frame rate was around 45-55 fps on average.
Upgrading to 7950 with same settings etc and my gpu usage is only at around 45-50% on average and gives the same frame rate of around 45-55fps.

So even though 7950 is more than twice as powerful as 5850, I am still getting 5850 performance as Q9650/775 is bottlenecking my 7950 severely and only way to get full performance from my 7950 is to upgrade cpu/platform.

djshauny1 · 6 Jul 2013 at 17:33

Id ditch the 740 tbh and go the intel route but thats just me

yannis76 · 6 Jul 2013 at 18:07

I think it is also a matter of whether a game is CPU or GPU bound.
Hitman seems to rely more on the CPU whereas TR and Sniper2 more on the GPU.

I wish I could just fit my 7970 to the x4-740 but its not possible...

yannis76 · 6 Jul 2013 at 18:09

djshauny1 said:
Id ditch the 740 tbh and go the intel route but thats just me

To be honest, I wish I had followed this route from the beginning. I didnt because it was more expensive. Problem is that if I want to change now, it is even more expensive. Is there any site with used hardware?

Marine-RX179 · 6 Jul 2013 at 19:19

yannis76 said:
To be honest, I wish I had followed this route from the beginning. I didnt because it was more expensive. Problem is that if I want to change now, it is even more expensive. Is there any site with used hardware?

Hate say I told you so, but had you taken my advice and went with the Intel Pentium and just grabbed a 2nd hand 6850/5850/5870 instead of following the Trinity hype back then, for the money you new to now spend plus the money you waste, you would have been upgrading to a i5 and a 7950/GTX670 now, rather than just the CPU and board (and spare the the kind of pointless move from the A-10 to x4 740, and grabbing a underpowered 7790...which ain't much faster than a 5850/5870).

As it stand, there's not much you can do on the FM2 platform in terms of CPU performance side of things. Your best bet on a limited budget is probably a 2nd hand i5 2500K for around £100-£110, 2nd hand decent model Z68/Z77 board at around £50-£60 (but you can keep your existing ram). You probably gonna need to get a 3rd party cooler as well...something around the £25-£40 range would do. That would bring the total for CPU upgrade to around £175~£200.

As for where to get them...do you have access to the members marketplace here on the forum?

yannis76 · 6 Jul 2013 at 20:15

Marine-RX179 said:
Hate say I told you so, but had you taken my advice and went with the Intel Pentium and just grabbed a 2nd hand 6850/5850/5870 instead of following the Trinity hype back then, for the money you new to now spend plus the money you waste, you would have been upgrading to a i5 and a 7950/GTX670 now, rather than just the CPU and board (and spare the the kind of pointless move from the A-10 to x4 740, and grabbing a underpowered 7790...which ain't much faster than a 5850/5870).

As it stand, there's not much you can do on the FM2 platform in terms of CPU performance side of things. Your best bet on a limited budget is probably a 2nd hand i5 2500K for around £100-£110, 2nd hand decent model Z68/Z77 board at around £50-£60 (but you can keep your existing ram). You probably gonna need to get a 3rd party cooler as well...something around the £25-£40 range would do. That would bring the total for CPU upgrade to around £175~£200.

As for where to get them...do you have access to the members marketplace here on the forum?

You were right I admit it. However, as you can read in my posts here, when I started this HTPC project, I wasn't planning to game on it. When I saw TR, Mafia2 and Hitman on the big TV, I liked it and enjoyed gaming where I didn't expect to (this is why I sold ps3 also!!).
Also with 7790 it is much much better than the 5800K. You can actually play at 1080p with medium-high settings. However the more you play the more you think how better would the graphics be...

yannis76 · 6 Jul 2013 at 20:21

I don't seem to have access on the members marketplace.
I don't know why...

Marine-RX179 · 6 Jul 2013 at 20:56

yannis76 said:
You were right I admit it. However, as you can read in my posts here, when I started this HTPC project, I wasn't planning to game on it. When I saw TR, Mafia2 and Hitman on the big TV, I liked it and enjoyed gaming where I didn't expect to (this is why I sold ps3 also!!).
Also with 7790 it is much much better than the 5800K. You can actually play at 1080p with medium-high settings. However the more you play the more you think how better would the graphics be...

