How much bottleneck you guys think I should be getting with my new gtx960 and my old Pentium g2030?

[guiprzb]

I didnt think that would be much of a problem, but for example i get a lot of slowdowns in fallout 4 playing on High settings, when i should be playing on ultra settings at at least 40 FPS for what I have seen in the benchmarks. Im planning on buying an used i5 3470 next month, but should I be worried with the GPU itself?

I'm also getting a lot of stutter in new games like GTA v and witcher 3, but thats not exactly a performance issue, I dont know, but a lot of people have it and it doesn't seem to be related with graphical power. GTA V is running fine when I put the vsync on half, and that's it, its only playable like that, very weird.

Full specs:

Pentium g2030
Gigabyte ga h61m ds2h
8gb ram corsair value
Gigabyte GTX 960 4gb
500gb HD
Windows 10

Thx bros.

 

[xBlaz3kx]

That's alot of bottlenecking. Even the technology is old, 22nm and yet we have 14nm now, so it's pretty old and won't work to it's best. You should improve your ram speed if you want the games to stop lagging.

 

[king3pj]

Depends on the game. It's going to be a significant bottleneck on any game that wants more than 2 cores.

 

[fudgecakes99]

a 960 paired with a 2 core pentium. Could have bottle necking in the sense that when theirs a drop from an explosion or a bunch of enemies spawning on screen etc. rendering. Their will be a big dip then it'll shoot back up. Which can get incredibly annoying and kill immersion, so to speak. The most significant thing you can do to increase frames bump up to an gtx 970 or 390 if you have the extra psu capacity/room.

8 gb of ddr3 for now is plenty to run all games. If you feel it's lacking maybe slap on an extra 8gb to make 16 total. Anything above is way overkill. Even 16gb is reaching really. If all you do is play games and don't render/vm's.

 

[guiprzb]

@xBlaz3kx

Damn, you think ram is the problem? My mother board makes my men's operate at only 1333mhz, youthink this is the cause of the bottleneck?

If it is, things are more advanced than I thought.

 

[guiprzb]

@fudgecakes99

Don't you think it's much better and cheaper to buy a better CPU, since I'm clearly not close to use my cards potential? Again, I'm having issues running fallout 4, every benchmark runs it on ultra settings with a gtx 960 at 50 fps. There's clearly something wrong with my pc

 

[jhall18]

I don't even know why you would buy a 960 with your current processor

 

[king3pj]

The bottleneck is the CPU not the RAM. The sugestion of upgrading your 960 to a 970 doesn't make sense either. If a 960 is being bottlenecked by your CPU a faster GPU won't do anything for you.

Switching to a used i5 that is compatible with your motherboard should make a big difference.

 

[fudgecakes99]

@xBlaz3kx

Damn, you think ram is the problem? My mother board makes my men's operate at only 1333mhz, youthink this is the cause of the bottleneck?

If it is, things are more advanced than I thought.

memory speed hardly does anything when it comes to games. Getting a new motherboard and getting 16gb of ram @ 1600mhz or 2133 isn't going to improve performance. Yes, switching from a g2030 anniversary edition to an i5 will help but it won't give your more frames, just less frame drops and if it does increase frames it'll be 2-5 tops. If you want better performance in video games upgrade your 960 to a 970.

 

[captaincharisma]

@fudgecakes99

Don't you think it's much better and cheaper to buy a better CPU, since I'm clearly not close to use my cards potential? Again, I'm having issues running fallout 4, every benchmark runs it on ultra settings with a gtx 960 at 50 fps. There's clearly something wrong with my pc

upgrading the CPU would be the best solution but you have to remember any CPU you get for your MOBO now will still have the same old technology as the one you are using now so if you were to try and get a new CPU to really minimize the bottleneck you would be looking at getting a new mobo too and possibly ram that would work with the new mobo

 

[xBlaz3kx]

@xBlaz3kx

Damn, you think ram is the problem? My mother board makes my men's operate at only 1333mhz, youthink this is the cause of the bottleneck?

If it is, things are more advanced than I thought.

1333Mhz is really low. Bottlenecking basically means RAM is not fast enough for the CPU to catch up with the calculating/operations.

