Will a Core i5 650 @ 3.20 ghz bottleneck a MSI Radeon HD 7870 OC

[SnakeGTX]

I was wondering if a Intel Core i5-650 would bottleneck a MSI Radeon HD 7870 OC. People have told me that the i5-650 could really run anything at my resolution, but I don't know about CPU because its only a dual core. But i found a video on YouTube about the cores you need for gaming: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4PDoy-mi0A

But then again he is running a newer processor and I don't know if that's going to make much of a difference, and i was hoping some of you guys in this forum could tell me.

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Intel Core i5 650 @ 3.20 Ghz

P7H55 PRO Motherboard

8GB of ram @ 1333mhz

1TB Seagate barracuda 7200RPM

Cooler Master i500 (80 plus bronze, with two 6 pin PCIe)

500W power supply

1280x1024 monitor
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And if i did get a new 1440x900 or 1980x1080 monitor, would i then get some bottlenecking?

Thanks in advance
-Snake

 

[simon12]

Short answer Yes especially at the lower res but still even at 1080. Some games just don't run well on dual core CPUs regardless. I have not watched the link so cannot comment on it.

 

[InvalidError]

The i5-650 is roughly equivalent to today's i3-32xx/42xx and might start to show its age in the most CPU-intensive modern games.

"Will X bottleneck Y" is a somewhat silly question since something ALWAYS bottlenecks something else. The difference is in the balance of how often X becomes the bottleneck instead of Y and how bad it gets in a given workload or game.

In general, what matters the most when increasing resolution is the GPU and with a 7870, you should have more than enough GPU power for 1080p with just about everything possible maxed out in most games.

This is almost an exact duplicate of:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1790866/core-650-ghz-bottleneck-sapphire-7870.html

 

[jaguarskx]

The first generation Core i3/i5/i7 CPUs are basically equivalent to AMD's Piledriver FX CPUs when it comes to playing games. You are not going to get much of a bottleneck. Below are some benchmark of CPU intensive games. The i5-650 is not part of the benchmark, but the i7-920 is and games basically do not benefit Hyper Threading.

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More benchmarks can be found in the following link:

http://www.techspot.com/guides/gaming/
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http://www.techspot.com/review/712-arma-3-benchmarks/page5.html

http://www.techspot.com/review/670-metro-last-light-performance/page6.html

http://www.techspot.com/review/642-crysis-3-performance/page6.html

http://www.techspot.com/review/608-hitman-absolution-performance-benchmarks/page6.html

 

[jaguarskx]

Hmmm..... actually I forgot that the i5-650 is a dual core CPU rather than a quad core CPU so it's performance would be closer to the i3-3220.

 

[SnakeGTX]

thanks jaguar the benchmarks help alot. So, the i7-920 has similar (if not older) technology, and the video that i posted above shows that a dual core doesn't have any less performance than a 4 or 6 core CPU (for gaming), so i should get about the same performance as the i7-920.

If not, please correct me where i am wrong.

 

[jaguarskx]

In general, the vast majority of games still use 2 cores. There may be specific games you want to play that can make use of 4 cores and they will provide a better performance. The more CPU dependent the game is the larger the difference. For the most part you will not have an issue playing games with only a dual core. As can be seen in the chart above Crysis 3 seems to be an exception. Comparing the i3-3220 vs the i5-3470, the i3 takes a 40% performance hit vs. the i5. That is the only exception.

Battlefield 3 in single player campaign only uses 2 cores. Though it does seem that according to the posted video, the in the single player "Comrades" mission having only 2 cores meant that you loose one support NPC and I suppose at the start of the mission instead of someone pushing the doors open for you, the doors open by themselves.

The i5-650 will perform closer to the i3-3220. If both were clocked at the same speed the newer Ivy Bridge i3 would have better performance than the older core i5. Both are dual core CPUs, but on average 3rd gen Core i3/i5/i7 CPUs are about 18% on average more powerful than the 1st gen series.

 

[SnakeGTX]

In general, the vast majority of games still use 2 cores. There may be specific games you want to play that can make use of 4 cores and they will provide a better performance. The more CPU dependent the game is the larger the difference. For the most part you will not have an issue playing games with only a dual core. As can be seen in the chart above Crysis 3 seems to be an exception. Comparing the i3-3220 vs the i5-3470, the i3 takes a 40% performance hit vs. the i5. That is the only exception.

Battlefield 3 in single player campaign only uses 2 cores. Though it does seem that according to the posted video, the in the single player "Comrades" mission having only 2 cores meant that you loose one support NPC and I suppose at the start of the mission instead of someone pushing the doors open for you, the doors open by themselves.

The i5-650 will perform closer to the i3-3220. If both were clocked at the same speed the newer Ivy Bridge i3 would have better performance than the older core i5. Both are dual core CPUs, but on average 3rd gen Core i3/i5/i7 CPUs are about 18% on average more powerful than the 1st gen series.

As you see the 7850 (not 7870) is getting around 70 FPS, And in this video this guy also has a i5-650 and a 7850, And he is getting 60 FPS while recording with Fraps. I don't think the CPU is bottlenecking the GPU in a new game like Batman arkham origins.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSIigfzeOQ0