Bottlenecked?

[IronSight]

Hey there,

A friend of mine has a question regarding if his PC is being bottlenecked by it's Processor.

He has a Q6600 and 2x 4870x2 in Crossfire, a pretty hefty machine, but is it bottlenecked?

Everything is running on stock speeds and he has no experience in Overclocking.

 

[invisik]

yes its going to bottleneck a little bit 2.4ghz isnt enough to push 2 4870x2.

 

[IronSight]

yes its going to bottleneck a little bit 2.4ghz isnt enough to push 2 4870x2.

I guess if we ramp up the Clock Freq and voltage by 0.2 it should be fine?

 

[invisik]

yup but remember ur not guaranteed a good oc. depends many factors such as ur mobo, cpu, ram and pc temp. when u get into the bios up the fsb in small increments then slowly increase voltage. my q6600 oc to 3.2ghz voltage is at 1.3v

 

[Superhal]

quiet honestly, the whole bottlenecking issue was discovered recently. your friend is in uncharted waters. nobody knows for sure what it is, why it happens, or what is the solution.

here's what you can do:
1. remove one card, and run benchmarks like 3dmark06, sandra, pcmark, etc. record the numbers.
2. put the card back in, and compare the benchmarks. in general, sli should give 50%-100% better performance (averages about 70%.)
3. if you are getting 0-10% improvement, it's a serious bottleneck.

Then, see if overclocking is the solution.
1. get an intel overclocking guide (sorry, i just do amd) and gradually raise cpu/nb/sb/memory performance, and see if there's any effect on the benchmarks.
2. if so, a serious overclock will get you the best performance out of that setup.
3. if not, then only raising mhz won't help.

You can read Tom's Q3 2008 graphics card roundup, to see what specs were used there, and what mhz you'll have to exceed to see an improvement. i think they used a 2.6ghz Qx chip, so you'll need to have a relatively serious overclock to see a difference.

 

[efeat]

In general, no not a whole lot. 2.4 ghz isn't exactly a breakneck speed for a CPU so you'll see some bottlenecking in games that can utilize multiple GPUs, but not multiple CPU cores. Even in that situation though, the Q6600 is still a solid chip and you'll get good performance yet.

If your friend is feeling a little adventurous or you find a game that just really needs a high CPU clock speed (rather than multiple cores), read up on overclocking and try to bump up the CPU speed a bit. The Q6600 is typically very overclocker friendly and you should get some solid gains from it.





Edit: lol, 5 others replied in the time it took me to make this post. Anyway, do not raise the voltage by that much in one jump, especially if you're not sure it's needed yet. Voltage does more for temperature than clock speed does, so ramp up the voltage slowly. If you reach a point where your overclock needs more voltage and your temperatures are still well within acceptable, only increase the voltage by 0.1 or so, and see what does to stability/heat. You should be able to get 3.0 ghz or so on stock voltage, but like invisik said, you're not guaranteed anything in the world of OCing.

 

[invisik]

forgot to mention y did ur friend get 2 4870x2? was 1 not enough. just letting u no i heard that 2 4870x2 dont perform well and sometimes there is decrease performance. no good drivers for quad gpu just yet.

 

[IronSight]

forgot to mention y did ur friend get 2 4870x2? was 1 not enough. just letting u no i heard that 2 4870x2 dont perform well and sometimes there is decrease performance. no good drivers for quad gpu just yet.

Yes he did get two off them, I'm running the same setup, from experience the 8.9 Drivers seem to utilize a massive boost in performance.
So ATi is getting there though.

However I haven't thought of the whole bottlenecking thing actually, so.

And I've never touched my MoBo setting regarding overclock I myself am the proud owner of a;

Asus P5Q-Pro
Intel Q6600
OCZ DDR2 - 1066MHZ Reaper 4GB
2x Sapphire HD4870x2
Thermal Lake ThoughPower 1200 Watts.

Any suggestions on Overclocking?

