i5 bottleneck a low end graphics card?

[sgoaty]

Im putting together a budget gaming pc. It's going to be based on an 1155 platform with 8GB of RAM and a GTX 670 or 680. I'm hoping this should perform reasonably well for 1080p gaming an medium settings.

Im aware that the majority of modern titles can now take advantage of more than 4 threads but i5s and 4c/4t xeon E3s can be picked up a lot cheaper than 4c/8t CPUs.

I've looked online at benchmarks but they all seem to be using much more powerful GPUs which are obviously going to bottleneck a lower end CPU.

My question is would there be much of an advantage going for an i7 over an i5 (neither overclocked) considering the graphics card I'd be using?

Thanks
Scott

 

[gavinh87]

Nope, I recently had a GTX 670 in a rig with a stock ryzen 1300x. Each and every single game the GPU was the limiting component.
You'll be fine.

 

[sgoaty]

Good stuff that's what I was hoping to hear thanks.

 

[jigger]

Im putting together a budget gaming pc. It's going to be based on an 1155 platform with 8GB of RAM and a GTX 670 or 680. I'm hoping this should perform reasonably well for 1080p gaming an medium settings.

Im aware that the majority of modern titles can now take advantage of more than 4 threads but i5s and 4c/4t xeon E3s can be picked up a lot cheaper than 4c/8t CPUs.

I've looked online at benchmarks but they all seem to be using much more powerful GPUs which are obviously going to bottleneck a lower end CPU.

My question is would there be much of an advantage going for an i7 over an i5 (neither overclocked) considering the graphics card I'd be using?

Thanks
Scott

If you can find a z77 or z75 board and something like Xeon E3 1240v2 you can get a reasonable fast machine with overclocking. Anything from the xeon 1230v2 up is a i7 3770. Price would be key though as you can also get 4 core 8 thread Ryzen 5's and boards for good prices.

 

[sgoaty]

If you can find a z77 or z75 board and something like Xeon E3 1240v2 you can get a reasonable fast machine with overclocking. Anything from the xeon 1230v2 up is a i7 3770. Price would be key though as you can also get 4 core 8 thread Ryzen 5's and boards for good prices.

DDR 4 prices stop RYZEN being an option with this build unfortunately. Its a B75 board I've bought as Z77 is a lot more expensive and I didn't think overclocking xeons was really worth it?

 

[jigger]

DDR 4 prices stop RYZEN being an option with this build unfortunately. Its a B75 board I've bought as Z77 is a lot more expensive and I didn't think overclocking xeons was really worth it?

The Xeon E3v2 chips allow for 400Mhz per core on top of the max turbo. Plus you can usually few get few Mhz per multi from the bus.

 

[jigger]

It's a shame you have the B75 board but I'd still take the i7 xeon over an i5 as you can run 8 threads. I'd also consider trying to work 16gb of RAM into the system.

 

[sgoaty]

That's good info about the V2s i didn't know that. I know 8 threads would be better but if the i5/4T xeon isn't going to bottleneck the GTX670 its not really worth it for this build.

 

[jigger]

That's good info about the V2s i didn't know that. I know 8 threads would be better but if the i5/4T xeon isn't going to bottleneck the GTX670 its not really worth it for this build.

That will be more down to the game engine and graphics driver TBH, so you'd need to look into that a little. I'd go with the 8 thread chip if it's in budget.

 

[Drollic]

Try and get a card with 3gb plus vram. 780 or 780ti should be cheap now. Even 970 possibly. Worth the extra.

 

[Armageus]

Bottleneck is such an overused term - in this case even if the 670 was held back slightly (e.g. by a few FPS or a small %), is it the end of the world?

As long as you aren't buying a CPU and GPU from opposite ends of the performance scale (e.g. a celeron with a 1080ti, or a Thread ripper with a GT710), then is there any point worrying about a tiny bit of potentially wasted performance?

 

[sgoaty]

I know its a widely used term but in this instance i think its the correct one. I just want to get the best out of the card without paying for a cpu thats not needed. If an i7 was going to give me 10-20 FPS more then it might be worth the extra but if it's only 5 then there's no point.

 

[Journey]

My question is would there be much of an advantage going for an i7 over an i5 (neither overclocked) considering the graphics card I'd be using?

Can't directly answer the question, but a few weeks ago I knocked up the cheapest gaming rig of the year so far for my 9yr old nephew. I bagged an old HP desktop tower unit from a car boot sale for £10, that had nothing in it other than PSU and motherboard (and a DVD-RW), won an i5-3570 on that famous auction site for £14 delivered, and put in a 128GB SSD (£11.50 at auction) a 500GB 2.5" HDD (Free laying around), and 8GB DDR3 RAM (£15 from second hand shop), then put in a GTX 660Ti.

