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CPU/memory bottleneck?

W

waterboysh

n00b
Joined
Mar 28, 2011
Messages
17
Hi, I haven't ever really posted here before, but I've been a long time reader. I recently bought the GeForce 560 TI from Newegg to replace my old 8600 GT.

I've never put much stock in artificial benchmarks such as 3d Mark, but I was curious to see how much my system would improve and it seemed a good way to relatively measure the performance increase. So I ran 3d Mark 03, 06, and Vantage last night.

I got my 560 today, and after rearranging my computer a little to get it to fit, I fired up 3D Mark 03. Really nice performance improvement there as expected. Then I proceeded to 3D Mark 06, and while it did show performance increases, they seemed very meager.

Here is the comparison: http://3dmark.com/compare/3dm06/15708174/3dm06/15710717

I don't have the budget to upgrade my computer all at once, but I figured a video card would give the biggest immediate boost to games, so I got a Corsair 750W PSU and this 560. Right now I've got an MSI K9N-Neo motherboard that has an Athlon 64 X2 4000 @ 2.1GHz with 2GB of DDR2 800. I know that the CPU/RAM combo I have will hold back the GPU some, but is it really by THAT much?
 
The term "bottleneck" is often abused by noobs and enthusiast alike, but in your case I think the term rightfully applies. That X2 is going to seriously hamper performance of your new card. That said, if you had a specific reason for upgrading and that reason has been met, then the bottleneck is moot as long as you are satisfied. If not, then you obviously have a problem. What socket is that board? 939? I don't think upgrading your CPU is a good option either due to the high costs relatively speaking of the older 939/940 cpu's. You would be better off going and puchasing a cheap am2+ or am3 board a decent phenom or phenom 2 and calling it a day. You can sell your 939 stuff for a decent price on Ebay these days to help with costs.
 
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I'd say it's a bottleneck, but the extent of the bottleneck will be dependent on the games you actually play. My take - give it a go and see if the performance is acceptable.
 
I'd try overclocking that CPU. I'd hope you could hit maybe 3.2-3.5ghz and gain some decent performance. But in games like BC2 which can use a full quad core, you will still be significantly bottlenecked.

You could always try to find a cheap quad core to replace that dual core. I upgraded an old am2 system with a p2 940 a few years back, and it gave decent improvement.
 
The board I have now is actually an AM2 board. TBH I've been out of the gaming scene for a while, but am getting back into it. The newest, most graphical intense game I currently own is Starcraft II, but I'm wanting to get some newer games soon when money permits. I knew that I would be making my cpu/ram a bottleneck, I'm just a little disappointed by how much.

With my 8600 I had to turn most of the settings down to low to get SC to run at a playable fps. I figured I'd be able to max out the settings on the 560, but doing so caused lots of stuttering, and I'm guessing it was being caused by the cpu and lower memory bandwidth. So I compromised and put most things at high, and any setting that said it relied more on the CPU I set to low. The end result was that SC ran really really nice.

I plan on upgrading my mobo/cpu/ram over the summer. I'm waiting for the AMD Bulldozer chips to come out and see how well they perform against the i7. I work at a computer store and am eligible for the Intel Retail Edge program and one of the summer deals is going to be the i7-2600k. They haven't announced the price on it yet though, so we'll see.
 
Based on what you are saying then best just to keep your card and wait until you upgrade. No point in wasting money doing anything else with your current setup seeing as you will soon be upgrading. In the meantime see if you can achieve a decent overclock on that X2 to help with performance. Quite honestly, even if you were able to get a decent OC you won't see much improvement. Maybe some older games might benefit but even then it will be minimal.
 
cesarioarce said:
Quite honestly, even if you were able to get a decent OC you won't see much improvement. Maybe some older games might benefit but even then it will be minimal.
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That's kinda what I was afraid of. I guess I just didn't realize how big of an impact the CPU has on gaming... I thought that the GPU offloaded most of the graphical work... I kinda suspect that the main culprit though is memory bandwidth, because with that DDR 800 its going to be pretty low.
 
humungoooooo bottleneeeeeeck :p. definitely upgrade to bulldozer or intel via your retail discount program as soon as you can (next month?) in order to make the most of your new card. your current setup will bottleneck even an 8800gt (at least 2x faster than your 8600gt), which is about 3 times slower than a gtx 560, so yeah. also, starcraft 2 gets a huge boost in performance from a much faster cpu (even though sc2 only uses 2 cores, a highly o/c 2500k/2600k performs best right now in that game): http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/20

btw, what resolution do you game at?
 
^Yup. The posts are right about SC2 - That game prefers a faster dual core compared to a slower quad core.