 

[invisik]

oh okay maybe there improving as we speak. =]
well go into the bios and increase the fsb slowly and save and see if the computer boots up and runs fine. when ur hitting around 3.0ghz increase voltage to 1.3v. oh ya in ur bios disable spectrum (if its on the bios) and disable speedstep. if ur computer doesnt boot up clear the cmos by taking the battery out of ur mobo and disconnecting power to the comp or if there is a switch to clear cmos on ur mobo do that instead.
let me no ur results or any issue u run into.

 

[macer1]

one question,

what monitor are you running, most have a refresh rate of 55-60 fps. with this it wont matter if you can push 300 fps as you are limited with your monitor.

 

[Kari]

and read the core2duo/quad OC quide on the cpu section. It's all you need to know

 

[kamkal]

best way to check that ive found is to use rivatuner or something similar to monitor your GPU usage in said game

if GPU usage is at 100% most of the time, you are not being bottle necked

if GPU usage keeps dropping a lot and this drop in GPU usage is accompanied by a NOTICEABLE drop in FPS, you cpu is probably bottle necking the GPU

also depends on the game, some games dont utilize more than 2 concurrent threads while others do, easiest way to check this is to leave task manager running while playing and see how many cores are being maxed out

source engine games for example dont really utilize more than one core while unreal engine 3 games can use at least 2 and games like flight simulator X and supreme commander can use all 4 cores

some games like more cache while others dont care, depends on the game

and with that setup u should have a monitor that can do minimum 1900x1200 to really see the benefits of TWO 4870x2s, hell you should be running a 30" screen with 2560x1600

you also have to be aware of xfire scaling issues that still exist in certain games that will limit or hinder performance

 

[IronSight]

oh okay maybe there improving as we speak. =]
well go into the bios and increase the fsb slowly and save and see if the computer boots up and runs fine. when ur hitting around 3.0ghz increase voltage to 1.3v. oh ya in ur bios disable spectrum (if its on the bios) and disable speedstep. if ur computer doesnt boot up clear the cmos by taking the battery out of ur mobo and disconnecting power to the comp or if there is a switch to clear cmos on ur mobo do that instead.
let me no ur results or any issue u run into.

Thanks man, I'll certainly try that myself, I'll let you know the results tomorrow.

one question,

what monitor are you running, most have a refresh rate of 55-60 fps. with this it wont matter if you can push 300 fps as you are limited with your monitor.

Running a LG W2452T it's a Full HD Monitor.

best way to check that ive found is to use rivatuner or something similar to monitor your GPU usage in said game

if GPU usage is at 100% most of the time, you are not being bottle necked

if GPU usage keeps dropping a lot and this drop in GPU usage is accompanied by a NOTICEABLE drop in FPS, you cpu is probably bottle necking the GPU

also depends on the game, some games dont utilize more than 2 concurrent threads while others do, easiest way to check this is to leave task manager running while playing and see how many cores are being maxed out

source engine games for example dont really utilize more than one core while unreal engine 3 games can use at least 2 and games like flight simulator X and supreme commander can use all 4 cores

some games like more cache while others dont care, depends on the game

and with that setup u should have a monitor that can do minimum 1900x1200 to really see the benefits of TWO 4870x2s, hell you should be running a 30" screen with 2560x1600

you also have to be aware of xfire scaling issues that still exist in certain games that will limit or hinder performance

Yeah I read those on the internet, let's hope ATi, and Devs will improve this so far the boost in World in Conflict and Cryisis is absolutely noticable.

I'll try the Rivatuner tip thanks!

 

[kamkal]

yea it takes them a while to get the xfire profiles out for games and each driver revision usually improves performance

i mean if the game is running well and its enjoyable at your monitor's 1900x1200 res with all the eye candy on i woulnt worry too much about bottle necking

the only bottle i would be worrying about is whether your beer bottle is empty or not

 

[IronSight]

yea it takes them a while to get the xfire profiles out for games and each driver revision usually improves performance

i mean if the game is running well and its enjoyable at your monitor's 1900x1200 res with all the eye candy on i woulnt worry too much about bottle necking

the only bottle i would be worrying about is whether your beer bottle is empty or not

Amen to that brother, amen to that.

Everything I've thrown towards it has been clean and slick so far, 'cept Crysis Warhead showed some troubles few hiccups but they dissapeared after awhile.