Question New GPU - - - - Bottleneck worry with old(ish) components ?

aveatquevale

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Hi, down below is my build:

Msi z170 A pc mate M0b0
i5 6600 cpu
Corsair Vengeance 2x8 16 gb ddr 4 2133 mhz ram
Crucial P2 nvme drive


The build is from some 6 -7 years ago. I haven't had a GPU for this system for many, many years. Thinking of finally getting something good. Eyeing a 3080; my question is, will a 3080 get bottlenecked by the components I've got ? If yes, how about a 3070 instead ? And also, what's the minimum wattage PSU I can get away with for a 3080 or a 3070 ?

Thanks in advance to anyone who has a look or posts (y)


Edit: Forgot to mention I've got a new 1080p monitor, so any gaming done will be exclusively in 1080p resolution.
 
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USAFRet

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"bottleneck worry"....

Putting in a better part, the new GPU, will not make performance drop.
Period.

Will your existing parts allow the new 3080 to reach its ful potential?
No.

But overall, you will get better performance.
Maybe/probably the same framerate. But you will be able to turn the graphics level up to Ludicrous.


Now...what specific PSU do you have to run this?
Make/model, please.
 

aveatquevale

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Hey USAFRet ! Thanks for taking the time to reply :]

Now...what specific PSU do you have to run this?
Make/model, please.

The PSU %100 has to change. The current one will not a handle a modern GPU. It's a no-nameish 400 something watt PSU. Getting a new PSU %100.

Putting in a better part, the new GPU, will not make performance drop.
Period.

Ye I know. I've been using onboard graphics for years:'(

But overall, you will get better performance.
Maybe/probably the same framerate. But you will be able to turn the graphics level up to Ludicrous.

Ye I think the 3080 will beat my intel hd 530 onboard graphics, hand over fist :bounce:

Will your existing parts allow the new 3080 to reach its ful potential?
No.

This is what I wanted to know specifically. What exactly is going to prevent the 3080 from reaching full potential; e), all of them ? Should I not fork the extra 150-200ish for the 3080 then, and go for a 3070 instead ?

Again thanks a lot for your time !

Edit: Forgot to mention I've got a new 1080p monitor, so any gaming done will be exclusively in 1080p resolution.
 
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USAFRet

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This is what I wanted to know specifically. What exactly is going to prevent the 3080 from reaching full potential; e), all of them ? Should I not fork the extra 150-200ish for the 3080 then, and go for a 3070 instead ?
The CPU provides the framerate, the GPU applies the eyecandy.

A 3080 will be sitting around most of the time, waiting on the CPU.
 
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lmcnabney

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You didn't mention the refresh rate of your 1080p display, but your CPU is going to bottleneck modern games at high refresh rates (120,144,165,240hz). Since you don't have a GPU right now ANY card is going to provide improvement. Your idea to get a 3080 is nonsense though. A 3080 is designed for 1440p/4K gaming with all of the eye candy turned on. You can get a card for half the price to meet your 1080p needs - so don't waste your money. For your PC you should probably get a 3050 to meet your need for eye candy. Anything more would be a waste.

Note - if you are really interested in a better gaming experience you should include a much nicer display. A 3070 and a nice-ish 1440p display would give you a much better experience than a 3080 for almost the same money.
 
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aveatquevale

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7 year old quadcore, no hyperthreading. That thing is going to hold up a 3080 massively. The only RTX 3*** GPU I recommand for such old cpu is a RTX 3050 but better find a used GTX 1070/1660 Super or RTX 2060.

Even the very best CPU’s would have trouble keeping up with a 3080 at 1080p apart from in a few exceptional games. Generally the 3080 is over the top 1080p.

First of all, thanks a lot for dropping in.

I would like to have some future proofing. That's why I was eyeing a 3080/3070. What would you guys recommend for 1080p gaming, that will get me all settings maxed out, 80-90 stable fps minimum, for the next 6 years at least ? I'm likely to keep this card for like a decade. Needless to say, you can see I'm kind of a keeper; don't change components every couple of years.

And what about the PSU to go together with the card I should get ?
 
