Upgrading GPU on an old computer/CPU, best choice to avoid bottleneck?

Grimlaking said:
I hate to say this but this is patently wrong. I had a GTX 1070 and went from an i7 2600k to an i7 7700k and about doubled my FPS. for watever reason the new CPU really does feed the newer video cards much better. So statements like this are generally wrong unfortunately. I was SHOCKED at the difference because really I thought just like this.
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I went from a core i5 3330 to a core i7 4770 with a GTX1070Ti and really felt little to no benefit at all at 1440p. Didn't take any benchmarks though...
 
Cyber Akuma said:
Sounds like a 1070 is the way to go for me then. Don't suppose there are any comparisons or benchmarks anywhere between two 670s in SLI and a single 1070 just so I can make sure that a single 1070 would be faster?
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Well, since most games don't support SLI anyway you can bet most of your games will run faster.
 
Araxie said:
yes you did a platform upgrade that can in many ways mean the reason of why you gained such FPS, first one IPC, which from sandy to kaby it's about of 25 to 30% at the same clock.. and there's where the second variable enter, clock speed.. was your 2600K overclocked?. also what RAM speed was running on that older system?.

aside from that there's no a typical scenario jumping from 2600K to 7700K you will double FPS.. unless the 2600K was running at stock clock with 1333mhz or less speed RAM running with HDD...

3770K can still be a viable gaming CPU if the multi-tasking are kept in control.. for a dedicated gaming machine a good clocked 3770K to 4.5ghz - 4.8ghz will still do a good job with most modern GPUs.. one of my secondary machines it's a 3770K clocked at 4.6ghz with 16GB RAM at just 1600mhz and I upgraded my daugthers GPU from one GTX 970 to GTX 1080 and that GPU it's still fully used on 99% of games, of the games tested I think only couple of assassins creed tittles and Kingdom come deliverance made the GPU to be bottlenecked at 90% usage we are still speaking of over 100FPS typically.. which it's more than enough for her at 1080P.. of course that's a dedicated gaming machine, if then we add streaming, and lot of web chrome/Firefox tabs with several type of content running background then yes, it may show a more significant bottleneck but still not as bad as to say that comparing it to a 7700K at the same 4.6ghz will mean doubling FPS, no CPU out there right now can double FPS from a good clocked 2600K/3770K.

when I upgraded my 3770K to 6700K was only exclusively for Fallout 4 which it's one of the few games that eat IPC and RAM bandwidth and still in that scenario which was actually the best possible for the 6700K at 4.8ghz versus 3770K at 4.6ghz I doubled my FPS.. and still the jump to the 9900K wasn't huge beyond being able to do much more multitasking.. and again that was for 1080P. at 1440P the differences are less noticeable..
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From my own experience, in many games, going from an AMD 965 (stock) to a 4670K @ 4GHZ didn't change anything. In some it certainly did help. And the IPC difference between the two was quite large. BF3 I would get around 35-60 in multiplayer and frame rates varied a lot. The 4670K took it a bit higher, such as 65 or so, but the minimum frame rate was closer to around 50-55. Not nearly as much variance. Metro 2033 saw zero performance gain though. Again, it varied. Smaller closed down games like Metro didn't see much benefit but other games did.

Depending on the game, going from a 2600K to a more current Intel CPU may only see a minor improvement. Others may see the minimum frame rate rise a lot but the highs probably won't change too much. Certainly won't go from a 50 average to a 100 average though.
 
I was just sharing my experience. Some notes.

Yes my 2600k was at stock speeds with an SSD and stock speed 16gb ram. So yes the generational upgrade and what came with it all contributed. You simply can't skip generations like that (unless your an AMD user) and not have to upgrade your attached hardware.

And sure... I did put in an NVME drive but that doesn't boost frames so much as loading times and help with pop-in elimination.
 
I'm in the same boat:
i7-3770K with a 980Ti which I'd love to upgrade the GPU to something around 1080Ti or better performance and move to 1440p 144Hz.


However, the 3770K is certainly showing its age. Here's a *CPU* comparison (scroll down quite a bit for gaming results) using a 1080Ti (roughly 2070 Super performance). The gains with the same GPU when just upgrading the CPU are unarguable: the 3770K offers quite a bottleneck.

https://techreport.com/review/32642/intels-core-i7-8700k-cpu-reviewed/


That being said, If you can afford to transition to a newer CPU, MoBo, and RAM shortly after grabbing a 2070 Super or 5700XT, then go for it.
Ultimately, my point is, focus on your entire platform instead of just the GPU...if you have the monetary means to do so.
 
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