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will my CPU bottleneck these gfx cards?

hanz77

hanz77

hanz77

Associate
Joined
20 Jun 2012
Posts
7
Hello all,

I need some advice on whether I should go for one of these gfx cards. My rig has a 5 year old Abit IP35 mobo running on a q6660 2.4GHz quad core CPU OC to 3.2ghz, 8gb DDR 2
Kingston hyper X 1066MHz, 5.5.5.15, 2.1v timings. Win 7 64 OS.

I'm looking to get either of of these but not sure if I'll see any benefit due to older components in my system. My budget is not very high to upgrade to a whole new rig as my one now is still sufficient. Just wanted to give it a extra gpu boost to play some newer game titles at a optimal and playable setting.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-175-OK&groupid=701&c
atid=1914&subcat=1810

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-173-EA

Cheers
 
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My old Q6600 overclocked to 3.6GHz would bottleneck my 5850 in quite a lots of games (that don't use all 4 cores)...and since the GTX560Ti is around 10% faster than the 5850, so I would say yes you will get bottleneck, a bit less in games that use all 4 cores.
 
well if your resolution is high enough the bottleneck may not be too apparently. for the record, a q6600 is not quite as good as an i3 for gaming, so under common resolutions you will get bottlenecked
 
I had a Q6600 at 3.6ghz and that just just barely bottlenecked a GTX580, so either of the cards you've linked to will be fine at 1080p, however I would save a little bit more money and stick with a 1GB 560ti, as the 2GB is only really worth it if you go SLI (which your CPU then be a bottleneck with)

the 560ti with Q over 3ghz will run BF3 on high (as an example)
 
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andybird123 said:
I had a Q6600 at 3.6ghz and that just just barely bottlenecked a GTX580, so either of the cards you've linked to will be fine at 1080p, however I would save a little bit more money and stick with a 1GB 560ti, as the 2GB is only really worth it if you go SLI (which your CPU then be a bottleneck with)

the 560ti with Q over 3ghz will run BF3 on high (as an example)
Click to expand...
If BF is all he (you) play then yes considering the game would use 4 or more cores. But unfortunately vast majority of games ain't as well multi-threaded as BF games.
 
there's always hope for the future lol. a distant distant hope for old quad core users that although current games bottleneck them, newer games somehow use more cores and work better lol

different between bf i5 and q6600 is supposed to be very very minimal
 
Marine-RX179 said:
If BF is all he (you) play then yes considering the game would use 4 or more cores. But unfortunately vast majority of games ain't as well multi-threaded as BF games.
Click to expand...

I never once had a situation where a game was unplayable and my GPU usage was under 99% with a Q + 560ti
this to me says that the Q was not a bottleneck, the 560 always became the limiting factor before CPU did
 
Bottom line, there will be some kind of hit game dependant, but it's the cheapest sure fire performance gain your going to get rather than do a costly MB/CPU/RAM+GPU upgrade just to get 100% gpu scaling.

They both will do a job but this 7850@£190 is faster, highly clockable with cheaper, cooler and newer features than the both you linked:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-295-SP

But I still wouldn't buy that either if I were in your shoes.

Then there is the 6950 which is £50 less than the 560ti in the link that gives realistically almost identical performance game to game(the 448 is slightly faster but not worth anywhere near £50 faster):

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-299-SP

Or save a fortune and get a 6870 that isn't that far off the mark of 560ti/6950's for £120(imho,there is no way in hell that the 560ti is worth £80 more):

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-143-MS

Out of them all, each card in your system isn't worth the extra over the 6870 tbph for the performance each gives.

The 560ti and 448 are both good cards in their own right but they are vastly overpriced right now, they should both be a good £50 cheaper than what they are now.
 
hanz77 go for it, it is a good upgrade and you will see a good performance increase. Forget the bottleneck stuff, the increase in performance will be worth the investment and honestly unless you are benchmarking you won't notice any bottlenecks. Enjoy your 560Ti when you get it I would go for the EVGA GeForce GTX 560Ti "448 Edition" Classified 1280MB for your setup, it is also at a not bad price at the moment if you are after an Nvidia card only.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-173-EA


If you are thinking maybe to save £50 the Sapphire HD 6950 OC "Dual Fan Edition" 2048MB GDDR5 is worth checking out too if you don't mind going AMD.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-299-SP


The best buy is the 6950 out of the two, but you have to decide if you need CUDA, PhysX and Nvidia drivers OR go AMD and save £50 for almost the same performance.
 
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Come to think of it, I didn't even get any added fps whatsoever when I was running a gtx260 (which was the most overclockable gpu I've ever had) with my Q6600. Just goes to show how relevant it 'can' be.
 
hanz77 said:
Hello all,

I've gone with the Sapphire 6950 and ordered it today. Hope I have made the right choice.

Just seen this and wondered if its true, as it claims the card comes with the 6950 and 6970 bios that is easily switched and no flashing is needed:confused:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIV_gQEWqPs
Click to expand...
6970 is only around 3% faster than the 6950 on the same clock and considering your CPU, you wouldn't really get any noticable different with the unlock. But there's not harm trying if the card already come with the 6970 bios without you needing the risk to flash the bios.
 
Installed my sapphire HD 6950 tonight and ran AVP from steam and Crysis 1 on full settings. Really impressed with the performance boost and quality so far for my budget of £200. Thanks for the recomendations.

However, been looking into the unlocking the shaders without flashing the 6970 bios, as av heard stories of people bricking their cards due to different timings with the bios and the safer way was to unlock the shaders and then OC manually to the the 6970 Core and mem clocks.

I did have a go at trying the shaders, yet all the guides I have seen failed. Atiwinflash flashes the card and prompts for a reboot. On a reboot the shaders are still default 1408 in GPU-ID latest version.

Is the card a newer bulid that doesnt allow this now? If not, its no biggie as I'm very happy with the results from the titles I have run on stock.
 
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