i3 @ 4.4Ghz query

[matt_fsr]

Hi,
I know this is somewhat subjective and difficult to quantify, but I've been running a happy little i3 for a while now, overclocked to 4.4Ghz on air.

I've recently upgraded to a AMD 7950 3Gb card, and I'm wondering if anyone can advise if the i3 is likely to be bottlenecking the card, and if so, by how much?
Anyone know of any decent reviews/comparisons

The PC is really only a gaming rig, anything else it does is insignificant by comparison.

Recently I've been playing a ragged mix of Dishonoured, Comnpany of Heroes, Killing Floor, Payday:The Heist, and a fair bit of modified Napoleon Total War (upwards of 10,000 men on the battlefields)

I'm planning on getting Company of Heroes 2 and Rome Total War 2 when they're out.

Is it worth sticking with my existing board and putting in an overclocked i5 for instance?

 

[littlepuppy]

I would say you are "ok"

If I was you and considering an upgrade, just go to ivybridge

If you want to stick with what you have - go the whole hog and get the I7 chips and clock the nuts off it... (870)

 

[ubersonic]

Proberbly not telling you anything you don't already know but for CPU upgrading you basically have three options:

600 Series i5: Pointless, they are just higher clocked i3 500's with turbo.
700 Series i5: Gain two cores, lose HT, all depends if you feel you "need" two more physical cores (and if your software will utilize it)
800 series i7: Gain two cores, lose HT, apparently these perform better than the 900 series (which is older) in gaming and OC quite well.

You can get an i7 870 for <£100 used and that will do for any game out now (especially OC'd). By comparison to new processors an IB i3 will not given a noticable performance upgrade over a 4.4Ghz 540 (if it gives any, its only slightly faster than a i5 680 which is basically a 3.8Ghz i3 540)

 

[JonSmith]

4.4 GHz i3 500 series are still insanely good as most games are still single/limited multithreading.

 

[Minstadave]

Just check your CPU usage in task manager whilst gaming, if you're hitting 100% consistently then you're bottle necked by you CPU.

 

[xsistor]

RTS games can really use the extra CPU power. I used to run a GTX 580 on a i3 540 @4.2GHz. I noticed quite a performance increase going for a i5 2500k. As Haswell is nearly an year away I'd say going Ivy is the best bet right now.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If you find the games are running fine,then I would not bother TBH.

 

[Marine-RX179]

For most games the bottleneck shouldn't be too bad, but it is games like Total Wars that your CPU bottleneck would be much more apparent.

Hell, I recently started playing World vs World on Guild Wars 2, and with 60-100 people duking it out at each other plus the rendering of the world environment, even my i5 2500K overclocked to 4.6GHz is bottlenecking my 5850

So it's really down to the games you play.