Is my processor bottle-necking my 7870

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shood247

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Current build
GFX: Msi 7870 Hawk
CPU: i5 650
Mobo: GA-P55-UD3R
Ram: 8gb
HDD: 2x 500gb 7200rpm
Psu: Thermaltake toughpower 775w

I upgraded from a 5750 to a 7870 a couple of days ago and honestly i'm not that impressed. I do not actually see any improvement in BF3. At first I though it has to be drivers and then I read into that. I find out that people were experiencing a similar problem with their drivers so I downgraded to 12.6 like much of them had done. I didn't get to much of an improvement from doing that so I then thought that there is a slight chance it could be a defective card. But After powering up PS2 I notice almost double the frames I used to get so I took my attention away from a faulty card. I haven't ran any benchmarks to see if the card is placing where is should be but atm it really feels like I still have my 5750 in my case.

In BF3 I get an average of about 40 fps on preset high at 1400x900. According to reviews and benchmarks of this card I would expect that fps with ultra settings at 1080p.

In Msi afterburner the gpu load doesn't go above 60% and when I have task manager open my cpu is around 90%. This is leading me to think the processor I have is bottle-necking it.

When I first got the card I thought the card may of been defective but from what i've read It may be the cpu. The being defective still isn't out of the question.

Can you guys help me?
 

simmons33

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What you saw in MSI Afterburner in the first sign of a Bottleneck. They suck so bad do they not? Multiplayer makes FULL use out of 4 Physical Cores and Hyperthreading in BF3. So most likely your having a CPU bottleneck.
 

Pherule

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Or he could just buy a second hand i5 750 or 760 for a fraction of the price. Overclock to near 4Ghz and it won't be a bottleneck.
 
G

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your cpu is weak for that game not your gpu, get a quad core dual core are getting past there sell buy date now.

i only have an phenom 1090T with an HD6850 and i get more fps than 40 lol
 

shood247

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Okay, thanks for all the replies. At the time an i5 750 was out of stock and me being the impatient orangutan I am got the 650.

Can anyone recommend a good cpu+mobo config for preferably under $400 (Over $400 is fine if it is best value for money).
 

Pherule

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I suppose that is excusable then. If you intentionally got the 650 over the 750 I'd be worried.

Seriously though, just get a 2nd-hand 750 or 760. There's no need to upgrade the mobo yet. You can save the extra money and get Haswell or its 14nm counterpart in a year or two.
 

shood247

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Would anyone else suggest waiting for the Haswell processors to be released and then picking up a combo then? I don't really wanna buy another 1st gen "i" processor.

I'm happy enough to wait for the next gen of processors if they come out in feb. I am unaware of the release date for Haswell processors however so could someone clarify when they will begin being released.
 
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