Q6600 and bottleneck question

[Peaks]

I have a friend who wants to buy a GTX 580.

He has a Q6600 which runs at stock (he has no desire to oc). He asked me if it would severly hold back a 580 and I said yes, am I correct?

Thanks

 

[simon12]

It would be a bottleneck how much depends on his resolution at over 1920 x 1080 the bottleneck may not be huge but at 1080 or below would be enough for it to perform only as well as a 570 or below.

 

[Peaks]

His res is 1920x1200 and his current card is a GTX 295.

I said that he wouldn't see much of an improvement because his CPU would be holding the 580 back so much, its probably even holding his 295 back. tbh, the 580 performs well at 1920x1200 so I would have thought that the bottleneck would still be quick high, even higher for the fact that the CPU would be struggling even more.

Out of interest, if he oc'ed would he still see a bottleneck?

 

[simon12]

Thats a high resolution which puts alot more strain on the GPU than the CPU so though I am certain there will be a significant bottleneck it will not be massive and will vary from game to game. If he overclocked to over 3GHz it will mostlikely get rid of the bottleneck in some games but it will still be there in games that need more CPU power.

 

[Peaks]

Yea that makes sense. Ok cool, well my predictions were sort of correct then, thanks.