Will an Xeon W3550 bottleneck a GTX 1060 3GB?

[Jlat512]

Its an Xeon W3550 not over clocked. I have 12 GB of RAM and a 500W PSU. Will it bottleneck a GTX 1060 3GB playing GTA V, Battlefield 1, etc.?

 

[Atomicdonut17]

It will be a bottleneck, and a noticeable one. 😛

 

[iamacow]

Yeah, that basically a downclocked i7 920. You are going to lose a good number for FPS just using the CPU. But i guess it depends on what resolution you play at

 

[Jlat512]

Will upgrading to a Pentium G4560 and then getting the GTX 1060 give me better performance? Or what is a better CPU that won't cost a whole lot but will give me better performance? I know I will need a new motherboard.

 

[Ecky]

Your Xeon has a lot of cores, but low clockspeed and (compared with new CPUs) poor per-clock performance. Each core individually is just too slow, and games rely on per-core speed. The G4560 is kindof in the opposite direction. It has very fast and higher clocked cores, but is only a dual core with hyperthreading, when many games are starting to use more threads. I think the Pentium would be an improvement, and you'd have upgrade options, but you really want at least an i5 for games like Battlefield and GTA. If your budget doesn't allow it, go for the Pentium but plan to replace it with an i5 later.

 

[Jlat512]

So getting a GTX 1060, I will see no improvement over a GTX 1050, but possible worse performance?

 

[Atomicdonut17]

So getting a GTX 1060, I will see no improvement over a GTX 1050, but possible worse performance?

Bottlenecks are bottlenecks. You'll still have one, but the notability from lacking power won't be such a turnoff.

 

[Ecky]

So getting a GTX 1060, I will see no improvement over a GTX 1050, but possible worse performance?

You can never have worse performance from a faster part. Worst case scenario is that in some cases, performance won't be any better.

 

[Jlat512]

So In GTA V, getting the 1060 should see better FPS at the same settings?Or vice versa? Would an i3 6100 or even an FX 6300 or so give me better performance compared to the Xeon or Pentium?
Sorry for the sort of brain dead questions, I have basic knowledge of this stuff but some of it gets confusing.

 

[Ecky]

If your CPU is what's preventing your framerates from being higher, getting a faster video card will not result in higher framerates. If your GPU is what's preventing it from being higher, it will help. Be aware that whichever is holding you back will vary from scene to scene.

An FX-6300 probably wouldn't be much of an upgrade, it's 5 years old and was not a great CPU when it was new. Depending on which i3 you pick, it could be an upgrade. A 6th generation i3 6100, or Pentium G4560 would both be improvements in some cases.

 

[Gon Freecss]

Get a locked Skylake/Kaby Lake quad-core.

 

[Jlat512]

Playing GTA online for about 30 minutes, 1920 x 1080, all settings at high and 1912MB out of 2048mb VRAM used, using Open Hardware Monitor, the highest any one of my four CPU's got was 81.5% but stayed around 65 to 75%, while my GPU core got to 86 %. Ran through its ingame benchmark and saw the same thing, got around 40 FPS playing in game. Will a CPU or GPU upgrade help?

 

[iamacow]

looks like the 1060 on very high settings @ 1080 is around 115fps on a i7 6700k. So yeah you have room to improve with a better CPU.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1060-pascal,4679-3.html