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Graphics Only Upgrade?

X

xkalibr

n00b
Joined
Jan 10, 2012
Messages
16
Specs:
AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE (125w) OC - 3.6ghz
eVGA GTX260 216 Superclocked - 896mb
Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz - 16gb
Samsung 840 120gb SSD boot drive + Misc. hdd's
Asus M4A87TD/USB3 mobo AM3
Antec 900 Case w/ 750w Antec Earthwatts 80plus

In anticipation for the next generation of consoles Im debating a system upgrade.
I would really like to upgrade my graphics card to a GTX760 or equivalent.
My question is, will my CPU become the bottleneck?
Right now I can run every game on medium to high with 2xAA etc.
and everything runs at exceptable frame rates
Grid 2 is on High Settings and locked at 60fps for example.
Tomb Raider on High Settings locked at 60fps.

My cpu is a Black Edition Deneb and i know there is a little more room for overclocking.
I just wanna get the most bang for my buck and I dont wanna upgrade only the card if
the CPU will just end up slowing everything down.

Thanks for the advice :)
 
I have an AMD 965 at stock. I went from an EVGA GTX260 216 Superclocked to a 560ti 2GB. Frame rates jumped by almost twice. I recently went to a GTX 670 PE/OC and performance again jumped by a large percent. I went from getting ~30 frame rates in Crysis 2 to getting over 50. Same results in BF3.

I would recommend getting a better CPU but yes, you certainly will see a huge performance jump.
 
A processor would only be a performance bottleneck if and only if the purchase of a new card doesn't remarkably improve frame rates or visual quality of games. The Phenom II X4 955 BE is a relatively modern processor, so you shouldn't suffer from any noticeable bottlenecking.

Assuming that you game at a 1920x1080 resolution -- do you? -- the GTX 760 would show a noticeable performance boost in comparison to the GTX 260 216.

As an aside, why are your games locked at 60fps?
 
Why are you considering a GPU upgrade in anticipation of the next gen consoles? Also, not meaning to offend anyone, but I hate the term "bottleneck." More venting after my advice.

Advice: Check your processor load while gaming to see if it's pegged. You can also OC your processor with your current GPU and see how much extra performance you get, or whether you can enable settings that you otherwise couldn't. If you see any noticeable impact on gaming, you might as well consider a CPU + GPU upgrade at the same time. That being said, you're probably going to notice some sort of improvement with just the GPU upgrade, but I think your CPU will be the limiting factor. But of course, all this depends on what settings and resolution you use, which you didn't mention. And whether you plan to upgrade your resolution in the near future.

Continuation of venting; bottleneck has a negative connotation, and it's thrown around quite carelessly. But the idea of a "bottleneck" has little significance if you're already getting the performance you desire or require. In that case, there is no bottleneck because you're not being held back with what you want to do. "Performance-limiting component" is a much better discussion.

I'd recommend a general system (CPU) upgrade to an intel IB (if you can find them on the cheap now) or Haswell because you'll get significantly more CPU performance at a much lower TDP/power consumption than your OC'd X4.
 
tirades is on the money here. A graphics card upgrade will do fine. A few CPU bound games games can benifit a little from higher clock speeds but your CPU is fine, though you might want to overclock a bit for those, bit not a biggie.
 
Thank you all for the replies!
Sorry I forgot to mention what environment I game in...
My setup is your typical HTPC/Steam Box setup. I game in 1920x1080 High Settings, on a Sharp Aquos 60E.
Most of my games are console oriented, I use an Xbox 360 controller to game on this system. I have a separate pc for Starcraft... etc...
I am anticipating a new gpu because mine is only DirectX10. I know in the coming months most new games, Watch Dogs, Titan Fall, will most certainly use all the new rendering techniques that I'll sorely
be missing out on with such an old card. Yes, Im sure I have been missing out already... lol

I understand the negative connotation with the term bottleneck. The way I view the term is exactly how you described it.
Right now my cpu is not overloaded but I tend to see lower frames on very particle heavy games, War Frame or Crysis 2 for example.
So I would assume that the "bottleneck" is on my card?

I was also throwing the idea of getting a second gtx260 for $50-$60 and running it in SLI?
Would this be enough of a performance boost? Or just a waste of $60 in the long term?
I try to lock in my games at 60fps using evga Precision X only because my television looks the best that way. Im not playing twitch based FPS games so I dont worry about insanely high FPS. Just smooth gameplay. Also using a controller I find little input lag at 60fps, being bound to a stick and all :)

Thanks again for the replies :)
 
xkalibr said:
I was also throwing the idea of getting a second gtx260 for $50-$60 and running it in SLI?
Would this be enough of a performance boost? Or just a waste of $60 in the long term?
Click to expand...
Two things:
1) Not even possible since your motherbaord doesn't use a Nvidia chipset nor does it appear that it was licensed to use SLI tech
2) Still wouldn't be a good idea on account of the limited amount of VRAM on that video card.
 
Hey Danny, ya you're totally right about that...
Guess I needed to do a little more research. I use to have a 9600gt as my physx card in the second pcie port. For some reason I thought I could SLI on this board... oh well... so much for that idea :/

I just bought a Corsair H80i cooler for my cpu, pretty excited to get this installed. :)
 
Danny Bui said:
Two things:
1) Not even possible since your motherbaord doesn't use a Nvidia chipset nor does it appear that it was licensed to use SLI tech
2) Still wouldn't be a good idea on account of the limited amount of VRAM on that video card.
Click to expand...

Might be possible to upgrade to a 760 for the PCIe x16 slot and throw the 260 in the x4 for dedicated PhysX, right?
 
Has anyone heard news of a 760ti coming? I saw a pic of nvidias roadmap and it didnt show anything on their regarding a TI version...? or maybe i just missed something
 
AFAIK there hasn't been any official announcement or solid rumors about the GTX 760 Ti.

However, IMO, there's an extremely good chance that were will be a GTX 760 TI, or whatever Nvidia decides to call it , that'll be released sometime in the future. There's a price and performance gap between the $250 GTX 760 and the $400 GTX 770. Nvidia isn't that stupid to ignore such a gap for long.
 
760 Ti wont be released this year though, Nvidia said they wont be releasing any new cards for the rest of 2013
 
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