Is my CPU bottlenecking my GTX680

Kaapstad · 2 Nov 2012 at 16:41

horrorxpunk said:
At default clock it rarely sees sights past 70% and it will be running at 1218mhz I am going to jump it up to 159% and bring it down anyway I have not started benching and burn-in yet as I had to run out to work. I did get 3D Mark 11 running at 1300mhz though.

Post your results in gregsters 3dmark11 thread and see how you compare. You should be able to beat my GTX 680 easy, the highest it will clock is 1215mhz and 7004mhz memory.

horrorxpunk · 2 Nov 2012 at 18:50

Kaapstad said:
Post your results in gregsters 3dmark11 thread and see how you compare. You should be able to beat my GTX 680 easy, the highest it will clock is 1215mhz and 7004mhz memory.

Awesome I will move this onto that thread and we can return to the original post. So it looks like my 8150 will not hold the full potential of the GTX680 so I am looking at Sandy-bridge-E / Ivybridge / Ivybridge-E. Price is not an issue although I cannot justify £800 on the 3960X what's the best CPU to go for. Sandy-bridge-E / Ivybridge. I believe Intel 2011 socket will support Ivybridge-E?

horrorxpunk · 2 Nov 2012 at 21:22

gregster said:
+1

Having looked about, your expectations of 1400+ is a little OTT unless you put the card under water and use a custom BIOS with ABX or some other form of volting tool.

OP. If you have BF3, use this as a test. If @ 1080P multi player you are seeing your CPU above 80% I believe, this will cause your GPU to slow down.

Actually I don't think the CPU barely goes over 50% with the FX8150 in most games as they are not optimized for 8 - core threading however I am now using Windows 8 which is supposedly more optimized - it's a pretty clean and fast OS bar metro UI ( which is still useful ) and essentially needs to be customised with the classicstartmenu tool. Anyway looking forward to get home from work tonight and getting started.

OptimaLnrg · 2 Nov 2012 at 23:02

Will be interesting to see what clock you can get on the stock volts. Not so long ago there was a user with a kfa2 ltd oc with a golden chip that was doing ~1400mhz on stock'ish' volts iirc.

I still think 1450mhz is a long shot though. That's ~double the factory OC on stock volts!

As for your OP, I have seen mixed opinions that say it will either outperform a 2500k in bf3(for example) and obviously others that say it's i3 level.. For single card it should be ok. Best way to tell is bench against a comparable intel system.

Gregster · 2 Nov 2012 at 23:05

horrorxpunk said:
Actually I don't think the CPU barely goes over 50% with the FX8150 in most games as they are not optimized for 8 - core threading however I am now using Windows 8 which is supposedly more optimized - it's a pretty clean and fast OS bar metro UI ( which is still useful ) and essentially needs to be customised with the classicstartmenu tool. Anyway looking forward to get home from work tonight and getting started.

Cool and that will save you a nice few quid in not having to upgrade the CPU

I look forward to your results bud and I am a taxi for my daughters toninght, so will be about for a while

horrorxpunk · 3 Nov 2012 at 00:03

well I only had 3DMark Vantage before I have bought 3DMark11 on steam I am always losing my keys so I will upload my results tonight and share them with you guys :-)

Gregster · 3 Nov 2012 at 00:06

Just run the free version bud. No need to pay for it

I only add the P scores and not X scores.

horrorxpunk · 3 Nov 2012 at 00:56

gregster said:
Just run the free version bud. No need to pay for it I only add the P scores and not X scores.

I like having it with steam it makes me feel e-safe haha. No the steam 3dmark11 merge accounts with my 3dmark vantage so I am happy with that. I got a total clock of 1240mhz at stock voltage and I have not seen anything over 70 degrees while stress testing with fur-mark with high clocks and high voltages. just benchmarking a bit at a time, I have had trouble with high clocks in BF3 before though where I had a GTX580 @ 952mhz everything else would run fine but BF3 would crash after around 15 - 20 minutes.

Kaapstad · 3 Nov 2012 at 08:55

horrorxpunk said:
Awesome I will move this onto that thread and we can return to the original post. So it looks like my 8150 will not hold the full potential of the GTX680 so I am looking at Sandy-bridge-E / Ivybridge / Ivybridge-E. Price is not an issue although I cannot justify £800 on the 3960X what's the best CPU to go for. Sandy-bridge-E / Ivybridge. I believe Intel 2011 socket will support Ivybridge-E?

All the SB-E CPUs do in 3dmark11 is push the physics and combined part of the score up. A better guide to use is the graphics score.

Mr. May · 3 Nov 2012 at 11:11

Looks like you have yourself a good card there! If you want to go 2011 I would say get the 3930k it not far of the pace of 3960x and is much cheaper

horrorxpunk · 3 Nov 2012 at 13:33

I have been benching the GTX680 all night my physics score kept dropping so I was getting lower marks but I was getting higher and higher graphics scores. I managed a score of 11497. Which is a massive improvement over the default 11266. My GTX580 only got 7308 @ 952mhz core clock. Sandybridge-E sounds the way to go as the motherboards will be compatible with Ivybridge-E which will be coming out Q3 next year Haswell looks set to be an amazing chip I will probably save for the highest spec chip which is probably around £800.

GTX680
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/4830957

GTX580

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/2916647

All the SB-E CPUs do in 3dmark11 is push the physics and combined part of the score up. A better guide to use is the graphics score.

This sounds good though physics is become a more and more important part of the way games work; this isn't just a bench system it's my gaming PC. I am very dedicated too it and I am a massive build enthusiast. I'm not about having all that power for the sake of it their is so much I can do to utilize it.

