Processor bottlenecking GTX 970 Strix?

[Mister_Cliche]

Alright so I literally just got the GTX 970 Strix today and I've been messing around with it for the past few hours. I'm going to say - the only performance increase I've seen is in Heaven 4.0, and it ran great. Average of 88fps with a high of 180 and a low of 20 (when changing scenes).

I have an AMD FX - 8350 black edition and I'm sadly using the stock cooler. I upgraded from a 6300. Now, from what I understand, AMD's processors aren't as great as Intel's but they're so damn expensive (Intel's) so when I was trying to budget myself, I went with AMD processor and a 660ti. Now, I didn't have the money to buy a nice monitor, so I found an old one and have been using that. (1400 x 900). With just having bought the 970, did I make a mistake? Should I have upgraded to an Intel i7 and just waited until the 970's price dropped? Or is it really not my processor bottlenecking me? I've ran BF4, FC4, AC:U, DA:I and Minecraft (With shaders) and didn't really receive any performance increase whatsoever. I did gain a cooler GPU that's also a lot quieter than the 660ti.

My 660ti is in relatively in good condition, so I was hoping I could sell that for 150$~ on Ebay.

Average FPS -

BF4 - 60 on Ultra with no AA deferred with drops when looking at large scenes and explosions
AC:U - 40~ except when looking at the sky and on certain rooftops ( Ultra )
FC4 - 50~ with the crazy simulated hair and 55~ with Enhanced fur
DragonAge:Inquistion - 50~ in-game and 30 during cutscenes (?) ( Ultra )
Minecraft with SEUS Shaders Ultra - 40fps with Normal~ render distance

This is basically what I got with my 660ti with some minor differences.


Anyways, my current PC Specs are as follows:

GTX 970 ASUS Strix
AMD FX-8350 (Stock Cooler)
8gbs RAM
1TB HDD
700W Power supply


UPDATE: Just played Arma 3 on Ultra with 20~ frames... Watched a video with a guy playing 1080p on ultra with a 970 and was easily getting 50~+ on ultra while recording with fraps so I'm not sure what's going on, I'm getting told it's not my CPU, it's not my GPU.

Is this defective or what?

 

[rockie_]

i5 4590 + Asrock H97 Pro4 + GTX 970

if it s possble , do some returns and new purchases

 

[emdea22]

Your monitor is bottlenecking you! At that ress the 660 would have been enough. Anyway upgrading from a 6300 to a 8350 is not much of an upgrade unless you can take advantage of the additional cores and i only know of 2 games that can do that - DA:I and Crysis 3.

Your PC is fine but running at a low res doesn't really put any stress on the GPU. What you need to do is: Get a custom cooler for the 8350 and OC it a bit; Get a 1080p or better yet a 1440p monitor.

 

[ingtar33]

you're on a 1400x900 monitor and you're buying a GTX970?

your priorities are out of whack. that old GTX 660ti should have been able to max ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING at that small resolution. If you were struggling to hit 60fps in titles at 1400x900 it was because your fx cpu wasn't overclocked. You had two main upgrade paths you could have taken from that point.

I would have suggested getting a 1080p monitor ($100-$120), a r9-280 ($160) and a h80i ($80) and used the remaining $20 you saved to buy a pizza. Then i would have spent some time overclocking that 8350 up to 4.4-4.7ghz which would have with that r9-280 landed you at 60fp in pretty much any title you wanted to play in 1080p at ultra or close to full ultra settings.

 

[Mister_Cliche]

i5 4590 + Asrock H97 Pro4 + GTX 970

if it s possble , do some returns and new purchases

you're on a 1400x900 monitor and you're buying a GTX970?

your priorities are out of whack. that old GTX 660ti should have been able to max ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING at that small resolution. If you were struggling to hit 60fps in titles at 1400x900 it was because your fx cpu wasn't overclocked. You had two main upgrade paths you could have taken from that point.

I would have suggested getting a 1080p monitor ($100-$120), a r9-280 ($160) and a h80i ($80) and used the remaining $20 you saved to buy a pizza. Then i would have spent some time overclocking that 8350 up to 4.4-4.7ghz which would have with that r9-280 landed you at 60fp in pretty much any title you wanted to play in 1080p at ultra or close to full ultra settings.

I don't plan on keeping this shitty monitor, haha - just want to make sure I have the hardware to support when I upgrade so I'm not stuck with 20fps

Definitely getting a new monitor asap - I might even have one in my attic somewhere if I look hard enough.

If worst comes to worst, I'll just convert my living room into my bedroom lol

 

[DubbleClick]

For an fx 8350, I'd say get a 1440p monitor. 4k is still too expensive and with your gtx 970 you can definitely play at 1440p where the cpu becomes a little less important. You could also go with a 1080p monitor but due to the rather weak ipc of fx chips I doubt you're going to see better framerates than at 1440p.

