Q9650 bottleneck?

[charold]

Specs of my rig

Asus Maximus II with a q9650 @ 3.6ghz
8GB DDR2-800 (4x2gb)
HD6950 unlocked to 1536shaders and overclocked to 940/1480
1920x1080 monitor res

I cannot really overclock much past 3.6ghz without overly stressing my RAM with high voltage so I just left it running 1:1 with my FSB (400x9)

I feel like I should be getting better framerates than what I am right now. Just some examples

Crysis 1 - high - about 45FPS, ultra about 40FPS (low and medium give me 60/50 fps)
Serious Sam 3: 45FPS avg maxed out vs my buddy getting about 60FPS on a 2500k and stock 6870
BF3 - ultra settings and high settings both with deferred shading off give me about 40-45FPS outside in larger maps (dips in the low 30's)
ES5 Skyrim Outside it drops to the upper 30's tweaked ini and maxed out otherwise
3dmark11 score is P5350 which is about where I should be at.

Anyone else with a 45nm q9x00 getting bottlenecked like this? Thanks for the feedback

 

[Falkentyne]

Seems about right to me. ESPECIALLY for that res. For the few weeks that I ran a QX9650 @ 4 ghz (with the HD6970 I still have for my 2600k), I was getting around those FPS in Crysis that you were getting in medium, except I was running at much lower res, on high detail, in my case, 1024x768, DX9 on high. And I was running at 4 ghz on the QX.

You're running a --MUCH-- higher resolution, and I assume you're using AA. To see if you're bottlenecked by CPU, do one of the following:
1) set your res to 1024x768 (just for reference, since I still use that res every day, even on this new system...we're just checking frames here..1024x768 won't kill you).

or

2) turn off AA completely at that res you're currently on..
Then report back your framerates.

 

[charold]

Just going to buy a 2500k tomorrow. I found out what these q9650's are selling for right now on ebay, and there's no way I can pass this up. Thanks for the help falkentyne

 

[Falkentyne]

Yeah it makes no sense why Q9650's are selling for MORE than 2500k's. You can almost buy a 2500k plus motherboard for the price of a Q9650. And with 8 GB of DDR3 for $30, RAM is almost free now.