Cpu Bottleneck?

[Guest]

I currently have an amd fx 4100. If I get two crossfired 7950's. will these cards be bottlenecked? I know if certains game like skyrim will. But will the average modern game will it? I also have a motherboard that uses x16/x4 does this mean that both will fun in x4 or will one run in x16 and one run in x4. and will that effect the cards preformance.

 

[Razec69]

Yes to everything.

I'd recommend as others would to just get a single 7970. It is a hell of a card and is worth the money. If your motherboard can only run in x16/x4 modes I wouldn't recommend a XFire config. You won't see any benefit really.

Now for the bottleneck, I am not sure honestly. The only way I know how to tell is if you overclock your CPU and see if there was a performance boost.

I know this was a solution I read back earlier this year and for me it seemed to work.

I play BF3 and I have a i7 960 and a Radeon HD 5970. I could run the game on Ultra settings but sometimes would get to 25-100+ FPS. I read the issue somewhere that one's CPU could be a bottleneck, and the solution for that was to OC the CPU and see if you gain a performance boost, with that info I did, and I did see a performance boost.

Now with almost any map I play the lowest frames I get is about 40, but I can sometimes get into 70-140 Frames fairly consistently.

If someone else can help with how to test if a CPU will bottleneck a GPU it will be appreciated for the OP and myself.

I thought having a i7 960 Quad Core, while 3 years old now will still be fairly good, as it is a fairly decent CPU still.

 

[Guest]

I would only be able to afford one 7950 if I got a new mobo and an i5. Is the asus v pro worth it? or would you recomend a different mobo in that series. I will be looking at ivy bridges. I'm on a very tight budget of 650.

Is the p8z77 lk a good board. I don't like the idea of spending 200 dollars on a board that will have an unsupported socket 2 years from now.

 

[flexxar]

If I were you, I would just get one 7950 and save your money. You will get great gaming performance from a single card. You will be able to play skyrim and all new games on max settings.

 

[Razec69]

Also in my personal opinion get a single card now, save up more money, and make a completely new build next year with new hardware.

Like I said previously I have a i7 960 OC'd to 4.1Ghz. A Radeon HD5970 which I sold, 12GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a 1TB HDD.

This isn't the latest but it still does very well for me.

What I plan on doing currently is just getting a new card no more than $400 so I can play most games maxed out and then upgrade next year. I don't have much money right now, and since most hardware out now is fairly dated in today's terms, I will wait for the next high end Intel CPU, and couple that with new RAM, GPU(more than likely, possibly SLI maybe not), HDD, and Motherboard.

I am going to try my very best to get the best stuff out there. I am a college student and have a job, so hopefully I will be able to do it by the summer.

The reason I go high end is because I want to play all my games maxed out and not have issues with them.

My rig with my CPU being OCd can play most games out there, but some I do have slight issues with, and its usually not the vanilla version of the games. For instance Skyrim heavily modded near launch 4+ gigs of mods, ran well but not as well as the vanilla game. BF3 I can't use any form of in game Post Processing or AA. In GTAIV I can't get the ICENhancer mod to work with 30+ at all, but that could be my own fault.

What my point is, don't waste your money now on a marginal upgrade to have to do a bigger upgrade in the near future.

You have $600 now, use a good $300 or so for a nice GPU, save the rest, and build up more money to do a full upgrade like I am going to do.