I upgraded my system's GPU from a 4870 1GB to a 6870 for SC2 alone and found out the hard way. Performance went up for sure, but minimum FPS when the battles got huge still remained pretty much the same (especially in team 3v3/4v4s).
 
a gtx560 with a 4000 X2? you must not have paid too mention for the time you spent reading on here because that is one of the most lopsided configurations I have seen in a while. you could have bought a $100 gts450 and gotten the same performance with that cpu. with just 2gb of ram on Vista and that cpu, you are looking at lots of stuttering, hitching and all around poor performance trying to run games at settings a gtx560 is intended to be used at.

even if you oc that cpu, you still are not going to come remotely close to fully utilizing a gtx560 by any means. bottom line is that its time for a new cpu/mobo/ram.

EDIT: just saw that is an AM2 board so a new Phenom X4 and more ram will get the job done. and sorry if I missed it but what is the monitor resolution you will be gaming at?
 
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Spooony said:
what resolution do you play at?
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Well, at the moment I don't have many games I'm playing. The only newer game I have is SC II and there is something wrong with changing the resolution in that game, so I'm stuck playing at my monitor's native resolution which is 1920 x 1080.

What I mean by that is if in the game I change the resolution to something lower, but still at the same aspect ratio, I still have parts of the game cut off and I can't play. For example, I tried 1280 x 720 and it cuts off parts of the top and the bottom of the screen. I don't know why it does this...

I appreciate the input everyone has given. I'm excited about getting back into gaming and messing around with my computer. I plan on getting Dragon Age Origins soon because it looks really fun and I love that type of game. Baldur's Gate was one of my all time favorites. Not really sure what other games I'll get yet.

Also, this board is AM2, not AM2+ so I can't drop a phenom II in it. Would be nice if I could though. I've never built an Intel system before, I've always gone with AMD because of the better price:performance ratio, but I may be able to get an i7-2600k or an i7-970 for a hugely discounted price through the Intel Retail edge soon. I wasn't eligible for the winter deal, but they had the 970 for $215 and its about $600 on newegg now and I think it was closer to $800 or $900 during the winter deal. If I can snag one of those for a really good price then I might do it.
 
well just go for a 2500k as that would make the most bang for buck as for as gaming is concerned. I honestly would not even bother playing most games until you get that cpu upgraded.

since you mentioned Dragon Age, this will give you an idea of just how poor your cpu will perform in that game. the slowest cpu on there is the 5000 X2 and it cant even give but 24 fps on max settings so just imagine your slower 4000 X2. http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...rks-75-percent-boost-for-quad-cores/Practice/
 
:D That motherboard is like a delorean, it takes you back in time ;) MSI K8/K9Neo

1981_Delorean_DMC12.jpg


I seriously thought that mobo was from 03' but it looks like maybe it's from 05', still man Shuttle was making Desktop Mobos back then. Sorry but that thing is just old. :( It should be in a museum. :p
 
cannondale06 said:
since you mentioned Dragon Age, this will give you an idea of just how poor your cpu will perform in that game. the slowest cpu on there is the 5000 X2 and it cant even give but 24 fps on max settings so just imagine your slower 4000 X2. http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...rks-75-percent-boost-for-quad-cores/Practice/
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Wow... thanks for that. I tried to find some review that compared just CPUs that also included older CPUs, but all I could find were reviews that compared intel to amd, or the newest amd/intel to the previous generation. I think I probably will hold off on getting any games until I upgrade the rest of my PC during the upcoming months.

teletran8 said:
:D That motherboard is like a delorean, it takes you back in time ;) MSI K8/K9Neo0
Click to expand...

My previous board was the K8N-Neo2 Platinum.... I've used MSI for a while and have been really impressed with them. Thats why I got the MSI GeForce 560.
 
I've been looking around at motherboards, and I've noticed that some of them have PCIe power connectors actually on the motherboard itself right above the top PCIe slot. Is that really necessary, considering that if the video card needs extra power over what the PCIe slot can deliver then the card will have some power connectors for external power anyway? If I got a board with one of those could I just ignore it? My video card already takes 2 power connectors, I don't want to run a third one...
 
Not trying to berate you or anything but you work in a computer store and don't know about current hardware? I hope you were not giving recomendations during that time.

Anyhow, an i5 2500K would be a massive upgrade. An i7 2600K would be a little bit better in gaming, but general purpose would be a bigger improvement over an i5 2500k. That i7 970 is a beastly processor in is own right and if you could get one for $215, that would be an epic deal.

On the AMD side of things, if you only plan to game a Phenom II 955 or 965 would be enough to power that GTX 560. A Phenom II 1090T would be a step up for most applications over the 955/965. If you are waiting until this summer, then it would be best to wait and see what bulldozer delivers.
 
Some older rigs can still do relatively well. I gave my old Ph II 940 rig to my nephew. It's @ 3.4GHz with 8Gb ram, a Foxconn A7DA-S 790GX mobo and recently had stock 6850 Crossfire installed. I watched him play DA 2 maxed with 8xAA|16xAF all on @ 1920x1200. With vsync enabled he was constantly doing between 33-45FPS according to FRAPS.

He claims he can run Metro 2033 maxed with it and I haven't seen him play that.
 
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