[SOLVED] Will i have bottleneck with i7 3770

[hightsee]

I currently have an i5 2500 paired with a GTX 960 (overclocked), and I wanted to upgrade to a i7 3770, will the i7 require a better graphics card or am I good with the 960?

 

[ceriumin]

I currently have an i5 2500 paired with a GTX 960 (overclocked), and I wanted to upgrade to a i7 3770, will the i7 require a better graphics card or am I good with the 960?

Firstly, with such an old CPU, I doubt you would be any good with the I7 3770, so I feel like it is not worth the upgrade. Secondly, it should be a fine match, maybe CPU heavy titles may bottleneck but I wouldn't worry too much.

 

[cdrkf]

I currently have an i5 2500 paired with a GTX 960 (overclocked), and I wanted to upgrade to a i7 3770, will the i7 require a better graphics card or am I good with the 960?

It won't 'require' a better graphics card - although you probably won't see much of a performance boost in most games as the i5 2500 should already be fast enough to keep a GTX 960 fed (that said, there are a few of the latest titles that need the 8 threads of an i7 so some games may well be a bit smoother).

The i7 3770 is quite a bit faster as well as having more threads, so you could realistically pair it with a faster GPU if you wanted to (probably up to something like a GTX 1070 or GTX 1650 Super)

 

[hightsee]

Okay, thanks!

 

[King_V]

"Bottleneck" is a badly misused term that has become meaningless.

Do not worry about bottleneck. The important factors are:

• What is your monitor's resolution?
• What is your monitor's refresh rate?
• Does your monitor have FreeSync, GSync, or neither?
• What specific games are you playing?

On that last point - where in one game, the weakest link might be the GPU, on the same exact system, the weakest link might be the CPU. Another it might be how much RAM your system has, etc.

Now, if you can get a used i7 fairly cheap, it would be worthwhile because newer games are starting to demand more threads. Still, the above 4 questions I listed are the most important part of this. There is NO SUCH THING as an ideal mach between a CPU and a GPU.

 

[InvalidError]

"Bottleneck" is a badly misused term that has become meaningless.

It isn't meaningless, only grossly misused and misunderstood as there is no such thing as "no bottleneck", only pushing bottlenecks beyond the each given person cares about. Bottleneck zealots would throw a fit at my i5-3470 and GTX1050, works fine for me since I don't give a hoot about eye-candy (I often lower it just to reduce visual clutter anyway) and am fine with a steady 45+ fps in the few games (mainly WoW) I actually care about.

 

[cdrkf]

There is NO SUCH THING as an ideal mach between a CPU and a GPU.

True, however there is such a thing as a bad match.... Given the lengthy backwards compatibility of graphics cards it's technically possible to pair an RTX 2080ti with a very old cpu provided the motherboard supports UEFI.... however I don't think anyone would advocate pairing a £1200 gpu with a Core i3 530 for example...

 

[InvalidError]

True, however there is such a thing as a bad match....

Though there is no such thing as a "match" due to GPU requirements for any given title having a nearly 100:1 range depending on resolution, details and frame rate whereas CPU performance scaling is more in the realm of 3:1 between absolute minimum requirement and the best currently available.

If you have excess GPU-power after setting everything to Ultra, you can push resolution scaling beyond 100% (modern-day FSAA) and have practically infinite GPU-power sink.

 

[cdrkf]

Though there is no such thing as a "match" due to GPU requirements for any given title having a nearly 100:1 range depending on resolution, details and frame rate whereas CPU performance scaling is more in the realm of 3:1 between absolute minimum requirement and the best currently available.

If you have excess GPU-power after setting everything to Ultra, you can push resolution scaling beyond 100% (modern-day FSAA) and have practically infinite GPU-power sink.

Yeah - it's also true that for most of the bigger games there are lots of GPU tweaks and mods that can help compensate for a lack of GPU power (for those stuck with weak gpu's on laptops and such). Whereas it's almost impossible to correct for a severe cpu bottleneck.

I guess the idea of matching cpu + gpu comes down to a value for money argument - it's common for oem machines and so on to be sold without any meaningful graphics capability so the obvious upgrade for many to get into pc gaming is to add a graphics card. In that context it is possible to make a judgement over how much money it makes sense to spend on a GPU to get a good result.

 

[InvalidError]

In that context it is possible to make a judgement over how much money it makes sense to spend on a GPU to get a good result.

Except everyone has different opinions on how much is a reasonable amount to spend and what constitutes 'good' results. Also varies a lot depending on what games are involved.