What setup will bottleneck an overclocked Core i7 930 setup?

[Lmeow]

Just wondering how much more life I can get out of my i7 930. Say it's overclocked at 3.6 GHz, what type of graphic card setup would the i7 be able to handle before it becomes the bottleneck?

I'm not upgrading anytime soon, I just want a rough estimate if any recent, economically-viable option this or next generation (by estimation) graphical card setup would be too much power for an i7 @ 3.6 to handle.

By economically-viable, I'm not talking about HD 6990 Q-CFX, but would a pair of stock HD 6950s in CrossFire overclock an i7 at that speed? Any based on rough estimation, would next generation's mid to high end graphic cards be too much for an i7?

 

[Cygnus x-1]

The first gen i7's are roughly 15 percent slower than the current chips, so no reason to worry about performance especially when overclocked to 3.6. You should be good to go with CF 6950's IMO.

These chips overclock very well, I have my i7 920 to 3500ish with just a tad over stock voltage. 3.6 to 3.8ghz is almost guaranteed with decent cooling.

 

[Lmeow]

Alright, thanks. What about next generations cards, roughly guessing? I.e., the successor to the HD 6950.

 

[Cygnus x-1]

Personally and I know some will disagree but... I think an i7 quad at 3.6 and above can handle any card combo even the up coming 7 series from AMD and the 6 series from Nvidia. I mean OEM's put stock chips in their boxes without worrying about cpu bottlenecks. On a side note, your chip should reach 3.8 with good cooling, maybe higher.

 

[ahnilated]

My i7 920 with an aftermarket cooler is running 3.8G at 1.22 volts and doesn't go above 70C with hyperthreading turned on.