I've not benched marked it as such, but it seemed to run the Unigine test programs at 1080p 35-70 FPS for the most part with no stuttering, and with a bit of tweaking it would go faster I reckon, but for £40 + the graphics card I doubt you could get better value with out nicking it. Windows 10 was running great on the SSD, and he was happily playing his Lego Ninjago or whatever it was last time I went round and it looked nice/smooth etc.

I've seen i5-2400/2550/3550/3570/3570K go for £10-30, so unless you are getting an i7 CPU or equivalent for £5-10 more then I don't see the point, it's not like if you pay double you'll get 100% more performance.

 

[sgoaty]

Can't directly answer the question, but a few weeks ago I knocked up the cheapest gaming rig of the year so far for my 9yr old nephew. I bagged an old HP desktop tower unit from a car boot sale for £10, that had nothing in it other than PSU and motherboard (and a DVD-RW), won an i5-3570 on that famous auction site for £14 delivered, and put in a 128GB SSD (£11.50 at auction) a 500GB 2.5" HDD (Free laying around), and 8GB DDR3 RAM (£15 from second hand shop), then put in a GTX 660Ti.

I've not benched marked it as such, but it seemed to run the Unigine test programs at 1080p 35-70 FPS for the most part with no stuttering, and with a bit of tweaking it would go faster I reckon, but for £40 + the graphics card I doubt you could get better value with out nicking it. Windows 10 was running great on the SSD, and he was happily playing his Lego Ninjago or whatever it was last time I went round and it looked nice/smooth etc.

I've seen i5-2400/2550/3550/3570/3570K go for £10-30, so unless you are getting an i7 CPU or equivalent for £5-10 more then I don't see the point, it's not like if you pay double you'll get 100% more performance.

This is exactly the kind of thing I'm trying to achieve. I don't think I'll manage it quite as cheap as you have though!

 

[G J]

Every now and again I've seen a 2500k go for around £30ish but as Journey said stay away from the I7's as most people want silly money for a 2600k and esp the I7 3770k.

 

[sgoaty]

Yes thats my thinking. I can see why the 3770Ks make decent money. Its the top of the range 1155 cpu so the best/easiest upgrade path for those who've had an I5 for the last few years.

 

[Lokken86]

Bottleneck is such an overused term - in this case even if the 670 was held back slightly (e.g. by a few FPS or a small %), is it the end of the world?

As long as you aren't buying a CPU and GPU from opposite ends of the performance scale (e.g. a celeron with a 1080ti, or a Thread ripper with a GT710), then is there any point worrying about a tiny bit of potentially wasted performance?

Get out of here with your logic it isn't welcome here.

 

[Terrorfirmer]

Simple answer - yes. It seems to be an unpopular opinion for some reason but the simple truth is that a 2nd or 3rd gen i5 is going to bottleneck those card's you have mentioned in some games. Only you can answer whether that's acceptable or not.

It might only be 10-15% of games, but that's not much consolation when it does happen and affects gameplay. You will see what I mean if you try playing BF1 or BFV 64-player conquest - erratic framerate and very hard dips regularly on 2nd and 3rd gen i5's. Those would be the best examples. In fact when I played BF1 64p on an i5-2500 non-K, I couldn't even hold a stable 50fps in some maps when stuff was going down, and drops to 35-40fps.

More in-depth answer - depends entirely on what games you intend playing if the CPU will bottleneck to the extent that it would impact on gameplay. The vast majority of SP games would be fine, for one, as well as racing games, strategy games, etc.

There are two kinds of bottleneck's realistically - 1) the technical kind that exist but are unnoticable as FPS remains >60fps and 2) the kind that are immediately noticable as no matter what GPU settings you use, you still get FPS spikes and drops.

So yes, massive advantage going for an i7-2600/3770/equivalent xeon over the i5's, even with a GTX680 or whatever. I personally would take a 2nd gen i7 over a 4th gen i5 at this time.

 

[nlel1975]

I've got an i5-2500k overclocked to 4.3ghz with the CPU voltage set to AUTO to make sure its stable. Gets pretty hot even with an Akasa Venom CPU cooler, about max temp of 79C under Prime95 fft load but the TJ Max is 98c so no worries.

I've got an RX 580 8GB graphics card. I've checked the 3D Mark CPU scores and my i5 @ 4.3 is 10% slower than a stock Ryzen 3 2200G and 20% slower than a stock i3-8100. So still pretty decent even today. Is low end now when it was mid-range from new but I've had it 7 years so its served me well.

 

[Devrij]

The real question is what games are you intending to play? The battlefield games like more cores, but you will still be primarily gpu limited.

In general an i5 is a good match for that gpu and you'll be fine as long as you accept the limitations and adjust your settings accordingly.