This is why when it comes to PC, people don't just buy what they think is good enough at the time, but something that's good enough at the time, AND got options to properly upgrade (FM2 ain't that for sure) and give big amount of boost.

The thing is that 7790 is a card that's in a really awkward position in terms of performance vs price. For the price it sit far to close to the 7850 2GB pricing, yet performance wise, it is closer to the 7770 side than the 7850 (kinda reminds me of the 5830 back then). Also, originally AMD had the 7850 1GB version at the £120-£130 price range, yet they thought it was too good for the customer and chose to replace it with a clearly inferior 128-bit 7790 card, and charge the same money for it :mad:

Should have went for either 2nd hand or B-grade 7850 2GB for that kind of money.

Anyway, what's done is done. For now, you best option is keep your 7790, and go for 2nd hand i5 2500K and 2nd hand Z68/Z77 board as I mentioned. Alternatively, you can get the following Gigabyte Z68 board NEW with full 3 years warranty for just £45:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18523418

yannis76 · 7 Jul 2013 at 19:16

Marine-RX179 said:
This is why when it comes to PC, people don't just buy what they think is good enough at the time, but something that's good enough at the time, AND got options to properly upgrade (FM2 ain't that for sure) and give big amount of boost.

The thing is that 7790 is a card that's in a really awkward position in terms of performance vs price. For the price it sit far to close to the 7850 2GB pricing, yet performance wise, it is closer to the 7770 side than the 7850 (kinda reminds me of the 5830 back then). Also, originally AMD had the 7850 1GB version at the £120-£130 price range, yet they thought it was too good for the customer and chose to replace it with a clearly inferior 128-bit 7790 card, and charge the same money for it Should have went for either 2nd hand or B-grade 7850 2GB for that kind of money.

Anyway, what's done is done. For now, you best option is keep your 7790, and go for 2nd hand i5 2500K and 2nd hand Z68/Z77 board as I mentioned. Alternatively, you can get the following Gigabyte Z68 board NEW with full 3 years warranty for just £45:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18523418

Please, although you might be right performance wise, you must also understand that we were talking about an HTPC that gaming wouldn't play a big role. A10-5800k was superb for this. I never expected to enjoy gaming on my big TV since I never did with the PS3. The 7790 is a bit on the low side but not that bad...Hitman and TR play fine at 1080p with high settings. Mafia2 with Physx on medium is so-so but this is the game I play mostly these days. Maybe this is why I have been looking for a used gtx660 or an upgrade in CPU/mobo...

yannis76 · 7 Jul 2013 at 23:06

Just out of curiosity I ran TR and Hitman benchmarks with low quality but 1080p:
TR: 60fps
Hitman: 40fps

So I quess that is the limit I would see with a faster GPU, correct?

Marine-RX179 · 8 Jul 2013 at 12:13

yannis76 said:
Just out of curiosity I ran TR and Hitman benchmarks with low quality but 1080p:
TR: 60fps
Hitman: 40fps

So I quess that is the limit I would see with a faster GPU, correct?

Yea. But if you got some extra settings enable that's CPU dependent rather than graphic dependent, the frame rate would dip to even lower than that.

Another thing you have to bare in mind is that the benchmark for games generally wouldn't always replicate the most demanding scenes under actual gaming environment, so be expecting frame rate would be even lower than that. Had you ask before buying the 7790 1GB, I'm pretty sure pretty much EVERYONE here on the forum would advise you to stretch another £20-£30 and get a 7850 2GB or GTX660 2GB instead....

I do apologies for my rant about the 7790. I was just a bit angry with how AMD pulled a quick one and replaced the 7850 1GB with the 7790 1GB at the same price, and affected customers such as yourself. Had you got a 7850 1GB instead, you'd be playing on High/Ultra, rather than Medium...

Jasseh · 8 Jul 2013 at 19:54

yannis76 said:
I don't seem to have access on the members marketplace.
I don't know why...

Quote taken from the FAQ:

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