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What happens when your CPU is the bottleneck.

I run cod mw2 on x2 3800+ @2.8ghz and an 8800GT in highest settings, 4xAA 1680x1050. It slows down in some places but mostly is around 30-50fps

Cant really see what an i7 & 5870 can do, other than maybe crysis in 2048x1900 or whatever and 16xAA.

Need some better games making! I will probably upgrade for BF3 or Starcraft 2 if needed.
 
My Q6600 at 3.8 doesn't bottleneck mine in Crysis Warhead playing on maximum settings at 1920x1200 so unless you are playing at a pitifully low resolution I don't think you will have an issue.

MSI Afterburner reports the card pretty much being at 100% GPU usage.

Edit : Oh... get a new monitor before a new graphics card :P, you are at a low resolution :).
 
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Am I oversimplifying things when I consider a processor to not be a bottleneck when the load on it doesn't reach 100% during gaming?
 
I wish they would overclock each archeticture tho. Just to see where the bottle neck for each card is. Like is a 3ghz c2d enough or does it need to go to 3.6?
 
xGaffner said:
i'm still worried about it being a huge bottleneck
Click to expand...
Hi xGaffner,

I read a lot of posts like yours where people are worried, anxious, concerned over a hardware purchase and I'm not sure where it all starts? buying hardware shouldn't be a dread task akin to a driving test, getting married! :p

I think some bad info gets out onto the interweb and the old chinese whipsers effect takes place and before you know it a really small issue becomes a terrible thing filling potential upgraders with fear! :D

CPU bottlenecking is one of the most misunderstood situations I've seen on the various forums, people are talking about crippled performance, laggyness, terrible plagues, swarms of locusts etc when in fact it's not such a bad thing at all . . .

If you imagine the CPU is an artist with a pencil and blank paper and the graphics card is a van full of painters, what happens when you game is the CPU/Artist sketches out the Geometry into a wire-frame, this is the bases of everything and not a lot of graphics can happen if there is no Wireframe to work from. As soon as the Geometry is completed the Artist hands over the infomation to the Painters/Graphics card and they go to work transforming the wireframe into a full blown and lifelike image . . .

cpubottleneck.jpg

left: CPU Geometry Image - right: GPU Rendered Image

CPU bottlenecking is just another way of describing system *imbalance* and means simply that the CPU/Artist cannot draw the wireframe quickly enough to keep the GPU/Painters all working at once, poor little artist is sitting there sketching out how things should look with a few hundred painters standing behind him going "come on mate get a move on" :D

All it really means is your not getting your moneys worth as your paying for painters who end up not having much too do and just sit around drinking tea and chatting about the footie!

The opposite of CPU Bottlenecking is GPU bottlenecking and comes more into play when higher resolutions and AA (ant-aliasing) are used, the CPU/Artist issues instructions to the GPU/Painters to paint every building in the street, no bodge job at least four coats of paint with a good rubdown inbetween each coat! :eek:

All you need to do is match the right CPU processing power to the right graphics processing power to get the job done, at 1280x1024 the burden is placed on the CPU and that will mainly determine the FPS, at higher resolutions the burden is placed on the GPU.

This whole subject is fairly mOOt these days *unless* you are a benchmarker most good CPU/GPU combos are good enough to achieve playable framerates if you use some common sense when configuring the game.

The end result we are aiming for here is for you to be sitting relaxing at your uBer PC playing a game and enjoying yourself, that's what its all about so what are you waiting for, go forth and enjoy yourself, it's ok your allowed! :cool:
 
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