 

[guiprzb]

@jhall18

Well, the plan was always buying an gtx 960 and a i5

I just bought the GPU first because I got it in a Christmas sale


@king3pj

Makes sense, I agree with you.

@fudgecakes99

That's what I always thought about mem speeds, but dude, if buying a better processor doesn't give me more fps, then there is something wrong with my card.

 

[guiprzb]

@captaincharisma

Well, a i5 3470 has a pretty close performance to a haswell i5 doesn't it? I remember the benchmarks didn't show that much of a difference.


@xBlaz3kx

Man, I have to hope you're exaggerating a bit, because I don't t have money for a new processor AND a new motherboard now. D:

 

[king3pj]

@xBlaz3kx

Damn, you think ram is the problem? My mother board makes my men's operate at only 1333mhz, youthink this is the cause of the bottleneck?

If it is, things are more advanced than I thought.

Yes, switching from a g2030 anniversary edition to an i5 will help but it won't give your more frames, just less frame drops and if it does increase frames it'll be 2-5 tops. If you want better performance in video games upgrade your 960 to a 970.

This is not true. Even an old i5 2500k still performs pretty well in most games. An i5-3470 should handle most modern games pretty well.

You are making it sound like framerate is 100% GPU dependent. If that were true than everyone would be buying $70 Pentiums for their gaming PCs. Your overclocked i7 would be a complete waste of money.

All games require some amount of CPU power in order to get good framerates. Some games require a lot more than others. There would be a huge difference between a Pentium G2030 and an i5-3470 in average framerate in many games.

Again upgrading from a 960 to a 970 when the 960 is already hitting a CPU bottleneck makes absolutely no sense. If the CPU isn't fast enough to keep up with a 960 a 970 would offer no benefit.

 

[king3pj]

@xBlaz3kx

Damn, you think ram is the problem? My mother board makes my men's operate at only 1333mhz, youthink this is the cause of the bottleneck?

If it is, things are more advanced than I thought.

1333Mhz is really low. Bottlenecking basically means RAM is not fast enough for the CPU to catch up with the calculating/operations.

The CPU is much more of a problem than the memory speed. Bottlenecking doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the RAM. All bottlenecking means is that one part, in this case the CPU, is maxed out and limiting performance even though the other part has power that isn't being used.

 

[guiprzb]

@xBlaz3kx

Damn, you think ram is the problem? My mother board makes my men's operate at only 1333mhz, youthink this is the cause of the bottleneck?

If it is, things are more advanced than I thought.

Yes, switching from a g2030 anniversary edition to an i5 will help but it won't give your more frames, just less frame drops and if it does increase frames it'll be 2-5 tops. If you want better performance in video games upgrade your 960 to a 970.

This is not true. Even an old i5 2500k still performs pretty well in most games. An i5-3470 should handle most modern games pretty well.

You are making it sound like framerate is 100% GPU dependent. If that were true than everyone would be buying $70 Pentiums for their gaming PCs. Your overclocked i7 would be a complete waste of money.

All games require some amount of CPU power in order to get good framerates. Some games require a lot more than others. There would be a huge difference between a Pentium G2030 and an i5-3470 in average framerate in many games.

Again upgrading from a 960 to a 970 when the 960 is already hitting a CPU bottleneck makes absolutely no sense. If the CPU isn't fast enough to keep up with a 960 a 970 would offer no benefit.

@xBlaz3kx

Damn, you think ram is the problem? My mother board makes my men's operate at only 1333mhz, youthink this is the cause of the bottleneck?

If it is, things are more advanced than I thought.

1333Mhz is really low. Bottlenecking basically means RAM is not fast enough for the CPU to catch up with the calculating/operations.

The CPU is much more of a problem than the memory speed. Bottlenecking doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the RAM. All bottlenecking means is that one part, in this case the CPU, is maxed out and limiting performance even though the other part has power that isn't being used.

Thx, bro. Sure I am going to buy that i5 3470 now. I expect to play fallout 4 on ultra setting with no slowdowns. Benchmarks says I was supposed to be running at 40~50 fps.

 

[king3pj]

If you have issues with Fallout 4 just turn shadow distance to medium and lower the grass detail fade a bit.