As for the gtx 660ti: $150? Whoa, that's almost it's price when buying it new. I doubt you'll find someone spending that much (2nd hand generally cuts the price by 2) but if you do thats great. You can also use that money towards the new monitor.

After all your upgrade path could have been a little better (I would have just kept the 6300fx or went with an I5) but if you get a 1440p monitor now it wasn't too bad. Or 4k and sli with your 660ti, but that might really be too expensive to pay off.

 

[Mister_Cliche]

For an fx 8350, I'd say get a 1440p monitor. 4k is still too expensive and with your gtx 970 you can definitely play at 1440p where the cpu becomes a little less important. You could also go with a 1080p monitor but due to the rather weak ipc of fx chips I doubt you're going to see better framerates than at 1440p.

As for the gtx 660ti: $150? Whoa, that's almost it's price when buying it new. I doubt you'll find someone spending that much (2nd hand generally cuts the price by 2) but if you do thats great. You can also use that money towards the new monitor.

After all your upgrade path could have been a little better (I would have just kept the 6300fx or went with an I5) but if you get a 1440p monitor now it wasn't too bad. Or 4k and sli with your 660ti, but that might really be too expensive to pay off.

Okay, so if it's not my processor that's bottlenecking - is it from being poorly cooled/not overclocked?

 

[DubbleClick]

Your cpu will hold your gpu down (i.e. bottleneck), but less so at 1440p than at 1080p, just because the gpu has a lot more to do while the load for the cpu stays the same. You would possibly get let's say 55 fps in some game at 720p now, 55 fps at 1080p and 55 fps at 1440p. That means your cpu is holding you back. But at 720p you would get say 250 fps with a better cpu, 120 fps on 1080p with a better cpu but only 60 fps with a better cpu at 1440p anyway. That way, you don't lose performance, get the most out of your gpu and get some nice eye candy.

 

[TheMagicalWallaby]

You CPU is not bottlenecking your GPU. You are just playing CPU demanding games on a CPU that doesn't work so well with those not so multi threaded games. ARMA cares for a CPU with less amounts of cores, but have strong cores. I had the 8350 and 970 set up and there was not bottleneck as the GPU could reach 100% load under stress tests. Bottlenecking is whn your GPU can't reach 100% load because it has to slow down for the CPU. Watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAgpvWc4VBM

 

[DubbleClick]

You CPU is not bottlenecking your GPU. You are just playing CPU demanding games on a CPU that doesn't work so well with those not so multi threaded games. ARMA cares for a CPU with less amounts of cores, but have strong cores. I had the 8350 and 970 set up and there was not bottleneck as the GPU could reach 100% load under stress tests. Bottlenecking is whn your GPU can't reach 100% load because it has to slow down for the CPU. Watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAgpvWc4VBM

A cpu is bottlenecking a gpu if there are better cpu's with which you'd get noticeably better framerates. That is the case with the 8350fx.

 

[TheMagicalWallaby]

You CPU is not bottlenecking your GPU. You are just playing CPU demanding games on a CPU that doesn't work so well with those not so multi threaded games. ARMA cares for a CPU with less amounts of cores, but have strong cores. I had the 8350 and 970 set up and there was not bottleneck as the GPU could reach 100% load under stress tests. Bottlenecking is whn your GPU can't reach 100% load because it has to slow down for the CPU. Watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAgpvWc4VBM

A cpu is bottlenecking a gpu if there are better cpu's with which you'd get noticeably better framerates. That is the case with the 8350fx.

No that just means that one cpu performs better in a game than another. Games use the CPU too.

 

[DubbleClick]

You CPU is not bottlenecking your GPU. You are just playing CPU demanding games on a CPU that doesn't work so well with those not so multi threaded games. ARMA cares for a CPU with less amounts of cores, but have strong cores. I had the 8350 and 970 set up and there was not bottleneck as the GPU could reach 100% load under stress tests. Bottlenecking is whn your GPU can't reach 100% load because it has to slow down for the CPU. Watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAgpvWc4VBM

A cpu is bottlenecking a gpu if there are better cpu's with which you'd get noticeably better framerates. That is the case with the 8350fx.

No that just means that one cpu performs better in a game than another. Games use the CPU too.

If it were by your definitiion a 10 year old 12 core server cpu running on 1ghz with horrible ipc wouldn't bottleneck anything. Just as you won't see a fx 8350 bottlenecking anywhere in a less than 8 thread game, since four simply won't be used, meaning the cpu doesn't run at 100% load. Meanwhile, framerates are shit compared to other cpu's. Call it how you want, an fx 8350 is limiting a gtx 970's performance in most games.