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Resolution and minimum framerates

elrasho said:
My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £888.87 (includes shipping: £0.00)
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I was thinking about that case myself recently, good choice IMO but Ideally I want a case that supports 3x 140mm fans up front though so the top 2 slots can be for my AIO CPU cooler and the bottom fan can feed cool air in for the air cooled GPU I have. Currently the GPU is breathing in warm air from the CPU rad.
 
If I was you I'd chance it and go for a GPU first, depending on how high end you go will influence how much your CPU will be holding you back but you 'should' see a decent graphics gain as essentially all you've done is change your monitor to a higher resolution which the GPU should handle just fine. Then if you run into any weird CPU bottlneck issues you could tweak in game settings to suit (like lower any CPU heavy tasks like particle effects or draw distance etc and possibly shadow distances) and/or eventually upgrade the CPU fort a nicer match to whatever GPU you go for.
 
RipGroove said:
If I was you I'd chance it and go for a GPU first, depending on how high end you go will influence how much your CPU will be holding you back but you 'should' see a decent graphics gain as essentially all you've done is change your monitor to a higher resolution which the GPU should handle just fine. Then if you run into any weird CPU bottlneck issues you could tweak in game settings to suit (like lower any CPU heavy tasks like particle effects or draw distance etc and possibly shadow distances) and/or eventually upgrade the CPU fort a nicer match to whatever GPU you go for.
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I see what you mean, ideally I'd want a 3080 but their gold dust right now. I see 3090s in stock here and there. My Sunflower 750W PSU should be enough for it and it'll fir in my NZXT S340 case just about.
 
elrasho said:
I see what you mean, ideally I'd want a 3080 but their gold dust right now. I see 3090s in stock here and there. My Sunflower 750W PSU should be enough for it and it'll fir in my NZXT S340 case just about.
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Exactly why I got a 3090, I was aiming for a 3080ti but availability for the 3090 was better. Give it a go (but be warned you might have to immediately upgrade CPU as well), if the GPU proves to be overkill you can up the graphics settings as much as you can but there will always be the chance that you could see CPU bottleneck symptoms like a very choppy inconsistent frame rate, which is the last thing you want after spending a lot of money on a GPU.

Ideally you shouldn't upgrade anything and just lower your in game graphics settings to the point you can maintain your new monitors refresh rate and then upgrade CPU and GPU together when your able to. Upgrading one without the other has its drawbacks either way.

Upgrading just the GPU 'might' work out ok but it might not, you might get away with it because your monitor is relatively hard to drive so that'll keep the FPS figures down to a point the CPU can keep up BUT if the GPU is way overpowered and starts smashing out high FPS you will have the CPU bottleneck symptoms I mentioned above and you won't be able to fix them without upgrading your CPU. I suspect the 3090 will possibly be too powerful for your current CPU because mine has Battlefield V bouncing off of its hard FPS cap of 200fps even at 3440x1440 Ultrawide with all in game settings set to max (apart from resolution scaling, which is set at 100% and no Ray Tracing because for some reason that makes my game a bit choppy).

TL: DR = A GPU bottlenecked PC (IE, a CPU upgrade for you) will play games smoothly but a CPU bottlenecked PC (IE, a big GPU upgrade for you) won't, and it'll be super annoying. So logically you should go with a CPU upgrade, BUT just a CPU upgrade might not give you the FPS you want/need for your new monitor so ideally either don't upgrade anything yet and just lower in-game settings to increase FPS or upgrade both CPU and GPU at the same time.
 
No worries. Like I said, you are in a tricky position because you are talking about big upgrade steps for CPU or GPU.

And yeah, well spotted, Double 99 - Ripgroove :D
 
If your FPS were fine before and it was just a monitor resolution increase then a new CPU shouldn't make much difference. GPU was probably max'd out and now it has more pixels to push but as mentioned a new 3080 might just highlight the limitations of the CPU instead. Ultimately depends what games you play and what FPS you deem acceptable. My old 5820K clearly shows signs of bottlenecking a 3080 but its not exactly useless - can still push 90+ fps in Warzone and 100+ fps in BFV for example. XCOM2 it struggles in many places to get 40 fps due to the engine (single thread limited) and it was pretty bad in one of the wow raids last expansion.
 
Have a play about with this bottleneck calculator, just press 'new calculation' to start a new one:

https://pc-builds.com/calculator/Core_i7-4790K/GeForce_RTX_3090/0AH176/

It's shows that your 4790k will cause a bottleneck of 32% with a 3090 at 1440p

What those figures mean exactly I don't know but it might be a good way to pair up GPU's and CPU's at certain resolutions because you can see the number change when you select a different resolution, obviously your resolution kind of sits in between 1440p and 4k but you get the idea. There are probably loads of bottleneck calculators online so maybe try a few to get an idea of which ones seem to spot out the same numbers.
 
This may be another one to look at because it gives you some FPS figures as well and also supports Ultrawide resolutions:

https://www.cpuagent.com/fps-bottleneck-calculator

Plumb in your current setup and see what the FPS figures look like compared to what you are actually seeing in real life. Then plumb in some different CPU and GPU pairs and see what they look like as well.

With this one you can see how the GPU bottleneck decreases the higher your resolution.
 
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3D Mark was going cheap on Steam so I got it. Compared my results with someone who had similar specs but a 3080 GPU

OepgAb1.png

Looking at a 38% increase in graphical performance if I got a 3080 :) That should get be back on track as my pixel count has gone up by around that percentage aswell
 
elrasho said:
3D Mark was going cheap on Steam so I got it. Compared my results with someone who had similar specs but a 3080 GPU

OepgAb1.png

Looking at a 38% increase in graphical performance if I got a 3080 :) That should get be back on track as my pixel count has gone up by around that percentage aswell
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You could have clicked on the demo version of 3DMark halfway down the Steam page and got it for free, that's all I've ever used.
 
Bear in mind that some titles are choked more by older processors than others. Still, can always do CPU / board / RAM down the line if you want to.
 
I overclocked my GPU by just 20Mhz and now I'm getting solid 100+ FPS with same graphics settings I had before. How can just 20Mhz make such a big difference? Shall I overclock the VRAM too?

maXrdlv.png

Here's a vid too:

Also noticed GPU usage sits at 97% almost constantly so seems like this site overclock has kicked my GPU up the butt lol Temps never go above 60c too
 
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