how much 'video card' is really nessasary?

M

matt167

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Dec 18, 2016
Messages
1,353
I'm playing through Watchdogs 2, eye candy all the way up minus a couple things like fog and AA is down a bit in my sig rig. 1080p 60hz. Frame rates between 30-55 fps, usually around 40-45 frames. I know the game is not a great PC port and it might take a bit more than it should ( GTA V runs 59 fps ultra settings easily ). OG Watchdogs runs 45-55 fps with everything turned up.. I've never played the Farcry's and they are likely next on my list, so the same issue will likely exist

Is it likely the stock clocked X5670 holding back? Or could I get a 1070-1080 and have a decent improvement? I know that my processor being locked to stock clocks is a limiting factor. I know there's a virtual wall where my processor cannot support a better graphics card, but I'm not sure the wall is @ a 1060 6gb, and how much higher I can go.
 
The 1060 will run all the Far Cry's perfectly at 1080. Upgrading now wouldn't be wise since prices are expected to dip further and next gen Nvidia cards are right around the corner.
 
Think a W3690 processor ( 3.46 ghz/ 3.9 turbo ) will do anything for FPS in the Ubi games? They are running ~$100 now which is a lot cheaper than a $4-1000 video card
 
How much? As much as your budget allows for. The LAST thing a PC gamer wants is to experience quick obsolescence because the choice was made to skimp on the GPU.
 
Well, I could easily get a 1080 TI but I'm not sure the 1366 socket can support all of the gpu power at stock clocks. And I'm going to swing this rig for what it is until 2020 or win 7 is dead. Unless it becomes incapable of 1080p gaming at or near 60 frames
 
If you want to smell the flowers and see the gnat on the fence post and find it difficult to tell the difference between "the game" and real life, you'll need a ton of horsepower. However, if you want to "win", you need very little.

Not saying you can't "win" with a multi-thousand dollar GPU, just saying that most good players that I know don't use very expensive cards to get the job done.
 
matt167 said:
Think a W3690 processor ( 3.46 ghz/ 3.9 turbo ) will do anything for FPS in the Ubi games? They are running ~$100 now which is a lot cheaper than a $4-1000 video card
Click to expand...

Use MSI Afterburner, EVGA Precision X, whatever software you can find to graph GPU usage during your gameplay. If your GPU is nearing 85-90% utilization, a new CPU most likely won't help. If it is staying below that threshold more often than not, getting a W3690 for BLCK overclockability (I am assuming your X5670 being non-overclocked is a motherboard limitation here) and aiming for 4.2 GHz+ would get a little better in terms of minimal frame rate dips, but at $115 or so it'll be a side step solution at best, that might buy you an extra year of enjoying current games at 1080p, but not much longer.

LGA-1366 has had a good run and is now finally starting to show its age with lack of AVX (a lot more media-centric applications are starting to require it) and it just can't hang anymore in single-thread performance. There are also quite a few DPC latency spikes that aren't there on more modern systems. I've got two X58 systems on my network, one is used as an encoder, the other for audio-workstation tasks -- and a lot of the time, I wonder why I even built the X58 system for a Twitch encoder, because my 3770k-based gaming PC can hit the same encoding preset as the X5675, *while* playing games with very little input latency difference. It sounded better on paper to offload it all, but in the real world all it did was add to my electricity bill.
 
You could buy a g-sync monitor. Then you really, really won't notice 40 FPS vs 55.
 
Okay, Newegg is being bitchy about publicly available wishlists again...

Memory

Motherboard

CPU

SSD

Just north of $1000 ($1010.50 shipped before tax, and a $10 MIR on the motherboard.)

Drop in your 1060 and you should be up for pretty much ANYTHING at 1080p.
 
I'd just overclock the X5670 and be done with it. I never really felt like my X58 Sabertooth and X5660 @ 4.2Ghz and 24GB of RAM was holding me back. Maybe 10-15% hit at 1080p?
 