I'm playing at 1440p on SLI 970s and an i5-4690k @ 4.4GHz and with all settings maxed I get dips into the 40s during cities. With those 2 settings tweaked my framerate never dips below 60. I have more powerful hardware than you but I'm also playing at a higher resolution so your results may be similar.

 

[fudgecakes99]

Trust me. Upgrading cpu's from 2 core to 4 core won't nearly be as significant in frame rate as going from a 960 to a 970. Stability in frames yes that would improve going from 2 core to 4 core. But thats it you won't magically get more frame rate. Upgrading ram in terms of gaming is insignificant. Ask anyone upgrading a gpu is much more important in video games then cpu.

 

[king3pj]

Trust me. Upgrading cpu's from 2 core to 4 core won't nearly be as significant in frame rate as going from a 960 to a 970. Stability in frames yes that would improve going from 2 core to 4 core. But thats it you won't magically get more frame rate. Upgrading ram in terms of gaming is insignificant. Ask anyone upgrading a gpu is much more important in video games then cpu.

I 100% disagree. Look at CPU benchmarks for any current game and compare and i5 to a Pentium. There is a significant difference in framerate and it's not magic. I'm going to leave it at that though. I don't want to keep arguing back and forth and I think I have already made my case.

 

[fudgecakes99]

A Pentium anniversary edition will bottleneck with a titan x or a 980 or a 980 ti. It will not bottleneck with a 970.

The question isn't what will be the best performance in the long run i'm talking short term. The biggest frame rate increase/boost you'd get from upgrading to a 970 far out weighs what ever small bottle neck you'd receive from the Pentium.

Upgrading your cpu to an i5 with a 960 isn't nearly as good as having a 970 with pentium. Again not arguing that having a Pentium with a 980/ti/titan would be completely foolish. Granted in the long run Pentiums a bad idea, but it'd make a lot more sense to me to buy the 970 first, then look at getting a better cpu later. Again if op can fork the bill for a new gpu that is otherwise the i5's a fine idea.

Though i'd recommend looking into a moderate oc with the Pentium if you so choose to buy a 970.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Also with gaming it depends on the games you tend to play obviously if a game is optimized around mutli core's/threads you'll get significantly worse performance.

 

[king3pj]

A Pentium anniversary edition will bottleneck with a titan x or a 980 or a 980 ti. It will not bottleneck with a 970.

The question isn't what will be the best performance in the long run i'm talking short term. The biggest frame rate increase/boost you'd get from upgrading to a 970 far out weighs what ever small bottle neck you'd receive from the Pentium.

Upgrading your cpu to an i5 with a 960 isn't nearly as good as having a 970 with pentium. Again not arguing that having a Pentium with a 980/ti/titan would be completely foolish. Granted in the long run Pentiums a bad idea, but it'd make a lot more sense to me to buy the 970 first, then look at getting a better cpu later. Again if op can fork the bill for a new gpu that is otherwise the i5's a fine idea.

Though i'd recommend looking into a moderate oc with the Pentium if you so choose to buy a 970.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Also with gaming it depends on the games you tend to play obviously if a game is optimized around mutli core's/threads you'll get significantly worse performance.

The OP specifically asked about Fallout 4 so here is a Fallout 4 CPU benchmark. The idea that a Pentium is good enough for modern games and will not bottleneck a 970 is silly. This benchmark was run on a 980Ti so the GPU is not the limiting factor in these scores.

As you can see from this benchmark a Pentium G3258 (which is faster than the OP's) severely bottlenecks performance in Fallout 4. The average FPS on this Pentium is 35. That means that if he upgraded from a 960 to a 970 the best he could possibly hope for is an average of 35 FPS. In reality it would be worse than that because his Pentium is slower than the one tested and the 980Ti in the test rig is much faster than a 970.

If you look at the slowest i5 on that chart the average FPS is 72. You say that switching to a better CPU won't increase the OP's framerate but this benchmark shows that the difference between a Pentium and an i5 is 42 FPS.

 

[fudgecakes99]

This benchmark was run on a 980Ti so the GPU is not the limiting factor in these scores.


Why would that pertain to a pentium on a 970?
Thats like comparing apples and oranges. You can't measure a statistical difference between a pentium and a 980 ti with a pentium and a 970.
I went from an i7 870 to a 6700k with a 980 ti on both. The only difference i saw was frame stability. Granted in this scenario both cpu's are 4 cores with hyperthreading the core clock on an the 870 is only 2.9 ghz and 3.3-3.4 with turbo boost.

