Gtx 1080 under performing

[chris_james_evans]

Hi, I have just bought a MSI gtx 1080 but I'm not seeing a huge improvement over my old 970. I'm starting to suspect a few things but I wondered what you guys thought. The rest of my rig is:
AMD FX-8320
8Gb 1866mhz ram
Asus m5a97 evo 2.0
I contacted MSI and they suggested the usual, reinstall drivers etc which I've done. I get the feeling I might have a bottleneck but how can I know for sure and if I do have one what should I upgrade. I don't really want to spend loads having just dropped the guts of £600 on a graphics card. Thanks as always guys.

 

[Krishan Mourya]

Hi, I have just bought a MSI gtx 1080 but I'm not seeing a huge improvement over my old 970. I'm starting to suspect a few things but I wondered what you guys thought. The rest of my rig is:
AMD FX-8320
8Gb 1866mhz ram
Asus m5a97 evo 2.0
I contacted MSI and they suggested the usual, reinstall drivers etc which I've done. I get the feeling I might have a bottleneck but how can I know for sure and if I do have one what should I upgrade. I don't really want to spend loads having just dropped the guts of £600 on a graphics card. Thanks as always guys.

Yes you are surely getting a bottleneck. You are pairing a 100$ CPU with 600$ GPU. Its bottlenecking it easily. And more than that an AMD processor is worst thing in a high end PC. Also your motherboard is lower quality which is another cause of bottleneck. And I suspect your PSU must be lower quality also.

 

[chris_james_evans]

If it is definitely the cpu bottlenecking, what would be my best (affordable) option for a new Intel cpu and motherboard? Thanks

 

[Wisecracker]

What resolution?

You will notice little improvement at 1080p --- at a minimum you should be jammin' 1440p . . .

 

[Dragos Manea]

If it is definitely the cpu bottlenecking, what would be my best (affordable) option for a new Intel cpu and motherboard? Thanks

An i5, if dont afford the new skylake 6500/6600 then a viable solution will be 4670/4690 (thats the minimum you should go with that videocard).

 

[Krishan Mourya]

If it is definitely the cpu bottlenecking, what would be my best (affordable) option for a new Intel cpu and motherboard? Thanks

An i5 6600k with Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 3 motherboard will be good. Also you will need a new PSU with it, so that your Components dont get fried. Seasonic S12II 750W is recommended here. Please specify which PSU youhave currently so i can tell if your PSU actually needs an upgrade. 2*8GB DDR4 RAM as the motherboard supports DDR4 only. Cooler Master Hyper 212X CPU cooler as you wont get stock cooler with i5 6600k.
If you have extra cash then you can rather go for i7 6700k which will be more suitable with GTX 1080.

 

[chris_james_evans]

Hi, I'm gaming at 1080p and my psu is a corsair cxm750. I'll take a look at the components you've all mentioned thanks.