Will I be bottlenecked?

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce' started by royal, Mar 14, 2006.

  1. royal

    royal Member

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    I recently switched to AMD and Nvidia from Intel and ATI. I understand a bit of the differences between AMD and Intel such as AMD's cpus doing 2 instructions per clock tick which is why a 2.0ghz amd is kinda like a 3.5-4ghz p4 or something like that (not entirely sure).

    My question is, I just bought a 7900GTX, and I was wondering if I bought a 2nd one and hooked them up via SLi, would my cpu be bottlenecking anything at all? Btw, my 3800x2 is oc'd to 2.4ghz.
     
  2. -=Fallscrim=-

    -=Fallscrim=- Member Guru

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    Short answer is yes -and no.

    Guru3D reckons that an AMD 64 4000+ (single core) will bottleneck a 78/7900 GTX to a limited extent.

    On the other hand, the x2 3800 outperforms the 4000+ in most CPU benchmark programs, though only by a slim margin.

    Furthermore, you have to remember that only a small percentage of games currently offer full support for dual core, so many games will not utilise your CPU at peak efficiency, leading to increased bottlenecking.

    On the other hand, the extent to which your CPU bottlenecks your graphics card depends on the resolution, quality settings, AA, AF etc that you have enabled.

    The higher your settings, the more noticeable the bottlenecking will become. Unless you're gonna try running everything in 1900*1200 with AA/AF, you shouldnt run into any noticeable problems.

    Hope this helps. Anyone else feel free to correct me if my theoretical knowledge of the situation is at fault :nerd:
     
  3. ManicOne

    ManicOne Maha Guru

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    You got it the wrong way around dude. Higher resolutions stress the gpu more, thus any bottleneck will shift from the cpu to the gpu. At lower resolutions much of your gpu power will be idle, thus the cpu will be effectively "bottlenecking" the gpu.

    A 2.4GHz X2 will bottleneck your planned SLI setup below, say, 1280/960, but not in any noticeable (in-game) way. At 1600/1200 up, you will be working your gpus at max (at least in modern games) and there will be no effective cpu bottleneck.

    In conclusion, you're good to go!!!!! :) :) :)
     
  4. -=Fallscrim=-

    -=Fallscrim=- Member Guru

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    Whoops. Ta for the correction. Should probably have re-read it before posting :hit:
     

  5. royal

    royal Member

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    Ah, thanks for the information. I always thought that games use the cpu/gpu quite evenly and if you had really powerful GPU but bad a bad CPU. Because I thought that, I figured the higher resolution you go no matter what, the worse performance you'd see because the CPU would be limiting the power your GPU can put out. I didn't know that the higher resolution you go, the more your GPU would work taking the load off the CPU effectively removing the bottleneck. Again, thanks for the information.
     
  6. AgentGOD

    AgentGOD Guest

    I had a 2.4A GHz Pentium 4 Northwood (overclocked from Stock 1.8 GHz). It bottlenecked my 6800 GT like hell. I scored 3.2k in 3DMark05 (this was in 2004). So... it goes to show you, CPU does matter.

    Back then, at 1600x1200, the framerates were EXACTLY identical to 640x480. Indicating massive CPU bottleneck. Not just identical, but the same 20 - 40 fps.
     
  7. kwak

    kwak Ancient Guru

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    agentgod, that is a very good example of bottlenecking. you dont get your cards max performance at lower res/detail, but as resolution/detail increases, it will come closer and closer to the cards max.
    royal, some games put more stress on the cpu than others. if you look at the guru3d reviews, look at the far cry and hl² graphs, those games are really cpu-limited, and also a very good example of bottlenecking.
     
  8. SniperDaws

    SniperDaws Banned

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    well you have one of the best CPU's out at the moment so i wouldnt worry, if an FX60 causes bottlenecks then theres nothing you can do really, though Mr Conroe might have somthing to say about bottlenecking when he rears his handsome head in the summer, Damn i hope AMD release somthing to kick the cpu into touch.
     
  9. W@w@Y

    W@w@Y Ancient Guru

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    conroe may be in our midst but 90% of gamers feel an affinity towards AMD.. for me, intel is for those who dont know their pc very well..
     

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