Where is my limit?

[JeditOjanen]

Slightly different to the usual "spec me a card at £X" threads: I'm curious as to how powerful a GPU I could use without being bottlenecked, including SLI options. Current system is an i5 2500K (OCed to 4.60GHz) with 4GB RAM and a single 560Ti 1GB.

Also, what would I be looking to upgrade in order to shift the bottleneck - RAM or CPU?

 

[Pale Shaza]

Mobo and psu?

 

[beejjacobs]

8GB of RAM will probably be benificial, an i5 2500K can power pretty much any graphics card set up. SLI depends on your motherboard and PSU.

RAM is cheap, 8GB is recommended.

 

[cmndr_andi]

It really depends on the resolution you play at and which games you play, but at 1080p or higher your would need Crossfire HD 7970 or better (ie £750+ of modern graphics power) to get close to a CPU bottleneck with a 4.6GHz i5 2500K.

 

[ALXAndy]

8GB of RAM will probably be benificial, an i5 2500K can power pretty much any graphics card set up. SLI depends on your motherboard and PSU.

RAM is cheap, 8GB is recommended.

If memory serves (pardon the pun) there are very very few games that address more than 2gb memory. For the simple fact that they are 32 bit applications and install into your program files X86 folder.

Thus they are only addressing at a maximum 3gb of ram and in most cases a game will have to use less because of the OS running underneath it.

I do agree that ram is cheap, but don't be expecting performance gains by buying 8gb over 4gb.

Slightly different to the usual "spec me a card at £X" threads: I'm curious as to how powerful a GPU I could use without being bottlenecked, including SLI options. Current system is an i5 2500K (OCed to 4.60GHz) with 4GB RAM and a single 560Ti 1GB.

Also, what would I be looking to upgrade in order to shift the bottleneck - RAM or CPU?

Personally I feel that 4gb is more than enough given what I said above. However, ram is so cheap right now* that you might as well get 8gb.

As for which GPU? you want one that can bottleneck yes. You want the GPU to be the fastest part in your PC so you can wring every last bit of performance out of everything else. Thus you are in 580/7950/7970 territory with the 7950 being the value card of choice. Do feel free to invest in a 7970 of course, because your CPU won't be too much of a problem on a single card.

It's when you start adding multiple cards that you will find your CPU can't cope with the throughput.

* Windy Miller at the rumour mill suggests ram prices are set to soar.

 

[beejjacobs]

People have reported better performance in BF3 with 8GB of RAM. Plus there's bound to be more than one program running!

 

[JeditOjanen]

Mobo and psu?

Yep, sorry. Mobo is the Asus P8Z68-V, PSU is Corsair HX 850W modular.

ALXAndy - it sounds from what you're suggesting that a GTX580 would be better than a pair of 560Tis? Not that I plan to upgrade now; I'm just fishing for the limit so that when I do, I won't buy anything I can't use effectively. I can always scale down if I can use more than I'd need.

Also, almost forgot: what is best for running a dual-display setup, one for gaming and one for browsing/other apps? Been meaning to go dual-monitor for ages but never got round to it.

 

[beejjacobs]

Your motherboard and PSU will support SLI/crossfire for most GPUs (only 2 590s or 2 6990s might be a problem for the PSU but they're old and I wouldn't recommend either)

Basically, more RAM I'd get, and then your "limited" pretty much by your GPU only. If you're only gaming on one screen, then any GPU will run the second okay for normal apps (I.e. The 560 you've got will support two outputs no trouble)

 

[Mr. May]

The only set up which bottlenecks on a 2500k is 7970 crossfire as long as you stay under that you should be okay .......

 

[andybird123]

If memory serves (pardon the pun) there are very very few games that address more than 2gb memory. For the simple fact that they are 32 bit applications and install into your program files X86 folder.

Thus they are only addressing at a maximum 3gb of ram and in most cases a game will have to use less because of the OS running underneath it.

seriously?
google "64 bit games" and see that games as far back as FarCry1 have native 64-bit support

BF3 uses up to 6gb of RAM on my PC


and to the guy asking about 560ti vs 580 - 560ti 1GB SLI is pointless as they run out of VRAM and grind to a halt, you need 560ti 2GB cards which are nigh on the same price as a single GTX580 1.5GB these days

2x 560ti 2GB will be faster than a single GTX580, but for not much extra you could have 2 GTX 580's, for 1080p 1.5gb cards would be fine but if you were thinking of going to 3 monitor or 2560x1600 display then 3GB cards would be better

basically as someone has pointed out, a 2500k with a decent OC will be able to run 7970 crossfire (or whatever the kepler equivalent is)

but you definitely want to upgrade your RAM asap

any decent graphics card will support dual monitor