i7 860 and gtx960

[bl4cK_d3Mon]

Hello Team
My PC specification are
processor i7 860
mobo intel dp55wg(pci 2.0)
ram 8gb corsair
psu cooler master 750w 80+ bronze

I like to ask does Nvidia gtx 960 works on my spec and if it works does my cpu bottleneck the gtx960. and any other problem with my specification.
and suggest me some good graphics card
Thanks

 

[Forgotten031511]

The GTX 960 should work with your computer no problem, BUT you will bottleneck the card with that CPU and only having PCI-e 2.0. This card is made for PCI-e 3.0 so not only are you limiting the bandwidth, but that CPU is not able to keep up with that card. You can get the GTX 960, but will not be able to use it's full power. I suggest getting a card that matches your PC specs and can use it's full power. Most likely get the same performance and will cost a lot less!

What are your intentions to use this PC for?

 

[AreEyeSeaKay]

I use an i7-860 with a GTX 980. While I'm sure that the performance would be better with a newer CPU, it doesn't bottleneck the 980.

I think you'll be fine with that setup.

 

[Forgotten031511]

I use an i7-860 with a GTX 980. While I'm sure that the performance would be better with a newer CPU, it doesn't bottleneck the 980.

I think you'll be fine with that setup.

The CPU isn't the large concern here, the PCI-e 2.0 is. The GTX 980, as you know, has a lot of power and needs to send that with high bandwidth. If you limit the bandwidth, you are limiting the card, hence bottle necking it.

 

[RobCrezz]

I use an i7-860 with a GTX 980. While I'm sure that the performance would be better with a newer CPU, it doesn't bottleneck the 980.

I think you'll be fine with that setup.

The CPU isn't the large concern here, the PCI-e 2.0 is. The GTX 980, as you know, has a lot of power and needs to send that with high bandwidth. If you limit the bandwidth, you are limiting the card, hence bottle necking it.

This is complete crap, PCI-E 2.0 is not a bottleneck for any graphics card.

 

[Supernova1138]

Yeah, there is no single GPU out there that is significantly held back by PCI-E 2.0 right now. Now if the OP wanted to run two Titan Xs in SLI on his platform, there would probably be a bottleneck from PCI-E 2.0, assuming he could push an extreme overclock on that i7 to overcome the CPU bottlenecking issue.

You should get most of the performance out of a 960 with your CPU, but for some CPU heavy titles like say Grand Theft Auto V, you may hit a bottleneck. If possible, try overclocking your CPU. Lynnfield i5/i7s should be able to achieve a 20% overclock reasonably easy, and that will help a bit with the newer games.

 

[RobCrezz]

Here's a nice article to confirm any "theories" about pci-e bandwidth bottlenecking
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-Express_Scaling/21.html

 

[Forgotten031511]

My mistake, I noticed a difference myself when I got a new system with PCI-e 3.0 vs PCI-e 2.0.

The graphics card remained the same, but it appears the above statistics prove me incorrect. Thanks for the correction and additional knowledge for my own learning.

 

[Henk van dommelen]

My mistake, I noticed a difference myself when I got a new system with PCI-e 3.0 vs PCI-e 2.0.

The graphics card remained the same, but it appears the above statistics prove me incorrect. Thanks for the correction and additional knowledge for my own learning.

A fine example of being cpu bottlenecked on your old setup.

 

[bl4cK_d3Mon]

Yeah, there is no single GPU out there that is significantly held back by PCI-E 2.0 right now. Now if the OP wanted to run two Titan Xs in SLI on his platform, there would probably be a bottleneck from PCI-E 2.0, assuming he could push an extreme overclock on that i7 to overcome the CPU bottlenecking issue.

You should get most of the performance out of a 960 with your CPU, but for some CPU heavy titles like say Grand Theft Auto V, you may hit a bottleneck. If possible, try overclocking your CPU. Lynnfield i5/i7s should be able to achieve a 20% overclock reasonably easy, and that will help a bit with the newer games.

Does bottleneck affect only in high resolution. If i play high end games on lower resolution 2k (i have 2k monitor 🙁 )
am new in these things thanks

 

[Supernova1138]

Higher resolutions do put more stress on the GPU and can alleviate CPU bottlenecks in some cases. However, if your CPU isn't fast enough to feed data to your card as quickly as it can process it, you will still lose some performance. The Lynnfield i5/i7s are starting to get a bit long in the tooth these days, and have trouble keeping up with the higher end graphics cards out right now when run at stock clockspeeds, likely due to the stock clockspeeds being rather low compared to current CPUs. Bumping your CPU up to 3.5-3.6GHz helps alleviate the problem to an extent. Higher overclocks than that are certainly possible, but at that point the amount of voltage you have to put into the chip for stability and the heat generated does get quite high and can become too much for lower end motherboards and lower end aftermarket CPU coolers.

 

[RobCrezz]

Yeah, there is no single GPU out there that is significantly held back by PCI-E 2.0 right now. Now if the OP wanted to run two Titan Xs in SLI on his platform, there would probably be a bottleneck from PCI-E 2.0, assuming he could push an extreme overclock on that i7 to overcome the CPU bottlenecking issue.

You should get most of the performance out of a 960 with your CPU, but for some CPU heavy titles like say Grand Theft Auto V, you may hit a bottleneck. If possible, try overclocking your CPU. Lynnfield i5/i7s should be able to achieve a 20% overclock reasonably easy, and that will help a bit with the newer games.

Does bottleneck affect only in high resolution. If i play high end games on lower resolution 2k (i have 2k monitor 🙁 )
am new in these things thanks

Resolution makes no difference to the CPU performance, only GPU. So as Supernova says, it can alleviate the bottleneck due to the more load being put on the GPU which will lower the framerate.

 

[bl4cK_d3Mon]

Yeah, there is no single GPU out there that is significantly held back by PCI-E 2.0 right now. Now if the OP wanted to run two Titan Xs in SLI on his platform, there would probably be a bottleneck from PCI-E 2.0, assuming he could push an extreme overclock on that i7 to overcome the CPU bottlenecking issue.

You should get most of the performance out of a 960 with your CPU, but for some CPU heavy titles like say Grand Theft Auto V, you may hit a bottleneck. If possible, try overclocking your CPU. Lynnfield i5/i7s should be able to achieve a 20% overclock reasonably easy, and that will help a bit with the newer games.

Does bottleneck affect only in high resolution. If i play high end games on lower resolution 2k (i have 2k monitor 🙁 )
am new in these things thanks

Resolution makes no difference to the CPU performance, only GPU. So as Supernova says, it can alleviate the bottleneck due to the more load being put on the GPU which will lower the framerate.

Thanks for clearing.
any suggestions on getting a supported graphics card( prefer nvidia )

 

[RobCrezz]

970 if you intend on upgrading the cpu/motherboard, 960 if you dont.

 

[flankerb]

From what I've read around, AMD mother boards do not have PCIx 3.0 standard at all, and still they do not bottleneck PCIx 3.0 GPUs.

But I have a p55 motherboard (Asrock P55PRO/Usb3). I intend to buy Gigabyte GTX 960 OC 4GB version (not G1 version) for my i7 870 based PC with 8GB of 1600MHz DDR3 (Corsair Vengeance Black) (I'm also considering overclocking it to a stable overclock).