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would my system bottleneck with a factory 680

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29 Sep 2011
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oh Hey guys and girls,

Looking to possibly upgrade from my gtx 460 to the new gtx 680 and wanted to know if my system would cause any bottlenecks if i did. no point in getting a good graphics card if i can't use all the power after all.

current setup as follows

Processor: i7 950 @ 3.1GHz
Memory: Dominator GT 6gb
motherboard: Asus X58 Sabertooth
powere: OCZ ModXStream Pro 700w

haf x case with plenty of fans but these new cards seem to run nice and cool.

oh and i'm running a Dell U2711 at 2560 x 1440 when possible but as you can imagine I have to lower that to get half decent fps in a fair few games

Cheers for any help :D
 
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Yeha, you'd need to OC your processor to maybe 3.6ghz which will be able to use all the GPU except in the most CPU demanding games.
 
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Don't buy it at all, you will be fine with your CPU at that speed, especially at the resolution you play at.

There are multiple anaysis out there where the difference between CPU speed and architecture is negligible in the majority of the games.

It will help a bit overclocking no doubt but your talking a couple of FPS at the most.
 
Soldato
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Since i've tested myself this week with 2.6ghz stock and then 4ghz overclock i can tell you the GTX680 is somewhat bottlenecked in certain games like Skyrim/BF3 which i mainly tested.I gained about 15-20fps in each one with the overclock however in some other games it will not be as beneficial besides you should overclock it anyway with the vast amount of good coolers available now.
 
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thanks for all the feedback people, good to hear it shouldn't be much of a problem, just need to wait for prices to drop a little or for more cheaper cards in the family to be released and i'm good to go. shame my 460 runs so hot or i would have keept it in as a physx card.
 

jb7

jb7

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I'm using an EVGA Gtx 680 with an i7 920 @ 3.2ghz. I don't think the CPU is bottlenecking it, I'm getting well in excess of 60fps (70-80fps) on ultra at 1920x1080 (BF3). This includes 4xaa

5kms89.jpg


Note I had the game paused before taking the picture which explains the drops in the graph. CPU seems to be maxing out the GPU
 

jb7

jb7

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youll be ok at stock,i had a 920 at stock and at 4.2ghz,there wasnt any noticable difference in gaming using a 5870 @1920x1080 res,its mostly the gpu thats doing the work

Yeah true, I think only with very old CPU's it will be bottlenecked.. I think we sometimes get a bit over excited and think a CPU will bottleneck just because it isn't the very latest generation :D Seems I have no reason to upgrade to Ivy Bridge
 
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I'm using an EVGA Gtx 680 with an i7 920 @ 3.2ghz. I don't think the CPU is bottlenecking it, I'm getting well in excess of 60fps (70-80fps) on ultra at 1920x1080 (BF3). This includes 4xaa

Note I had the game paused before taking the picture which explains the drops in the graph. CPU seems to be maxing out the GPU

BF3 would be the worst game to use as a reference on CPU bottlenecking as it's so GPU intensive pretty much any quad core i7 at 3Ghz+ will get almost identical results.

In Skyrim or god forbid GTAIV it would be a different story though. You could be looking at 10fps+ betweeen a 3Ghz i7 and a 4.2Ghz 920 for example.
 

jb7

jb7

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BF3 would be the worst game to use as a reference on CPU bottlenecking as it's so GPU intensive pretty much any quad core i7 at 3Ghz+ will get almost identical results.

In Skyrim or god forbid GTAIV it would be a different story though. You could be looking at 10fps+ betweeen a 3Ghz i7 and a 4.2Ghz 920 for example.

Just tried Skyrim on ultra, with high res pack and other high res mods installed. There seems to be some sort of lock on (v sync?) that prevents the FPS from going above 60.. but the entire time it was at 60, no frame drops
 
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