First of all, thanks a lot for dropping in.

I would like to have some future proofing. That's why I was eyeing a 3080/3070. What would you guys recommend for 1080p gaming, that will get me all settings maxed out, 80-90 stable fps minimum, for the next 6 years at least ? I'm likely to keep this card for like a decade. Needless to say, you can see I'm kind of a keeper; don't change components every couple of years.

And what about the PSU to go together with the card I should get ?

There are games you won’t achieve 80-90 minimum fps because of your cpu regardless of gpu choice.

As for future proofing it’s not really possible. Just take a look back at the GTX1070-1080 and how it performs today. It also doesn’t support newer features. I’d say you were better off getting a 3060Ti, use it for 3 years and then sell it. With the money saved today and what you get from the sale you should get something far more suitable and with more modern features.

For PSU a Corsair RMx 850 is a good choice that will run a 3070/3080 with any currently available cpu.
 
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Hi, down below is my build:

Msi z170 A pc mate M0b0
i5 6600 cpu
Corsair Vengeance 2x8 16 gb ddr 4 2133 mhz ram
Crucial P2 nvme drive


The build is from some 6 -7 years ago. I haven't had a GPU for this system for many, many years. Thinking of finally getting something good. Eyeing a 3080; my question is, will a 3080 get bottlenecked by the components I've got ? If yes, how about a 3070 instead ? And also, what's the minimum wattage PSU I can get away with for a 3080 or a 3070 ?

Thanks in advance to anyone who has a look or posts (y)


Edit: Forgot to mention I've got a new 1080p monitor, so any gaming done will be exclusively in 1080p resolution.
A 3080 is wholly inappropriate for a 4 core/4 thread CPU. Even at 60 FPS a 4 thread CPU is not going to offer the same experience as a higher core count CPU. If you really need the power of a 3080 or 3070, then you can be sure you need more than 4 cores. My two cents would be upgrade the whole machine. In terms of a PSU I would get a good quality 850W or higher. the Corsair RMx 850 suggested above would be a good choice.

What would you guys recommend for 1080p gaming, that will get me all settings maxed out, 80-90 stable fps minimum, for the next 6 years at least ?
No one can give you assurances on what card can manage those frame rates for 6 years. It would be very dependant on game choice and what sort of compromises your willing to make in graphical quality to maintain them for that length of time. It also assumes the CPU will be able to deliver those frame rates. While there is no such thing as 'future proof' generally the more you buy the longer it will last. You might want to wait a couple of months though as the Nvidia 4080 is expected to be released.
 
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jasonf2

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Video games although they seem to be pretty linear often utilize precaching systems to improve real-time framerate. Instead of simply looking at user input and rendering based on that input the software tries to anticipate what the players next moves will be and loads everything up as close as it can to speed up end rendering before the decision is made. This process is performed primarily on the cpu side and for obvious reasons (you are trying to calculate all possible player decisions and pre calc all of them) is pretty resource intensive. Beyond being resource intensive though it is also latency sensitive. So individual core IPC and clock makes a big difference. Intel in its performance lead years had established enough IPC lead that they had maintained a "four core is best" for gaming. Intel carried this for various reasons related to thermals, monolithic die structure, a comfortable IPC lead and market share dominance. This position had most AAA titles really only utilizing 4 cores, even though there may have been more available. When AMD brought out Zen the IPC lead vanished and Intel had to start increasing core count along with AMD. Today 6 cores for a decent gaming rig are minimum, with a high IPC and clock. So with this in mind the CPU has a huge amount to do with framerate. Better CPU = higher frames.
So it is pretty easy to ask what does the GPU actually do then? The GPU takes all of that precache stuff from the CPU and does the heavy lifting. So if the CPU is feeding stuff to the GPU too fast to calculate framerate will be reduced as well. This is why the graphics settings make a big difference relative to the GPU. Higher fidelity leads to more intensive calculations on the GPU. So if you take your game to the lowest possible settings and watch framerate that is pretty much your CPU top out. Any difference between that and "Ultra" is mostly GPU.
On to tacking a 3080 onto a 6 year old I5 with integrated graphics at 1080. There is going to be a pretty dramatic increase in performance. Integrated graphics with a few exceptions are about as low level as they come and pretty much stink. Just about any discrete graphic card is an improvement. If you put a 3080 on top of that CPU you will be able to run anything you are doing in the highest graphics settings with very little delta between the lowest settings. However understand that if it is only running at 20 fps in the lowest setting now the GPU isn't going to improve that framerate by much if any. You might see a little, but only because Intel HD graphics really are that bad.
The 3080 is in my opinion massive overkill for your CPU pairing. It won't hurt anything but you will need a good 750+ watt power supply, so figure that one in. Both a 3060 or 3070 are going to be overkill on your machine as well, so unless you are looking to update your CPU in the next little while, don't be afraid to buy the next card down with similar results. Prices are starting to become more reasonable and I certainly am not one to talk about overkill so spend what you want. I would wait for the 4000 series release though because there will be an inventory dump. Just keep an eye on your power budget. 3000 series cards are power hungry. Also when you are looking at GPU utilization you need to expect low numbers. That is simply because the GPU is easily handling what the CPU is throwing at it, not because anything is wrong. I hear this complaint a lot when people put imbalanced parts in.

