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Which is the bottleneck?

  • Thread starter Deleted member 72990
  • Start date
D

Deleted member 72990

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I was told before i upgraded that my CPU would be a bottleneck for a radeon 6970 and that I can't use the video card to its full potential. However, in the games I play (BF3, DCS A-10, and Skyrim), the video card is always at 99% use. Does this imply that I need more GPU power?

I'm going to watercooling and suspect that I can reach at least 4 ghz on the CPU.
 
How is the performance? BF3 and Skyrim are both CPU demanding games, so they'll take whatever CPU power you can give them. As for the bottlenecking, it isn't quite as easy as "my GPUs are at 99% so I must be bottlenecking" because you can always max out the GPUs by increasing the settings too far. OVerclocking that CPU to 4.0 would certainly help though.
 
I highly doubt there would be much of a difference in BF3 and Skyrim between a Q9550 @ 4GHz and a SB @ 4GHz in games, using a single 6970. Maybe on minimum frames?
 
Thanks for the feedback.

I run all games at 1080p.

BF3, with everything maxed out including HBAO and 4x AA, i get about 33 fps min and about 55 max, depending on the area.

Skyrim, running at max settings except AA is at 2x becuase it was choppy at 4x, so definitely a GPU issue.

DCS A-10C, runs exactly the same no matter what the graphics settings (CPU issue then?). I get about 14 fps min and 35 or so max.
 
bjornb17 said:
BF3, with everything maxed out including HBAO and 4x AA, i get about 33 fps min and about 55 max, depending on the area.
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That sounds about right actually if you are indeed using Ultra settings. The numbers you're seeing is due to both the CPU and GPU not being fast enough for a higher FPS. Try dropping down to High Settings.
bjornb17 said:
Skyrim, running at max settings except AA is at 2x because it was choppy at 4x, so definitely a GPU issue.
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Fair assessment.
bjornb17 said:
DCS A-10C, runs exactly the same no matter what the graphics settings (CPU issue then?). I get about 14 fps min and 35 or so max.
Click to expand...
Could be but it could also be a game issue or driver related.
 
Ivy bridge is right around the corner, and intel already discontinued the 1366 i7's. Your pretty much due for an upgrade with something almost 3 generations old.

the 6970 should play pretty well at 1080p, and can even handle 2560x1600 gaming at modest settings.
 
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