Is my 7970 being bottlenecked?!

[evan4244]

Hei guys. How haven u all been doing? Using tomshardware once again after such a long time!

So i got a second hand Sapphire 7970 Ghz Edition recently. I am currently using a i5-750 2.6Ghz (never OCed) which i bought back in 2010. My concerns/questions are -

1. Do u guys think my i5-750 will bottleneck my 7970? My cpu usage rarely goes over 70% on a handful of titles i tested recently.

2. How do i find out whether my gpu is being bottlenecked by my cpu or any other hardware?


*i dont plan on overclocking my cpu

 

[Chugalug_]

Hei guys. How haven u all been doing? Using tomshardware once again after such a long time!

So i got a second hand Sapphire 7970 Ghz Edition recently. I am currently using a i5-750 2.6Ghz (never OCed) which i bought back in 2010. My concerns/questions are -

1. Do u guys think my i5-750 will bottleneck my 7970? My cpu usage rarely goes over 70% on a handful of titles i tested recently.

2. How do i find out whether my gpu is being bottlenecked by my cpu or any other hardware?


*i dont plan on overclocking my cpu

Nope, you should be perfectly fine in 99% of cases with the exception being a handful of select CPU bound games.
If you want to test if it is being bottlenecked, run a gaming benchmark such as Tomb Raider, Shadow of Mordor or GTA V, and take note of the CPU and GPU load on MSI afterburner in the top corner while it is running.
If the CPU load hits 100%, and the GPU isn't coming close to maxing out, that means it is bottlenecking, but i'm fairly certain at stock speeds there is no problem with the 7970.
Even an Athlon x4 645 wouldn't bottleneck that card, and it is lower performing!

 

[nitrium]

Also you can OC your i5 750 very easily and reliably. I'm still running the very slightly newer i5 760 OCed to 3.5GHz (4 cores) and 4.0 GHz (turbo) and it doesn't bottleneck my R9 390.

 

[Chugalug_]

Also you can OC your i5 750 very easily and reliably. I'm still running the very slightly newer i5 760 OCed to 3.5GHz (4 cores) and 4.0 GHz (turbo) and it doesn't bottleneck my R9 390.

It does in fact overclock quite easily, but as OP has stated, he doesn't plan on overclocking his CPU.
It is quite an old CPU platform, for the cost of a good cooler you could even be able to pick up a used i7 860 for a little more and run that at stock speeds.
Even then, perfectly fine with the current setup, not much need to overclock unless he's upgrading his GPU.
Keep in mind he states in the original post he doesn't want to overclock as well, so that's definitely something you want to consider first. Big risk to undertake if you're not sure what you're doing.