Best of luck
 
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aveatquevale

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You didn't mention the refresh rate of your 1080p display, but your CPU is going to bottleneck modern games at high refresh rates (120,144,165,240hz). Since you don't have a GPU right now ANY card is going to provide improvement. Your idea to get a 3080 is nonsense though. A 3080 is designed for 1440p/4K gaming with all of the eye candy turned on. You can get a card for half the price to meet your 1080p needs - so don't waste your money. For your PC you should probably get a 3050 to meet your need for eye candy. Anything more would be a waste.

Note - if you are really interested in a better gaming experience you should include a much nicer display. A 3070 and a nice-ish 1440p display would give you a much better experience than a 3080 for almost the same money.

Sorry :beurk: Should've mentioned make/model to be clear. It's a 2019 LG 1080p @ 144hz monitor, 27". I've been able to run it max on 120 hz so far, cause of the onboard graphics. Or lack of a GPU.

On this machine, I'm mostly going to play racing sims like iracing, ACC, and also eyeing the upcoming Rennsport that is going to employ Unreal Engine 5. In most other titles I'm willing to go down a notch from ultra settings honestly.

Oh and one last thing I failed to mention ! I might wanna go into a triple monitor setup, which would bump the resolution up to.. 1080x5760 ? From 1080x1920.
 
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lmcnabney

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On this machine, I'm mostly going to play racing sims like iracing, ACC, and also eyeing the upcoming Rennsport that is going to employ Unreal Engine 5. In most other titles I'm willing to go down a notch from ultra settings honestly.

Oh and one last thing I failed to mention ! I might wanna go into a triple monitor setup, which would bump the resolution up to.. 1080x5760 ? From 1080x1920.

Oh, you are putting even more on your plate.
First, the UE5 stuff that will come out is going to want more resources - both GPU and CPU.
Second, moving up to top-tier GPU is going to push your power supply requirements up (another part to upgrade)
Third, if considering moving to multiple monitors you need to review what your usage is. If you intend to continue gaming at 1080p and use the other two monitors only for productivity you don't need to change anything. If you want to game outside of 1080p you instead may consider replacing the 1080p gaming monitor with a curved 3440x1440 11:9 ultra widescreen display instead. Most modern games support the expanded field of view and racing games like Rennsport are huge beneficiaries of 11:9.

I really think that you are falling into the replace category instead of upgrade.

I went to the bottleneck calculator and adding a 3080 to your system results in a 57% bottleneck - which is terrible. Even a 3050 is bottlenecked by your CPU.
 
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Eximo

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For the cost difference between a 3080 and a 3060/Ti you can pick yourself up a an i7-6700 or i7-7700 or even a 7700k since you have a Z170 board. You could also get some new DDR4 3200Mhz memory.