Gregster · 3 Nov 2012 at 14:02

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=23047623&postcount=1809

That is what a score should be on 1437Mhz core clock

horrorxpunk · 3 Nov 2012 at 15:19

holy crap that's nice I am not managing to hit those clocks though; I can get high clocks but I am having problem with oscillation and max boost clocks ( not the normal BC ) but at a certain level it gives out and my TDP and GPU Usage and temperatures are fine and it doesn't seem to be anything to do with the voltage either so I am a bit stuck. I can get 1306mhz but I am getting artifacts; my tempratures are fine and my TDP is set to `159% although I have my voltage at absolute maximum.

Kaapstad · 3 Nov 2012 at 15:53

horrorxpunk said:
I have been benching the GTX680 all night my physics score kept dropping so I was getting lower marks but I was getting higher and higher graphics scores. I managed a score of 11497. Which is a massive improvement over the default 11266. My GTX580 only got 7308 @ 952mhz core clock. Sandybridge-E sounds the way to go as the motherboards will be compatible with Ivybridge-E which will be coming out Q3 next year Haswell looks set to be an amazing chip I will probably save for the highest spec chip which is probably around £800.

GTX680
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/4830957

GTX580

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/2916647

This sounds good though physics is become a more and more important part of the way games work; this isn't just a bench system it's my gaming PC. I am very dedicated too it and I am a massive build enthusiast. I'm not about having all that power for the sake of it their is so much I can do to utilize it.

For gaming and getting the best out of a GPU you don't have to spend loads on a CPU. For a single GPU an i5 2500k is good, for multi GPUs an i7 is slightly better. It does not have to be the most modern i7 either an i7 920 overclocked is still very good.

Gregster · 3 Nov 2012 at 15:57

I have very little knowledge on piledriver but from what I have read, it still flass short of a 2500K (which is old now).

Whilst I would say you are fine with your CPU now, higher resoloutions and more demanding future games could see your GPU bottlnecking but don't change out till you need to/want to.

horrorxpunk · 3 Nov 2012 at 16:22

gregster said:
I have very little knowledge on piledriver but from what I have read, it still flass short of a 2500K (which is old now).

Whilst I would say you are fine with your CPU now, higher resoloutions and more demanding future games could see your GPU bottlnecking but don't change out till you need to/want to.

As I say I am mosly waiting on the Intel Haswell chip as I now have the mone tha I am working full-time ( almost non-stop ) for a broadband company who pay very well ;-)

. I will see which motherboards Asus bring out for the Haswell and look into buying on of those chips. I am unlikely to go over a 1080p resolution I never use monitors bigger than 24" otherwise I have trouble seeing as I am sat quite close. GTX680 is flawing everything on full but at 1266mhz core clock is giving me nearly 5fps more in some cases which I like; I am looking at a minor boost clock increase and see what I can push the memory clocks too a little improvement would still be nice. I think I would have been better off not getting the ASUS TOP. I would have probably got a higher clock speed with the standard DirectCUII model. I get a max clock of 1280mhz and it starts oscillating between that and 1258mhz and this is at full gpu usage and 50 degrees temperature and only 90% TDP. I am baffled any advice?

Gregster · 3 Nov 2012 at 16:58

I think your clocks are pretty standard and are infact higher than a few others I have seen. My score was that high because of over volting and the LTG will not throttle back over 70C.

I have seen some cards bomb out at 1230Mhz, so yours at 50MHhz higher is very decent.

horrorxpunk · 3 Nov 2012 at 18:59

gregster said:
I think your clocks are pretty standard and are infact higher than a few others I have seen. My score was that high because of over volting and the LTG will not throttle back over 70C.

I have seen some cards bomb out at 1230Mhz, so yours at 50MHhz higher is very decent.

I can hit 1306mhz but I start getting artifacts I am not getting bad crashes. I am finding voltage is not making a big difference but the right voltage can help stop the oscillation. It's not that I can't go higher than 1280mhz it's that the max clock fails and the graphics card drops down. It shouldn't do though as it hasn't even reached 100% TDP, it's still at 60 degrees and full gpu usage. I cannot understand the problem but I actually think it could just be at the graphics cards peak or it is a problem with the power supply; I am only using an XFX Core Edition 650 w; I am looking at switching to modular.

horrorxpunk · 5 Nov 2012 at 20:52

gregster said:
I think your clocks are pretty standard and are infact higher than a few others I have seen. My score was that high because of over volting and the LTG will not throttle back over 70C.

I have seen some cards bomb out at 1230Mhz, so yours at 50MHhz higher is very decent.

Clocking was a bit of a fail on the core clock I could get a max boost of 1267 mhz stable with a memory clock of 7602 mhz which was impressive. Overclocking the memory core on it's own I was able to increase the offset by an amazing 900mhz / 7814 mhz effective. I ran multiple benchmarks; heaven a few times and survived through 3D Mark 11. Yay. I sat down and used furmark at 228 x 228 resolution with 8x MSAA to simulate the heat generated by a demanding game and set my fans accordingly. I launched up the new Crysis 3 Alpha and played for a good 15 minutes; suddenly the game crashed and now the clocks won't stabilise at all above the default. furgh. Any advice? Funnily enough if I increase the fan speed to 85% it will stabilise. I only needed a fan speed of 45% to keep the temperature below 69 degrees :-(

but some reason everything is just locking up now. I am using EVGA Precision-X as it afterburner will not set the voltage at max constantly during heavy load and I have had major crashes with GPU Tweak in the past; I have always been able to get higher clocks with ASUS Smart Doctor though.

7814mhz 3D Mark 11 no artifacts

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/4846370

1267mhz Max Boost / 7602mhz Memory
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/4847268