Intel i5 2320 3.0ghz Upgrade question

[alisoncat]

Hey guys, I had a quick question.

So, I've done a lot of work on my PC over this past year, and currently I have:

CPU: i5 2320 (3.0ghz 3.3ghz Turbo Boost)
GPU: GTX 680 2gb (SLI)
Ram: 8gb
Mobo: Gigabyte Z68A-D3H-B3 Z68 (Chipset) LGA 1155
Monitor: 2560x1440p + 2560x1080 (I don't use these together, I just have two different monitors I switch between).

Okay so my question is, is my i5 bottlenecking my setup? Am I being held back? My main question is:

I. Is there anything I can do to improve my system's performance (specifically my CPU).

II. Does the CPU have a big impact on gaming performance?

I was considering upgrading to an i7 3770k (I know most love the i5 2500k, but I also do a lot of multitasking so I figured why not upgrade a bit further). But would upgrading to an i7 3770k or i5 2500k give me a better performance? Or should I just be happy with what I have now.

To be honest, I sort of built my PC rig in a bizarre way. When I first started, I had no idea what I was doing. If I had to do it again, I would have chosen a different mobo and CPU. But since I've already paid for everything over the past year, I'm just wondering if any other upgrade would be worth it, or pointless.

 

[ASHISH65]

1)your cpu is fine 2)Gpu has most impact on gaming. Try to check gpu and cpu usgage while playing games if cpu has more usage then you are bottlenecking with cpu.

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

Is the Intel® Core™ i5-2320 bottlenexking your system? Yes it is possible but it isnt that bottlenecking your GTX 680. The performance of the processor is small comparied to that of the video card for most games. I would expect that you would see only a couple % of performance due to using this processor.

 

[alisoncat]

Thanks for the replies. I was trying to run 3Dmark11 at extreme at 1080 (it doesn't currently support 2560x) and it always crashes on the CPU tests. Could be a driver issue though.

If performance % won't go up substantially I think I'll hold off on anymore upgrades and wait for the next gen games to come out. Seems like a safe bet. I think a bigger concern at this point is my GPU memory. At this higher resolution I'm pushing 1740mb on battlefield 3 ultra and Crysis 3 beta actually hits 2 gb.

 

[alisoncat]

Hmmmm

My 3Dmark11 scores:

Performance: Graphics Score 15722 Physics Score: 938

Extreme: Graphics Score 6496 Physics Score: 934

Well, my CPU score is pretty terrible.