Or, spend the difference on upgrading the platform entirely i3-12100 is more than equivalent to the older quad cores with hyperthreading. And i5-12400 are not the expensive.
 
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How so? They are as equally valid as every performance chart in a GPU review. The same underlying data goes into them and the application crunches the numbers where on the X (CPU), Y (GPU), and Z (resolution) the performance lands.
Except theres numerous cases where they are straight up wrong.
On my old setup 8086k+R9 290 the same calculator 3 months apart said I went from 3% bottleneck to 28% bottleneck.
Then today it says my 8086k+6700XT is a 5% bottleneck.

The reality? I can max out both CPU and GPU without issue. Its a load of flaming garbage.
Actually no, flaming garbage would at least keep you warm. These sites are worth less than that.
 
How so? They are as equally valid as every performance chart in a GPU review. The same underlying data goes into them and the application crunches the numbers where on the X (CPU), Y (GPU), and Z (resolution) the performance lands.
There is a user on here, the same hardware gave him significantly different results when submitting over a period of time. These calculators don’t take into account resolution, the specific game or game settings, all of which have an impact on cpu and gpu usage. Even the best systems can bottleneck in certain circumstances.
 
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USAFRet

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What is the Bottleneck percentage of these parts?
i7-4790k, RX580, 32GB RAM.

Choose the correct answer:
A. 18%
B. 1.87%
C. 3.42%
D. All of the above.

Correct answer is D.

1bRMu6n.png
 

Eximo

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  1. Game settings -We don't know what they used
  2. Resolution - You get to pick it
  3. CPU - You get to pick it, no mention of system memory, motherboard, cooling, etc
  4. GPU - You get to pick it, no mention of clock speeds, cooling.

So, one can assume they are going with ideal configurations, always dual channel or quad channel or whatever is optimal for a platform, assuming cooling is good (likely a 360mm AIO), and that the motherboard is of high enough quality to run a processor for long durations at high power output. Likely an open air test bench which gives the GPU maximum potential performance.

If they are prioritizing FPS, then logically they would have the game settings as low as possible/reasonable. This is intended to show CPU bottlenecks and is what you see on GPU reviews. This is not how people actually use GPUs. You scale the settings and resolutions with the performance and memory capacity of the GPU.

So a calculator that treats a 3060 and a 3090 the same is already doing you a disservice. Ray tracing on/off, DLSS/FSR are also huge factors.

Since we don't know their setups, we can't assume anything. Also we don't know if they actually put any testing behind this, or if they just scrape benchmark data from other sources.

This particular calculator does let you pick the game, and I am leaning towards data scraping though rather than testing. Some of the ones I manually checked were spot on to what other benchmark sources had, but others were way off as if they mixed up 4K or Ray Tracing results with standard ultra and high settings.
 
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lmcnabney

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There is a user on here, the same hardware gave him significantly different results when submitting over a period of time. These calculators don’t take into account resolution, the specific game or game settings, all of which have an impact on cpu and gpu usage. Even the best systems can bottleneck in certain circumstances.

The site I linked specifically requires CPU, GPU, and resolution for the aggregate measurement. You can also dial in specific games to determine if performance would increase if the CPU or GPU were upgraded.
 
The site I linked specifically requires CPU, GPU, and resolution for the aggregate measurement. You can also dial in specific games to determine if performance would increase if the CPU or GPU were upgraded.
Just to check, I figured in my exact hardware again, in the last game I played (AC Origins), at the same settings I used, and it claims a 26% bottleneck on my GPU.
Reality? It was at 100%. Sure sounds like the opposite of what said "calculator" claims. 26% off is not within a margin of error. Its plain wrong.
Additionally, if they really were sourcing their metrics from other benchmarks/reviews/tests/websites, they arent crediting those sources anywhere. So its either A) a lie, or B) stolen.
 

lmcnabney

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claims a 26% bottleneck on my GPU

That makes complete sense. Any recent CPU is going to be GPU bottlenecked. You do understand what that means, right? If you added a more powerful GPU your performance would improve but if you added a better CPU it wouldn't. Your CPU has enough processing power to get higher performance, but your GPU is holding it back.