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Q6600 + BF3 + GPU Usage question.

ToejaM

ToejaM

ToejaM

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Hey peoples, do any of you have experience with the above?

Ideally I'd like to know if you max out your GPU usage with a Q6600 in BF3.

Currently my brother has an E8600 @ 4.3Ghz but his GPU usage is all over the shop but his CPU is bottle necking at almost full capacity. So I'm looking at getting him a nice cheap upgrade, a Q6600 or better!

Short of upgrading the entire rig this is the way forward I think.

His GPU is a GTX470 if its relevant, so if you have a similar card or better and you're maxing out GPU usage before CPU it'd be interesting to know :)
 
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I think the speed is largely irrelevant from the benchmarks I've seen but more the processing raw power/threads/how bf3 handles it but thats only by going on what I've seen in reviews
 
I have a Q6600 with an 6950 2GB, which is a bit better than the GTX 470 but not worlds apart. I find in BF3 that the GPU is pretty much maxed out, and the CPU is at 75-90% across the cores on average, so I'd say they're fairly evenly matched really.

Ignore the post above, a Q6600 at 3.4-3.6GHz will be miles better than an E8600 even at 4.00GHz+ as it uses all 4 cores.
 
andy_mk3 said:
I have a Q6600 with an 6950 2GB, which is a bit better than the GTX 470 but not worlds apart. I find in BF3 that the GPU is pretty much maxed out, and the CPU is at 75-90% across the cores on average, so I'd say they're fairly evenly matched really.

Ignore the post above, a Q6600 at 3.4-3.6GHz will be miles better than an E8600 even at 4.00GHz+ as it uses all 4 cores.
Click to expand...

Not in BF3....
 
I believe mine is the same, although it's a while since I looked to be honest! It is to be expected though, perfectly normal.
 
May seem you're bottlenecking to, with my setup and as the card is similar is spec.. I get a flat 99usage across the board with very very rare dips to 97% unless I tab out though my CPU usage is around 45-60

His however can drop to 60 usage, no vysnc on either
 
Alkalinepro5 said:
Not in BF3....
Click to expand...

Most definitely so, particularily online. I get 70% usage averaged out over all 4 cores.

ToejaMz0r said:
Hey peoples, do any of you have experience with the above?
Ideally I'd like to know if you max out your GPU usage with a Q6600 in BF3.
Currently my brother has an E8600 @ 4.3Ghz but his GPU usage is all over the shop but his CPU is bottle necking at almost full capacity. So I'm looking at getting him a nice cheap upgrade, a Q6600 or better!
Short of upgrading the entire rig this is the way forward I think.
His GPU is a GTX470 if its relevant, so if you have a similar card or better and you're maxing out GPU usage before CPU it'd be interesting to know :)
Click to expand...

I am maxing out my 6870 at ~70% on my q6600 (at 3.4ghz atm)

Ram is also a consideration in bf3 performace. 4gigs isn't enough to run it smoothly. After a very short time it will max it out resulting in chopiness. Despite what task manager displays as its supposed usage, it doesn't use/relinquish resources well and I would have to reboot to get normal perofmance again (even after game close).
If you have spare old sticks lying about its worth plugging them in, even at the expense of ram oc. Adding the extra 2gb I had gave me far more consistant fps and gpu usage (beforehand it had fluctuated a fair bit).

In your case I couldnt say which is the more significant impact as the dual has got a good oc.
 
He has 4x 1gb at the moment so it would be a whole new ram change, though it is 1066 so that could be the problem also.. problem with ddr2 is that its expensive but good suggestion ill have a look out for some in the MM ty
 
hi i have the q6600 with 8 gig ddr3 corsair xms3 ram and running a gtx 260 gpu im running mid settings on bf3 mine run full but im clocking both my cpu to 3.0ghz and my gpu from 570 to 700 mhz with 1200hz ram setting
 
I have a 560ti and Q6600 stock speeds (and 8GB ram) - BF3 on max settings, works fine. If someone reminds me of the program to record CPU/GPU use during gameplay I'll check out how they compare, but the Q6600 isn't bottlenecking my system as far as I'm aware.
 
I went from a QX6700 @ 3.2GHz to an i7, and noticed absolutely no difference in performance in BF3 - this suggests to me that a decent Core 2 Quad isn't a bottleneck for a 560 Ti. I think psychas is in the right ballpark; I'd suggest that you look at getting a Q9xxx as a decent upgrade.
 
My i5-760 runs well below 100% playing bf3 while my 6950 is at 100% while playing. Everything is running at stock speeds.

Just run graphs in game for a while and atl tab out to see what is happening.
 
I had a Q6600 @ 3.2ghz and ATI 5870.
This managed 30-40 fps on low @1080p
Went to i7 2700k and kept the gpu and its flying at medium high at 50+ fps.
BF3 is CPU bottlenecked by any core 2 chip.
 
spicypixel said:
I had a Q6600 @ 3.2ghz and ATI 5870.
This managed 30-40 fps on low @1080p
Went to i7 2700k and kept the gpu and its flying at medium high at 50+ fps.
BF3 is CPU bottlenecked by any core 2 chip.
Click to expand...

I assume the upgrade also included 4>8gb ram as well. In your case that would have been a large limiting factor too. Just as a comparision (I forgot to mention in my earlier post) my setup gives me 40+fps at medium/high. Though I've no dubt the new sytem squeezes a bit more out and is a better longterm solution anyway.

ToejaMz0r said:
He has 4x 1gb at the moment so it would be a whole new ram change, though it is 1066 so that could be the problem also.. problem with ddr2 is that its expensive but good suggestion ill have a look out for some in the MM ty
Click to expand...

Well you'd only need 2 2gb sticks, run 6gb total and then sell on the last 2 sticks if you can. I wouldn't worry overly about the ram speed, I have to run them at 850 as the 1gb modules are quite old ddr2 800. But yeah, it is only worth doing if you can find them cheap.

It occured to me you could try adding a fast usb/sd card you might have lying about and using readyboost (I think its called) and see what effect that has on gameplay/fps/multitasking. It wont alleviate fully the ram issue but may help a bit. If you do, I'd be interested to know if it had any effect.
 
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I was wrong, he has 2x2gb and I managed to get another 2x2gb from the members market for £20! Just waiting for it to arrive, I actually have a spare 2x1gb of 1066 sat here so gunna try that tomorrow.. just not keen on tinkering with a temp solution as I'm sure its gunna mess with the overclock.. probably different latencys on the ram aswell :(

Both are different brands but both are 1066 which is a plus so we'll see how this goes. I wonder if it is the ram causing the problem.. if not its definately the CPU and a quad core is the way forward.. it'll just be finding the right quad core after this that then makes the gpu a bottleneck.

What do we think I'm looking at price wise for a Q9XXX?
 
I put in that spare 2x1gb I have and its not made a difference to the GPU usage, not that I think its gunna make the world of difference having 8gb over 6gb now but I'm gunna wait for this ram to arrive and give that a go but I expect the same.

So I'm now left with finding a suitable Q775!
 
If it is ONLY for BF3 then getting a slower clocked quad core will give you a performance boost, if the CPU is the current bottleneck.

However, it may lower performance in other games which don't make use of more than 2 cores, where a fast dual core is far better than a 3GHz quad.

Imo you should probably just stick with that dual core until you are ready to upgrade to a Sandybridge/Ivybridge Quad..
 
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