Will a GTX 760 Bottleneck a Core 2 Quad Q9650

Solution
No, your processor will bottleneck The 760. Its a decent card, it just lacks the RAM for modern games. You'll be able to at least to high settings on World of Warships. The other two, I don't play, so I don't know. You might be able to max out all options if you turn down AA. Witcher 3, Medium settings, and your CPU is going to be the bottleneck in this game first. It has alot going on, but it's very CPU speed dependent. BF1, You're going to probably be on Medium also. This game is really modern for both the Card and your Processor. You might be on Low. It will game. It's about equal to a GTX1050-minus the RAM.

I fried my card at a LAN party when the guys house got struck by lightning. I used the 760 for about 2 months until I went...

joshyboy82

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There, with the TL:DR answer out of the way, depends on the resolution and game. You have a Quad Core, but it's throughput is ancient. Most modern games weigh heavily on the graphics end, not the processor. So you can turn up AA. I answer these questions everyday and I always suggest the same thought: Something is going to be a bottleneck, at least it's not your ___________. If you get a weaker card, what gaming does that leave you with? So what are your actual options. I have a 760 in an old system, and when I bought the 970, I felt a bit of buyer's remorse. It wasn't immediately better. I didn't notice all my games improve. Then I fried that card on accident and had to go back to the 760. Witcher 3 was unplayable. Oh, so what games are you wanting to play?
 

Deanosaur2000

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So how did you fry your card? did you overclock the gpu so much that you broke it?

BTW: the games: Will it bottleneck
World of Tanks at max settings
World of Warships at high settings
Warthunder: at high settings

Lets pick more powerful games:
Witcher III
Battlefield I
Crysis III
Batman Arkham Night
Any powerful game that will cause the GTX 760 to get around 30-60fps at full load

 

Deanosaur2000

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I already knew that the cpu was ancient i even know the day it was built which is 2007, but i found a bunch of towers left outside near a trash can and want to put good use into the parts and want to make a cheap build? and i have left over computer components and i wanted to know if my GTX 760 would bottleneck the core 2 quad Q9650.
 

joshyboy82

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No, your processor will bottleneck The 760. Its a decent card, it just lacks the RAM for modern games. You'll be able to at least to high settings on World of Warships. The other two, I don't play, so I don't know. You might be able to max out all options if you turn down AA. Witcher 3, Medium settings, and your CPU is going to be the bottleneck in this game first. It has alot going on, but it's very CPU speed dependent. BF1, You're going to probably be on Medium also. This game is really modern for both the Card and your Processor. You might be on Low. It will game. It's about equal to a GTX1050-minus the RAM.

I fried my card at a LAN party when the guys house got struck by lightning. I used the 760 for about 2 months until I went and bought a new 970.
 
Solution
@Deanosaur2000 I imagine it would at times, but it would still probably be worth it. I would look up some YouTube videos of gameplay with the two, I think I've seen some with a GTX 760 paired with a Core 2 Quad before, wasn't too bad.

@joshyboy82 does your i7-950 bottleneck your GTX 970 in any games?
 

Karadjgne

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Depends entirely on the game specifically and the settings used. BF1 can bog down any i5, as can Ashes of the Singularity, WoW, modded Gta:V, there's plenty more. It's only because these games are optimized for more than 5 threads, so any quad will suffer. MGS:V on my i5-3570k saw 90% usage or better, swapped it for an i7-3770K and usage dropped to 55%. This can affect streamed games used through Arc or Steam, depends on the actual usage. For heavy single thread games like cs:go, LoL, Wot etc, it'll be GHz that's going to be more important than thread count, with graphics only limited by the gpu. 3.0GHz is about the cutoff, over that and the cpu will handle anything reasonably, under that and the cpu will struggle to some degree
 

joshyboy82

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It might. Not that I've noticed. There's two games I've played that I can't max out settings at 1080p and still get 60fps. From the MSI Afterburner utility, it seems to be a card bottleneck, with my CPU usage sitting around 60%. 1st is Division, second is Witcher 3. I am building a new system, because I feel this set up I have is balanced, but loosing ground, plus I want to go up to a 21:9 3440p monitor.
 

Karadjgne

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For a 4k monitor, you'll really need to come off the money, that present system won't do it. You'll be looking at a skylake /kaby-lake i7 with a 1080/1080ti minimums to get any possible playability.

I have one game that's stifled by my 970 on 3770k. That's MGS :V, played through GeForce Experience settings using 4k DSR. It gets my i7 to 55% but the gtx970 sees 99% usage and vram usage of 3.5Gb. That's at consistent 60fps on 1080p.

Of course with Guildwars 2 ,i swear I can hear the gpu snoring, it's so bored.