Even with all that data you can't make fallout 4 the rule. You can't give an accurate benchmark for all games from one game. Meaning not every game is optimized for 4 cores with hyper threading. Though i suppose you can infer that emerging trends may point towards it. Still doesn't make the fact that a👎 Pentium currently with a 970 would outperform an i5 with a 960. Outperform in terms of pure frame rate not frame stability.

 

[guiprzb]

A Pentium anniversary edition will bottleneck with a titan x or a 980 or a 980 ti. It will not bottleneck with a 970.

The question isn't what will be the best performance in the long run i'm talking short term. The biggest frame rate increase/boost you'd get from upgrading to a 970 far out weighs what ever small bottle neck you'd receive from the Pentium.

Upgrading your cpu to an i5 with a 960 isn't nearly as good as having a 970 with pentium. Again not arguing that having a Pentium with a 980/ti/titan would be completely foolish. Granted in the long run Pentiums a bad idea, but it'd make a lot more sense to me to buy the 970 first, then look at getting a better cpu later. Again if op can fork the bill for a new gpu that is otherwise the i5's a fine idea.

Though i'd recommend looking into a moderate oc with the Pentium if you so choose to buy a 970.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Also with gaming it depends on the games you tend to play obviously if a game is optimized around mutli core's/threads you'll get significantly worse performance.

The OP specifically asked about Fallout 4 so here is a Fallout 4 CPU benchmark. The idea that a Pentium is good enough for modern games and will not bottleneck a 970 is silly. This benchmark was run on a 980Ti so the GPU is not the limiting factor in these scores.

As you can see from this benchmark a Pentium G3258 (which is faster than the OP's) severely bottlenecks performance in Fallout 4. The average FPS on this Pentium is 35. That means that if he upgraded from a 960 to a 970 the best he could possibly hope for is an average of 35 FPS. In reality it would be worse than that because his Pentium is slower than the one tested and the 980Ti in the test rig is much faster than a 970.

If you look at the slowest i5 on that chart the average FPS is 72. You say that switching to a better CPU won't increase the OP's framerate but this benchmark shows that the difference between a Pentium and an i5 is 42 FPS.

Geez, I had no idea it was this bad, holy shit.

 

[king3pj]

This benchmark was run on a 980Ti so the GPU is not the limiting factor in these scores.


Why would that pertain to a pentium on a 970?
Thats like comparing apples and oranges. You can't measure a statistical difference between a pentium and a 980 ti with a pentium and a 970.
I went from an i7 870 to a 6700k with a 980 ti on both. The only difference i saw was frame stability. Granted in this scenario both cpu's are 4 cores with hyperthreading the core clock on an the 870 is only 2.9 ghz and 3.3-3.4 with turbo boost.

Even with all that data you can't make fallout 4 the rule. You can't give an accurate benchmark for all games from one game. Meaning not every game is optimized for 4 cores with hyper threading. Though i suppose you can infer that emerging trends may point towards it. Still doesn't make the fact that a👎 Pentium currently with a 970 would outperform an i5 with a 960. Outperform in terms of pure frame rate not frame stability.

You aren't understanding how benchmarks work. They specifically use the best GPU they can when they do CPU benchmarks. That way you can see exactly how much the framerate differs between multiple CPUs. The best a Pentium can do is 35 FPS even on a 980Ti in Fallout 4.

That means that its absolute ceiling for Fallout 4 is 35 FPS. It can't do better than 35 FPS on a 970 if that is the maximum it can do on a 980Ti.

The OP specifically said he wanted to upgrade for better performance in Fallout 4. That's why I looked up the CPU benchmark for that game. Upgrading from his 960 to a 970 would not provide him better performance in Fallout 4 because the Pentium can still only put out 35 FPS at most.

Anyways, you said that upgrading from a Pentium to an i5 would not increase framerate. I showed you a benchmark that shows a 42 FPS difference between a Pentium and an i5. Look up any modern, graphics heavy game you want and show me a CPU benchmark where a Pentium and i5 are equal. I have looked at several and I can't find a single one where that is the case.