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New GPU bottlenecked by CPU - Worth upgrading?

SpoonedurI

SpoonedurI

SpoonedurI

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4 Oct 2010
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50
In anticipation of BF3 & Skyrim (and not to mention spotting a 580GTX for under £300 :P) I've decided to upgrade from my ATI 5830.

Now that I've installed the new card I realised that my current CPU, q6600 @ 3.2ghz, is horribly bottlenecking the 580. I'm now having to look at upgrading my whole system instead of just the gpu :(.

I'm not in need of any extra CPU power apart from gaming so is it really worth going all the way for those extra FPS?
 
Well I got a 6950, but found my X4 640 to be holding it back.

Ended up upgrading everything and got an i5 2500k. Frame rates are much more consistant now. Before, whilst a nice improvement from my old 5770 GPU, the frame rates would still drop in CPU intensive games, but now with a better CPU, the frame rate stays high.
 
SpoonedurI said:
In anticipation of BF3 & Skyrim (and not to mention spotting a 580GTX for under £300 :P) I've decided to upgrade from my ATI 5830.

Now that I've installed the new card I realised that my current CPU, q6600 @ 3.2ghz, is horribly bottlenecking the 580. I'm now having to look at upgrading my whole system instead of just the gpu :(.

I'm not in need of any extra CPU power apart from gaming so is it really worth going all the way for those extra FPS?
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First of all...how exactly do you determine that your Q6600 at 3.2GHz is bottlenecking the GTX580? Have you checked your GPU usage during gaming?

Sometimes the bottleneck can be due the game design with it not using all four cores of the CPU...but for BF3 it is most likely it is design to use four cores or more.

It's worth doing a bit more thorough investigation and testing on your existing system before opening up your wallet.
 
Marine-RX179 said:
First of all...how exactly do you determine that your Q6600 at 3.2GHz is bottlenecking the GTX580? Have you checked your GPU usage during gaming?

Sometimes the bottleneck can be due the game design with it not using all four cores of the CPU...but for BF3 it is most likely it is design to use four cores or more.

It's worth doing a bit more thorough investigation and testing on your existing system before opening up your wallet.
Click to expand...

1) I'm not seeing much of a framerate improvement compared to my 5830 (10 FPS at most)

2) So far I've tested the following games: Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Crysis 2, Metro 2033, F1 2011 and Far Cry 2. I get the same/nearly same frame rate at 1920x1080 with max AA as I do at 1280x720 with no AA.
 
SpoonedurI said:
So far I've tested the following games: Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Crysis 2, Metro 2033, F1 2011 and Far Cry 2. I get the same/nearly same frame rate at 1920x1080 with max AA as I do at 1280x720 with no AA.
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Crysis and Crysis Warhead are two-cores games...even my overclocked 5850 (which is slower than your GTX580 by a fair margin) would get CPU bottleneck at times with my Q6600 overclocked to 3.6GHz on 1920 res 4xAA highest settings for everything, so I can confirm for you it is definitely CPU bottleneck for those two games, and then chances are your GTX580 is only around as fast as 5850 level at some scenes.

Metro2033 is optimised for using up to six cores...however because this game is SO graphic demanding, I think you would actually hit the roof on the graphic side before your CPU's. But check GPU usage during the game...if no bottleneck the GPU usage should be at max or near max most of the time and should not drop hugely during intensive fights/scenes.

F1 2011- same problem as the previous game (F1 2010)...CPU heavy, but not optimised for quad...so yea again the GTX580 will get bottlenecked, particular because the game only use around 3 cores. See more details here:
http://www.dsogaming.com/pc-performance-analyses/f1-2011-pc-performance-analysis/

Far Cry 2 is not a demanding game, and it's optimised for quad if I'm not mistaken. You should have no problem getting 50-60fps in this game most of the time. Again, check GPU usage.

You can use MSI Afterburner and in settings set up for it to should GPU usage while in game. By default it is on the top left corner.

Hate to say this, but game developers would most likely keep releasing new games and doing a pants job at optimising it for the PC with the game not using all 4 cores...so in the long run you should definitely consider upgrading to faster platform such as SandyBridge, for the sake of compensating for the incompentence of the game makers :o
 
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Used a 6950 with a e6600 for many months, finally got a i5 2500k and it was such an improvement. I knew my cpu was crap but i didnt relise how much it was holding fps back in games.

Using one screen, my system runs games more than fine now, but ofc i'm using eyefinity and the idea of a second 6950 is very tempting now. Bf3 is playable on 3 screens but its only around 30fps, only sad part is 6950's seem to of gone up in price!
 
The benchmarks from the B3 beta are starting to pop up all over the www. Your 580 will be fine, though you should google "bf3 cpu usage" to find out possible upgrade paths.
 
I am very tempted to make the jump to I5 too.

I feel my 965BE is bottlenecking my 6970's big time.

I just need some reassurance that its the right thing to do at the moment though!

Tough choices.
 
keyser said:
I say wait for Bulldozer.. followed by Ivy Bridge, depending how long you can wait. I'm kinda in the same boat.
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I agree.
I'm also in the same situation. This boat is quite crowded :)
BD is only 1 week away. May aswell wait.

If BD fails to deliver. I'd grab the 2500k & overclock it to 4.5GHz.
That should hold you off upgrading for a while :)
 
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