I wouldn't bother upgrading that system for 1080p gaming, it should run Far Cry 5 at 1080p ultra without much issue. If you were trying to transition to VR or 4k, then it'd be worth visiting, but you're mostly going to be at max settings at 1080p with a few exceptions, and I really doubt you'd notice the fog and AA enough to be worth the few hundred dollars an upgrade would cost right now.

If you were making that move, I'd probably go video card first as most games will not get a huge boost from a faster cpu with a 1060. A 1070 or 1070ti would probably be a nice match for that processor, above that and you'll limit your video card. But, I'd probably get a 1080 so that when I decided to upgrade the cpu, the video card wouldn't be limiting it again right away. ymmv, good luck.
 
I don't have any interest in 4k, but do have an interest in VR. I've thought about VR capability a bit. I'm still on the fence, because I'd be using it for racing mainly, and where it's supported at that. But I have a real car that I can go drive around in AR so it's cool, but I'm not sure right now I'll use it.

Is there any way to OC A Dell T3500? I didn't think there was, unless I'm missing something
 
matt167 said:
Is there any way to OC A Dell T3500? I didn't think there was, unless I'm missing something
Click to expand...

W series Xeon, software overclocking BCLK in Windows. Then if you want it permanent, you could turn off the signature verification on BIOS flashes, and alter the stock tables for your CPUID to make it permanent when you've verified stability.
 
DejaWiz said:
How much? As much as your budget allows for. The LAST thing a PC gamer wants is to experience quick obsolescence because the choice was made to skimp on the GPU.
Click to expand...

I agree, with a caveat. If you HAVE to skimp a bit, the GPU would be the place to do it. It's a very easy upgrade path down the line and games scale exceptionally well by simply lowering settings.
 
RamonGTP said:
I agree, with a caveat. If you HAVE to skimp a bit, the GPU would be the place to do it. It's a very easy upgrade path down the line and games scale exceptionally well by simply lowering settings.
Click to expand...
Just to add: GPUs don't seem to be stagnating quite as badly as cpus - If I didn't *want* to build a new machine (and get new features supported by modern motherboards) I really didn't NEED to. My 6 year old 3930k rig (32gb ddr3 1600 & sata ssd) offered nearly identical performance at 4k resolution to my 7700k with 32gb of ddr4 3200 & nvme ssd. I don't remember what gpu I had when I first built that 3930k rig, but I know I moved to a GTX 680 shortly after... The difference between that 680 and my current 1080 is massive, certainly much larger than all the other components combined.
 
matt167 said:
Well, I could easily get a 1080 TI but I'm not sure the 1366 socket can support all of the gpu power at stock clocks. And I'm going to swing this rig for what it is until 2020 or win 7 is dead. Unless it becomes incapable of 1080p gaming at or near 60 frames
Click to expand...

It can't

Upgrade to a coffee lake or coffee lake S and 3200mhz ram and your in for a huge bump in everything your system does.
 
Last edited:
Just saw an interview on Mad Money and nVidia's CEO mentioned RTX and how it will catapult gaming video

WHat's really going on with this RTX technology?
 
I can't stand 1080p60 anymore. I think that resolution completely holds back the PC gaming experience.
 
Having re-purposed many of these T3500 for gaming, including a few with 1060, my opinion is a CPU upgrade is in order here. You are below 3.0ghz now. Full turbo mode is not likely to happen in gaming conditions.

The fastest CPU at stock speeds you can run in there is the X5687 which can be had for $40-45. Four cores so you are not paying premium for hex core, which won't help when gaming anyway.

[edit]
As for overclocking ... the Dell BIOS does not allow any frequency or voltage changes, so BCLK is unlikely. W3690 you were considering may be (may be not) an unlocked CPU which means you could use Throttlestop to up the multiplier. Above said, OCing W3680 has been confirmed. There are a few people running 4.2ghz (32x133) in these with the stock cooler. If you want to try that route do your leg work first. This thread would be a good start.

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/throttlestop-overclocking-desktop-pcs.235975/
 
Last edited:
Shadowed said:
I can't stand 1080p60 anymore. I think that resolution completely holds back the PC gaming experience.
Click to expand...

