Need CPU that wont bottleneck high end GPU's

[HEXiT]

if your stuck with an amd platform already then get a 960t and overclock the beans out of it... you may just get enough bandwidth not to bottleneck 2 680s but its doubtfull... even the highest end bulldozer will have issues at some point because of its poor single threaded performance. as you know not all games use 8 threads. in fact most use less than 3 so the 680 will choke sooner or later but sooner if you use 2 of em...

4 680's is a waste of time unless your gonna put em on a 2011 socker board as the pci wont have enough bandwidth to cope. even then i cant see any real reason to go that far with them cards unless your doing semi pro rendering... for gaming its just way past overkill as 1 card can max out every current game and give 60fps minimum even bf3 with x4 aa so 2 would be more than enough... you really would be wasting 1200 bux /900 quid... if you got 4 of em as 2 would never be used...

 

[Russell_PC]

the asus rampage iv formula is a 2011, and effectively so is the i7 3820.
^ read my system specs and preferences above. 4 way is necessary for what my preferences are.

 

[captainvera]

hello m8,

If you are on a tight budget theres really no need to go 3 way 6950 as 2 7870 would have better performance that saves you some money even two 7850 is probably good enough if you dont go past the 3 monitor config otherwise crossfire is a bit hard to justify unless you're above 1080p resolution. you can probbly get a good z68 MB for the same 140 which is able to do 3 way crossfire, but since you probably dont need it a mATX Z68 able to do it is even cheaper. SInce you saved money (around 100$ maybe a bit more) for going 2xcrossfire you'll be able to purchase i5 2500k and a good aftermarket cooler so that you achieve lets say at least 4.0ghz easily and that would give you like 20 fps more then a phenom at 3.7ghz oc in most games at 1080p.

Thats just my opinion, if you choose to go amd i wish the best of luck finding a pII x6 1100t because any other will never cut it.

+99

 

[Russell_PC]

Anyway, doesn't really matter why I need 4 x 680s.
All I really want to know is weather or not my i7 3820 overclocked to 4.5ghz will bottleneck these 4 cards.

thanks!

 

[HEXiT]

its possible but it would depend on the software your running as much as the hardware.
there are issues with scaling when you get 3 or more cards. 2 cards should give 80% increase 3 cards may add another 50% but 4 your looking at between 5 and 20 percent only (as far as i know)... this may change when you put the cards on a pci-e 3.0 board. i dont think the low scaling is due to the cpu but rather a limit of the pci-e bandwidth.

 

[Russell_PC]

yeah PCI 3.0 is the way to go haha
so hopefully my board should do the trick then if its more so the high bandwidth that effects the scaling?
so you think at 4.5ghz I should be alright?