Upgrade to GTX680 CPU/RAM bottleneck?

[WaQs]

I'm considering an upgrade to a GTX680. But feel my CPU and RAM would be a bottleneck. I currently have the following spec:

Mobo: Gigabyte GA-890gpa-ud3h
CPU: Phenom X6 1100t (OC'd to 3.8)
Ram: 6gb GSkill Ripjaw 1600

If the above is a bottle neck what should I upgrade too? I've not really kept up with the latest CPU news benchmarks.

Thanks in advanced

 

[mattius1989]

I'm running a 680 on a [email protected] and I'm getting great performance.

But I think I would probably see an improvement if I bought myself an Intel 2500k (having asked a question similar to yours recently).

Long story short, you shouldn't have any concerns but look to maybe a stronger CPU in the future possibly.

 

[WaQs]

Great to hear, I'm really happy with my PC so would rather not upgrade if I can avoid it. The only issue I have is with StarCraft 2 on ultra settings I'm not seeing the perfomance increase I was expecting by upgrading from 5870, drops to 20-30fps in battles with toss motherships. All other games I can see a visible improvement. I probably stick with my setup until the Ivy bridge is launced and then revisit my options.

Thanks for the swift reply.

 

[Zeed]

get massive cooler and run it at 4ghz. My phenom runs at 4.0 on 212 ultra cooler with no problems at 1.41v. Your should do same its tad better in standard and all.

 

[welshrat]

starcraft is massively dependant on ipc rather than cores hence the bad framerate, only way to improve that is to go intel.

 

[WaQs]

I've got the Corsair H70 Cooler

http://www.corsair.com/cpu-cooling-...-core-high-performance-liquid-cpu-cooler.html

But for someone reason I can't hit 4ghz and boot into windows, all I'm doing is uping the multiplier and increasing the vcore to 1.5. But its really unstable for me at 3.8 I idle at 38C and the max I've seen underload is 49C so I should have room to manuvour with my existing cooler

Lord Zed, can you post your bios settings? I'm hoping they'll work for me.

 

[Tonester0011]

I've always looked at CPU bottlenecks depending on what res you play. Anything 1080+ the 1100t is as good as any tbh.

 

[andybird123]

a 2500k might give you a small improvement in fps but only very small, not worth spending the money, wait for at least ivybridge, possibly even Haswell before upgrading

 

[tommybhoy]

The performance just isn't going to reach what you see in all the benchmarks using an AMD cpu and a 680 i'm afraid:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/20

http://www.legionhardware.com/artic...ossfire_cpu_scaling_performance_part_1,1.html


Where as the much cheaper 7850 oc'ed to the max is not that far off the 680 at all, plus it will work better in your current system.

Money much better spent on an Intel setup imho:

Cheapest 680=£430

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-201-MS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2261 £110

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-005-VX&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=411 £182

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-368-IN £162

=£454

Or buy the 7850, the MB and wait for the new Intel 3rd Gen 22nm cpus to hit the shelves.

 

[andybird123]

don't forget he's OC'd to 3.9ghz, a lot of those graphs you've shown are a) at low res and b) at stock CPU settings or c) older games that don't use more than 2 cores... an OC'd 1100t will be much better than some of those graphs portray in newer games

at actual gameplay settings an upgrade at the moment will make scant difference - barely noticeable (e.g. yes if you turn down resolution so that you are entirely CPU bound we are talking 120 vs 140fps, but at gameplay settings you are going to be talking 48 vs. 53 fps type differences which I would think most people would have a tough time telling the difference on)

take your magazine graph above... it shows a Q6600 bottlenecking a 570 by a massive margin... but my own experience of a Q6600 @ 3.6ghz says that it only just bottlenecked a 580 by about 5-10% which made about 3FPS difference in game... an 1100t is much better than a Q6600, particularly at the type of OC the OP has

 

[tommybhoy]

I'm only going by my own experiences with a [email protected]/PIIx4BE@4GHz(stopgap cpu waiting for BD in a Sabertooth)/[email protected], I disagree with you on the small gains(3fps) moving up from the Q6600, having gone this route myself.

Gaming wasn't much different on the PII over the Q6600, however my gpu got put to its paces much better in the 2500K.

While your point about oc'ing the cpu's in the above graphs is valid, take into account the other cpus oc too, with the even higher oc'ing that the 2500K can achieve, it's only going to pull even more ahead than the op's 3.9GHz.

The newer games, not many make use of 4 cores never mind 6, it's ipc that counts which the 2500K wins without braking a sweat.

The max fps doesn't count for much imho, the averages and minimums make all the difference.

My point above was that the op would see better gains across the board on the whole going the Intel oc/7850 oc route rather than slapping a 680 into his current setup.

I'm not saying don't get the 680, but the op should be aware he's not going to get close on the benchmarks in the reviews a lot of the time, his cpu will bottleneck the 680 more often than not.

 

[WaQs]

Just to give you an update, on sc2 which is my main game I'm not seeing notable perfomance gains from upgrading to a GTX680.

But on BF3, I get solid 60fps+ (It doesn't drop below 60fps) on ultra settings. So I'm happy with my current settings.

Comparing benchmarks I've done with what I've found published I agree with andybird123, when I get home tonight I plan to take screenshots I'll share them in this thread.

 

[welshrat]

Just to give you an update, on sc2 which is my main game I'm not seeing notable perfomance gains from upgrading to a GTX680.

But on BF3, I get solid 60fps+ (It doesn't drop below 60fps) on ultra settings. So I'm happy with my current settings.

Comparing benchmarks I've done with what I've found published I agree with andybird123, when I get home tonight I plan to take screenshots I'll share them in this thread.

As I posted above, the only way to get better performance in SC2 is to go intel, the game is heavily dependant on ipc and only utilises a few cores, not much else you can do about it.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-fx-8120-6100-4100_6.html#sect0

 

[tommybhoy]

^
+1

Just to give you an update, on sc2 which is my main game I'm not seeing notable perfomance gains from upgrading to a GTX680.

As I said, it's not about the max fps it's the mins and averages that counts, you are severely bottlenecked in SC2.

The older slower 480 has a huge increase in performance when paired with the right cpu:

But on BF3, I get solid 60fps+ (It doesn't drop below 60fps) on ultra settings. So I'm happy with my current settings.

BF3 is not cpu limited in the slightest though, and I'm presuming that's not full ultra 4xaa your talking about never going under 60fps?

 

[Varsh]

I've got an AMD Phenom II x4 945 BE @ 3.4GHz myself and hoping it won't bottleneck the GTX 680 much, but compared to my GTX 285 I'm sure it'll make a world of difference. Not too concerned about upgrading my CPU and Mobo to Intel yet as I can seemingly run most things pretty well, but completing Metro 2033 @ 1920x1200 on max with only 17FPS was quite difficult.