It all depends on what distance/size you're gaming at. DPI is everything when it comes to resolution. I game 4/5 feet away leaning back from a 40" 4K screen and 1080p is just fine.
 
Hmm, well I might just pick up an X5687 since they are so cheap and I doubt I really would notice 2 less cores..

I tried a very, very slight OC on my 1060 and it actually dropped the framerate
 
Ok, so I turned on the OSD for CPU usage and GPU usage, and all the cores hover around 40-55% while the GPU is at 98-100% most of the time, so this might be a GPU limitation.. CPU boss shows about 15% more single core performance over my X5670 for either W3690 or X5687, but I'm thinking it's a GPU limitation in my case.
 
matt167 said:
Ok, so I turned on the OSD for CPU usage and GPU usage, and all the cores hover around 40-55% while the GPU is at 98-100% most of the time, so this might be a GPU limitation.. CPU boss shows about 15% more single core performance over my X5670 for either W3690 or X5687, but I'm thinking it's a GPU limitation in my case.
Click to expand...

That doesn't necessarily look like a GPU limitation to me. That looks like your CPU and GPU are both loaded to 100% with the exception of your hyper threaded cores, which isn't exactly uncommon for games not to be able to adequately utilize. Need to remember that 6 of your 12 threads are basically unused areas of a physical core that CAN be used by another thread if those unused areas happen to contain the logic necessary to complete the task.

Very easy way to tell where your bottleneck is, is to simply lower the settings in the game. If your FPS shoots up, it's a GPU limitation. If it stays pretty much the same, you're CPU limited. Most graphical settings minimally impact CPU load.

If you conclude it's a CPU issue, and aren't ready for a new board/cpu/ram, I would search ebay, not for a faster clocked CPU, but a motherboard capable of overclocking.

I have an i7 860 from a HP that I snagged a decent MSI motherboard for and got an easy 3.6GHz out of it from the stock 2.8.
 
Good observations. What are you using to stress the system? Some games and benchmarks are far more CPU dependent than others. And at what resolution? Did you try different settings and look for changes?
 
I have Superposition and Heaven for benchmarking and it scores well, but lately just been looking at the framerate swings in games, mainly both Watchdogs.. If I go by the basic recommended settings in Watchdogs 2, I get a nearly solid 60 FPS, it's just not as graphically pleasing as I like. The 40-45 frames is playable to me. Everything I do is 1080P 60hz.

I would think about a mobo that can overclock, except 1366 boards are extremely expensive, and a complete system would not cost much more
 
matt167 said:
I don't have any interest in 4k, but do have an interest in VR. I've thought about VR capability a bit. I'm still on the fence, because I'd be using it for racing mainly, and where it's supported at that. But I have a real car that I can go drive around in AR so it's cool, but I'm not sure right now I'll use it.

Is there any way to OC A Dell T3500? I didn't think there was, unless I'm missing something
Click to expand...

If you're mainly doing racing games then vr is by far the best thing you can do.

Your current system will run vr fine as is, but you won't be able to crank the aa. I ran a 1060 in vr for close to a year before upgrading to a 1080 and that mainly just let me add 4x aa and transparency aa. Aa does make a bigger difference in vr as the ppi is lower than even a 720p screen even though there are a lot more pixels, they're spread out over a much wider view area.

But having vr and some aliasing is WAY better than seeing everything in 2d, so spend the money for a vr headset before doing anything else. The first time you sit in a car in vr and feel like you're really there, you won't care about aa...
 
On frame rate basis, performance level seems decent for what you have now. Looks like you are within recommended system requirements for Watch Dogs 2, except for the CPU. nVidia has a graphics & performance guide that may help with some tweaking on the visuals.

>> https://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/watch-dogs-2-graphics-and-performance-guide

No getting around fact you have a 7-8 year old system running 1366 socket and DDR3 maxed at 1333mhz. As you know, that Dell is largely proprietary so changing motherboard means going with a completely different case, and probably PSU too.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top