Do you think i7 920 @ 3.8ghz will bottleneck HD7970

Blkout said:
An i7 @ 3.8GHz isn't going to bottleneck any video card or multiple video cards. Anyone telling you otherwise doesn't know what they're talking about.
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It certainly will not a single 7970.
 
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xoleras said:
What the hell is your problem? Anyway, I don't see the CPU being a huge issue. The CPU can make a difference in MP but at 1080p and beyond the GPU is a bigger factor in performance.
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My problem is the nonsense in this thread.

To answer the OP with finality: at 1080P you may have a minor bottleneck. If you decide to go crossfire, you will certainly be limiting your GPUs. If you play over 1080/1200p your cpu won't be the bottleneck in your system.

boxleitnerb said:
Now comes the big but:
Often people complain that they have low GPU usage - be it with a single card or with SLI/CF and automatically assume that something is wrong with SLI/CF/the driver. While that may be the case, it usually is not. People play BF3 in SP, get great fps and then enter a 64 player server and their GPU usage/AFR scaling goes bad. 64 people generating data that needs synchronizing, causing explosions and whatnot - all computed by the CPU. And people wonder why they don't get the same scaling as in SP...
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If 60 FPS is your goal the answer is NO!

If 120 FPS is your goal then the answer is YES!
 
wabbitseason said:
My problem is the nonsense in this thread.

To answer the OP with finality: at 1080P you may have a minor bottleneck. If you decide to go crossfire, you will certainly be limiting your GPUs. If you play over 1080/1200p your cpu won't be the bottleneck in your system.
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Your quote about BF3 MP needs more mention.

Very few sites, unlike the [H], attempt to benchmark it. Thing is, it's a whole different animal. If you want a solid 60+FPS, you're going to need 4.0GHz+ on a modern architecture from an Intel CPU. Much more from an AMD CPU.
 
With a decent overclock Nehalem is still perfectly acceptable, any bottlenecking will be pretty minimal in my experience. My main machine will be sticking around in it's current configuration until Haswell at this point.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
Your quote about BF3 MP needs more mention.

Very few sites, unlike the [H], attempt to benchmark it. Thing is, it's a whole different animal. If you want a solid 60+FPS, you're going to need 4.0GHz+ on a modern architecture from an Intel CPU. Much more from an AMD CPU.
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Here's the reason stuff like this never gets mentioned:

wabbitseason said:
Posters on this forum have a funny way of playing follow-the-leader. A couple months back it was "hurr durr you have a CPU bottleneck" anytime anybody posted. Now, it's "shut your face bottlenecks don't exist derp". You have to take these things on a case-by-case basis, and the OP was very vague. There are many conceivable situations, without dropping to 800x600 or such nonsense, where an i7-920 at 3.8 is a system bottleneck. This is an even greater issue if you're trying to push 120 frames.
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The point is this: system bottlenecks exist in varying degrees of severity, depending on the technological gap between your hardware. If you want to pretend, like MacLeod, that 60 FPS is fine to you, that "anything over 60 FPS means a bottleneck is irrelevant", that's your business. But don't go spouting it off as fact just because the forum pendulum's in your direction at the moment.
 
I will say that I have an I7 920. (currently overclocked to 4.0) I also have a 5850 crossfire setup. I have pretty much zero problems with running games with the graphics cranked up. I am also heavily into flight simulators. These are typically CPU bound. Once again, I have no problems.

so as to your question about if it bottlenecks it...

If it does it would not be noticeable enough to justify the cost of upgrading your system. The only thing a 7970 would give me is higher framerates, which I usually dont have a problem with anyway. That said, when my cpu does start struggling a bit, I'll just purchase a used hexacore and overclock the crap out of it. The 1336 socket still has quite a bit of life left in it.
 
Depends on the game and how it's optimized, as long as your GPU is running at 100%, there's no CPU bottleneck. Some games like Skyrim are only programmed to use 2 cores, your CPU will be a bottleneck to your GPU in that game in certain areas because your CPU clock speeds aren't fast to run the game @ full speed without using the other 2 cores.
 
Interesting addition btw:
I'm a rather avid Rome Total War fan. Some of you might know this game from 2004. It only loads one thread, every benefit above that most likely comes from the graphics driver or background processes that would hog that single thread. The game is laughably easy on the GPU.
Anyway, when playing this game on my 2600K@4GHz with HT disabled (so 4 threads) I don't see a CPU load of the individual cores rise above 40%. However, when slashing the CPU clock by 50%, I slash my fps by 50% and the load that is reported by windows explorer or other tools like Aida is still very well below 50% for each single core/thread.
Even with only one thread (all other cores and HT disabled in the bios) the CPU load is displayed only at 80%.

So my conclusion:
CPU load as reported by Windows explorer or other tools does not necessarily indicate a CPU bottleneck or the lack thereof. In fact, it may be rather unreliable. What the cause of this is, I can only guess. Thread dependencies?

The one and only way to absolutely make sure if you have a CPU bottleneck or not is to investigate fps scaling with CPU clocks. If you increase/decrease your frequency by 10% and the fps rise/fall accordingly, voila -> CPU bottleneck.
 
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wabbitseason said:
Here's the reason stuff like this never gets mentioned:



The point is this: system bottlenecks exist in varying degrees of severity, depending on the technological gap between your hardware. If you want to pretend, like MacLeod, that 60 FPS is fine to you, that "anything over 60 FPS means a bottleneck is irrelevant", that's your business. But don't go spouting it off as fact just because the forum pendulum's in your direction at the moment.
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For one, there is always a bottleneck be it cpu/gpu/mem/pcie bus etc. Otherwise games would run cough cough at infinite speed.

What is important? As in FPS or consistent FPS for good game play? This is more individual, for me 30 FPS and above works. Do like 60 FPS better and can notice the difference but for gaming it is not that significant for me. Others can be perturb of 60 FPS and notice the jumps strafting left and right and will throw down their mouse and curse at their monitor. So if cpu limiting and affecting game play for an individual is the answer which we cannot answer for one asking, they will just have to test it out themselves. Obviously if FPS is less then 30fps due to CPU then it is probably time to upgrade that cpu since most would notice it (not all).
 
Agreed with Jorona. I have a 2500k with my single 680. It played everything completely smooth except for one game- BF3. It stuttered here and there and I decided to OC the 2500k from stock speeds that I was running it at. It made all the difference. BF3 runs completely smooth now. I never would dream my 2500k would bottleneck my gpu, but it did so very much in BF3. Pre-overclocked my gpu usage was crazy going anywhere from 99% usage to 21% usage in rare instances, but after I overclocked my cpu to 4.6 my gpu usage stays in the 90's.
 
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