GTX 980 possible bottlenecks

[sushiebar]

Hello.

So it has been two years and my rig is due for an update. I have purchased a gtx 980 and i was wondering if my 2-year old components will severely bottleneck the performance of my GPU.

These are my specs:-

Intel Core i7-3770K

ENERMAX ELC120-TA / Dual-Fan Water Cooling

G.SKILL [ RipjawsX ] F3-12800CL9D-8GBXM / 8GB (4GB x 2) / 1600Mhz

Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H

ENERMAX NAXN 850W 80Plus Bronze (Modular) PSU

NZXT SOURCE 210 / BLACK / WINDOW USB 3.0

PALIT GeForce® GTX 680 JETSTREAM (2048MB GDDR5) (SWITCHED OUT)

Liteon 24X DVDRW

WD 1TB Caviar Blue

Anything critical that I should replace before i switch out the 680 for a 980? I'm leaning towards getting a new mobo (Asus P8Z77-V) but I do not want to spend money where it is not needed.

Definitely going to get a new set of G.SKILL RAM for productivity purposes and if the budget allows, an SSD?

All replies are deeply appreciated!

 

[guanyu210379]

i7 3770k is not a bottleneck for GTX980.
Mobo? Mobo does not effect anything in this case.
Another 8GB RAM should be nice and an SSD would be nice too

 

[Dark Falz]

No, most modern games will be bottlenecked by your 980 rather than your CPU, especially at greater than 1080P. There's always the option to use higher settings/DSR etc. for anything that's CPU bound.

Rest of your specs are fine. I found almost zero benefit going from 8 GB to 16 GB.

SSD is nice to have but mainly for boot times, you'll quickly run out of the number of actual games you can put on it.

 

[sushiebar]

i7 3770k is not a bottleneck for GTX980.
Mobo? Mobo does not effect anything in this case.
Another 8GB RAM should be nice and an SSD would be nice too

Thank you for your prompt reply.
I am very relieved to know that my processor is not a bottleneck
But herein lies my second set of problems, spurring my decision of upgrading my PC

Problem #1
I dabbled in OC-ing my 680 a few weeks back, and I can't even get a 10 MHZ increase without crashing the benchmark.
While running the benchmark in factory OC, the power usage only goes up to about 80%.

Now I'm not sure if the card is supposed to run at only 80%, but I strongly suspect there is a problem with either a) my mobo not supplying enough power to my card or b) my PSU is somehow connected wrongly or faulty and it took me 2 years to realize.

Problem #2
I get extremely unstable internet connections of late. Whether the connection is via LAN or a WiFi USB dongle, I get normal internet speeds at for the first 5 minutes of the computer running then it goes downhill after that. I tried connecting to multiple internet connections (WiFi dongle at my studio and LAN cable at my house) and still the problem persists.

I suspect a driver issue, but could it also be hardware? I read online of cases where the mobo's ethernet port gets fried affecting the internet connection?

So are these legit problems? And can they be fixed by simple software and driver tweaks or is a hardware change necessary?

 

[sushiebar]

No, most modern games will be bottlenecked by your 980 rather than your CPU, especially at greater than 1080P. There's always the option to use higher settings/DSR etc. for anything that's CPU bound.

Rest of your specs are fine. I found almost zero benefit going from 8 GB to 16 GB.

SSD is nice to have but mainly for boot times, you'll quickly run out of the number of actual games you can put on it.

Thank you for your input.
I failed to mention that I am adding RAM to improve performance in 3d modelling/digital graphics editing
(photoshop, illustrator, indesign)

Is adding RAM in this scenario a good step to take or will the gains be too minimal?

The SSD is purely optional; I will only get it if I am sure that my current components are running at 100% and nothing needs to be replaced

 

[guanyu210379]

If you do photo/video editing adding more RAM will be a great help.

SSD is a good addition to any new PCs, your PC will be more responsive by using an SSD. Yes, it is optional but the benefit of having an SSD is great. Booting, program opening, loading screen, etc. will be faster, just not a single fps in games.

Hmm, about the internet connection, it could be the driver, it could be you WLAN stick, etc. You just have to play around until the cause has been found. I have doubts that the mobo is broken.

About GPU OC, this is also based on luck, if you have a really bad card, you can push it at all.

 

[Dark Falz]

I upgraded from a 680 to a 980 same as you, with similar CPU (3570K @ 4.2).

I also upgraded to a 1440p monitor. The 680 was pretty good at 1080p for 95% of games. But the 980 is much better (for most games though, it's just a tad faster at 1440p than the 680 was at 1080p. Apples to apples real world it's about 60-80% faster. If it was available at the time, I would have gone a 980 Ti though. My ROG Swift is hungry for frames!

 

[Dark Falz]

If you do photo/video editing adding more RAM will be a great help.

SSD is a good addition to any new PCs, your PC will be more responsive by using an SSD. Yes, it is optional but the benefit of having an SSD is great. Booting, program opening, loading screen, etc. will be faster, just not a single fps in games.

I found a limited increase with SSD but overall a worthwhile edition, especially as they are now much more affordable.

However I have always run a 2 disk setup (Windows/Games on one disk, swapfile/data on the second) so it's always run better than a single disk solution. I now run a 3 disk setup (OS/new or fave games/swapfile on SSD, data on second, rest of games on third). Works very well.

 

[guanyu210379]

If you see extra fps on SSD, this means that the game is exchanging data between RAM and SSD/HDD really often.
SSD usually has nothing to do with your fps. FPS is mainly influienced only by GPU and CPU.

 

[sushiebar]

The inputs have been great guys.
I really want to say that I'll be staying put with my current config and just spend the remainder of my money on things like an SSD or additional RAM, but I am really scared the current state of my components (especially my mobo and CPU cooler) will affect the rest of my components in the long run.

On the other hand, my processor is already showing its age and within a year or so i will be upgrading, which means a new mobo down the road.

So change out my components now? or wait out a year or so and go in for a full upgrade?

 

[sushiebar]

Hello again.

So the final decision on how I'll spend the remainder of my budget.

New SSD (KIngston v300 120GB)
New CPU cooler (Noctua NH-U14S, really don't want to risk another faulty pump on a liquid CPU cooler)
Some case fans (Noctua NF-S12A)

As for my current PSU and mobo, I've decided to just tough it out until I have the necessary funds for a full upgrade.

Thank you again guys for the amazing inputs and helping reach to this conclusion!