Question RX 470 bottlenecked by CPU?

kruxpavilion

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Feb 11, 2014
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Hello everyone,

I'm looking for some insight into the build I have with my wife's gaming PC. I have a 1060 6gb in my computer paired with a 5th gen processor.. Works amazing.

According to benchmarks, my GPU should only be about 13% better than my wife's GPU. I have her RX 470 paired with a 4th gen FX processor... Quad Core. I'm not next to the computer at the moment, but you get the idea. I'll post full specs later.

I'm really noticing that I can't play much with it. The performance difference in games like Insurgency on both computers is night and day. I can pull 60+ frames easily, her computer struggles so hard.

Am I bottlenecking my wife's GPU with her CPU?

Any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks!
 

Wendigo

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Nov 26, 2002
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The FX-4300 never was a good gaming CPU. And yes, it probabl;y can't push the RX470 to its limits. You can check the CPU and GPU usages while gaming to confirm this. Is the GPU always at or near 100% usage ? If not, it would confirm the FX-4300 is holding it back.

What is the "5th gen" CPU you're comparing it to ? Any 5th generation i5 or i3 will be way more powerful than the FX-4300, probably something like twice more powerful for an i5. They're enough to drive a GTX1060, although the i3 might be somewhat borderline for the latest games.
 
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I've previously owned the FX 6300, and I know how bad this CPU was, at least for high-end gaming. It used to bottleneck my GTX 970 card. But once I upgraded to an i7 4790 (non-K) CPU, there was 'night and day' performance difference in most of the games, if not all.

I'm still rocking the same INTEL i7 CPU, but this time it is paired with an RX 480 GPU.
 

kruxpavilion

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Feb 11, 2014
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So this is essentially a confirmation then - yes it's definitely bottlenecking the GPU.

Did some stress tests and the GPU never seems to operate past 75%. Damn. What a waste of money. The challenge is now to understand where to go from here. I don't believe there are any quality CPU's that can fit the AM3+ slot.. I'd have to completely replace my motherboard as well as my CPU.
 

Wendigo

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So this is essentially a confirmation then - yes it's definitely bottlenecking the GPU.

Did some stress tests and the GPU never seems to operate past 75%. Damn. What a waste of money. The challenge is now to understand where to go from here. I don't believe there are any quality CPU's that can fit the AM3+ slot.. I'd have to completely replace my motherboard as well as my CPU.
You may look for a used FX-8xxx. Much better than the 4xxx series. They should do fine with the RX470.
 

kruxpavilion

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Feb 11, 2014
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I'll work towards getting a fx-8xxx then. I don't really want to completely overhaul this system.

I do have the other system but that's mine - this computer we're talking about is my wife's. I had it built as a cheaper build (see where that got me) but I obviously didn't look to hard into the FX lineup. I knew the AMD line was inferior but I didn't think it was going to bottleneck the GPU. My mistake.

I appreciate your guys' input.
 
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Wendigo

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I'll work towards getting a fx-8xxx then. I don't really want to completely overhaul this system.

I do have the other system but that's mine - this computer we're talking about is my wife's. I had it built as a cheaper build (see where that got me) but I obviously didn't look to hard into the FX lineup. I knew the AMD line was inferior but I didn't think it was going to bottleneck the GPU. My mistake.

I appreciate your guys' input.
Well, it wasn't really a mistake if your original goal was to buid a cheap PC. The FX-4300 was a decent choice at the time for a budget PC. For the same price, you would have get no better than a dual core Pentium or, maybe, a 2nd gen i3, which would not fare really better for gaming today.
 
I'll work towards getting a fx-8xxx then. I don't really want to completely overhaul this system.

I do have the other system but that's mine - this computer we're talking about is my wife's. I had it built as a cheaper build (see where that got me) but I obviously didn't look to hard into the FX lineup. I knew the AMD line was inferior but I didn't think it was going to bottleneck the GPU. My mistak

No worries, m8. Good luck.