What Speed CPU to keep up with my cards?

[smogsy]

Quick Question

What CPU speed do you think, would allow my cards to get full potential.

I have an I7 940 @ 2.93ghz i did OC to 3.6ghz and noticed around 50-80 extra fps. in BF3 & few other games, however i had to turn it off as it was not stable.

i'm considering getting a new PC in April (maybe ivy) moving some of the stuff over gfx/hdd/etc.

 

[Alkalinepro5]

Best way to check is if you use MSI Afterburner and look at the GPU usage between different overclocks.

I know even on my 6870 I see an improvement when I oc the CPU.

I would consider either a 2500K, 3820 on X79 or wait for Ivy-vanilla. All of those options will yield an improvement.

I must say though an i7 940 with a healthy OC should be more than enough for BF3! I would investigate the reasons for the instability (no doubt heat/power), and upgrade cooling solution accordingly. I honestly don't think its worth upgrading CPU from the one you have, and you should wait for Haswell atleast IMHO.

 

[spixelspixel]

I doubt you were getting that much extra fps!

Why was the OC not stable? cpu should be able to do much more than 3.6 without issues.

 

[Dark_Angel]

As said, I doubt you were getting 80FPS more O.o

Perhaps invest in better CPU cooling or reseat your current one. I'd be surprised if that CPU didn't reach 3.6GHZ +...

 

[smogsy]

everything was working fine next day booted up motherboard said OC failed.

CPU at 3.5ghz was 75c running Heaven benchmark cooling is good

As said, I doubt you were getting 80FPS more O.o

Before on BF3 - 50-90FPS
after Overclock 110-150fps

didnt test it for prolonged periods but, generally gpu usage was higher.

 

[setter]

Good guide here for clocking the 9** cpu's.

http://www.overclock.net/t/538439/guide-to-overclocking-the-core-i7-920-or-930-to-4-0ghz

Is your 12gb of ram in a 6x2 or 3x4 configuration? Filling all slots will require a lot of qpi voltage, 3x4 will maybe also need a little more as well. Running a 920 here at 4.0ghz, seeing 50% ono cpu use in bf3, 99% gpu use, though lately ive been using the fps limiter so the cards are only at 60% usage ono.

 

[spixelspixel]

everything was working fine next day booted up motherboard said OC failed.

CPU at 3.5ghz was 75c running Heaven benchmark cooling is good

As said, I doubt you were getting 80FPS more O.o

Before on BF3 - 50-90FPS
after Overclock 110-150fps

didnt test it for prolonged periods but, generally gpu usage was higher.

75c is a bit toasty although I don't know much about i7's

I would try overclocking again, read up about voltages and what not and test with prime95. Could just have been a motherboard bug, happened to me a couple of times. Don't use any auto overclocking, set everything manual.

From 3-3.6ghz would be around a 20 percent increase so I would say the 50-90 would be more like 60-100. On multiplayer though it can vary greatly depending on how many players are in the server etc

From my experiences the more cpu power the better, so long as your not playing at insane resolution with everything max on a very graphics heavy game you will keep getting higher fps as you increase the clock speed.

If I had that cpu I'd try to get around just over 4ghz out of it and i'd be content.

 

[Alkalinepro5]

everything was working fine next day booted up motherboard said OC failed.

CPU at 3.5ghz was 75c running Heaven benchmark cooling is good

As said, I doubt you were getting 80FPS more O.o

Before on BF3 - 50-90FPS
after Overclock 110-150fps

didnt test it for prolonged periods but, generally gpu usage was higher.

That's completely possible for an SLi setup, which requires a fair amount of CPU power to drive at full potential.

It's always a constant battle between the CPU/GPU bottlenecking each other, and the key is to minimize this as much as possible to ensure you are getting all the juice you can out of your GPU's.

75c isn't too bad for Intel. A Phenom would be near enough dead at that, however Intel CPU's are far stronger, and much more resilient to heat!

IMHO just play around with voltages until its stable