Will I run into bottleneck with this setup?

[iainfixed]

Hello,

I am looking into buying an XFX 7970 3GB card here shortly to replace my 460GTX SLI setup in my rig.

My rig's specs:

AMD Phenom II 980BE Quad core 4.0ghz (oc'd)
Asus Crosshair V motherboard
16GB G.SKill Ripsaws DDR3

Planning on running an eyefinity+1 setup (3 bottom, 1 top) and running GW2, TERA, and source games mostly. (I don't mind running VERY heavy games on a single monitor)

So, will I hit bottleneck?

 

[geofelt]

Possibly.
But... what are your options?

You will certainly need more graphics muscle for triple monitors +, and the 7970 is a very good upgrade from sli GTX460.
Go ahead and buy the graphics card and see how you do. You will get very good graphics performance, higher fps, better minimum fps and the ability to select more eye candy.

Once you are running the 7970, try reducing your cpu OC and see what happens. If the FPS drops considerably, it will suggest that your games are sensitive to cpu capability.
If a cpu upgrade is needed, then a 3570K With a modest OC and a Z77 motherboard will make a big difference.

 

[iainfixed]

Possibly.
But... what are your options?

You will certainly need more graphics muscle for triple monitors +, and the 7970 is a very good upgrade from sli GTX460.
Go ahead and buy the graphics card and see how you do. You will get very good graphics performance, higher fps, better minimum fps and the ability to select more eye candy.

Once you are running the 7970, try reducing your cpu OC and see what happens. If the FPS drops considerably, it will suggest that your games are sensitive to cpu capability.
If a cpu upgrade is needed, then a 3570K With a modest OC and a Z77 motherboard will make a big difference.

My only current option is a GPU upgrade, I have $550 to be used for this upgrade and prefer my AMD based system (I just built the damned thing less than a year ago) I'm just sick of having 3 screens, and only using one to game on. I don't even need it to be super pretty pretty in triple screen mode. I can deal with games on a single screen, but would like the ability.

I'm not that keen on replacing my motherboard, and cpu with intel right away. Maybe in another year or so.

 

[BoltHead513]

Hmm, i noticed the processor doesn't support PCi 3.0. Although it is bottlenecked you shouldn't take much of a hit performance-wise

 

[iainfixed]

Hmm, i noticed the processor doesn't support PCi 3.0. Although it is bottlenecked you shouldn't take much of a hit performance-wise

If anything I can upgrade that to a better AMD cpu later on that does. I don't think I should have too much trouble.

Planning on running my setup with the 3 screens on the bottom, and an accessory on the top. The XFX 7970 GHZ edition seems to be able to do this, without having to adjust games down too much if I run in span mode, and no adjustment/ultra on single screen.