Will my i5 bottleneck my GTX 1070?

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Cosmicsaber

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I'm going to get the 1070 in the fall when hopefully it will be restocked, but my question is will my i5 bottleneck it?
(Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor)
 
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photonboy
WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.

You will definitely find scenarios where a CPU faster than an i5-4460, and even i5-4590 will benefit from a faster CPU when paired with a GTX1080.

(and of course times when the GTX1080 is the bottleneck. There is ALWAYS a bottleneck somewhere usually the CPU or GPU. Or artificial cap like VSYNC)

Now, the amount for most games will be between almost NOTHING and very MINIMAL, thus the advantages of a faster CPU also minimal.

Some scenarios will gain over 10% (i.e. vs i7-6700K for example). And even when you DO find these situations it might mean 70FPS vs say 80FPS which is just fine anyway. If FPS is really low then of course you can always tweak some settings as well (CPU related ones if it's a CPU bottleneck...
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I have a similar question. My processor is a 4690 w/ mini-itx mother board (Asrock H97M-itx/ac). Curious if there is a bottleneck as well.

Edit: Just saw the above answer. Glad to hear about no bottleneck. :)
 
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WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.

You will definitely find scenarios where a CPU faster than an i5-4460, and even i5-4590 will benefit from a faster CPU when paired with a GTX1080.

(and of course times when the GTX1080 is the bottleneck. There is ALWAYS a bottleneck somewhere usually the CPU or GPU. Or artificial cap like VSYNC)

Now, the amount for most games will be between almost NOTHING and very MINIMAL, thus the advantages of a faster CPU also minimal.

Some scenarios will gain over 10% (i.e. vs i7-6700K for example). And even when you DO find these situations it might mean 70FPS vs say 80FPS which is just fine anyway. If FPS is really low then of course you can always tweak some settings as well (CPU related ones if it's a CPU bottleneck, GPU if GPU bottleneck).

So...
Long story short is that I wouldn't worry too much about it, but let's at least answer the question correctly.
 
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Solution
If not clear, a good scenario would be something like STARCRAFT 2 when battles get intensive.

The visuals are more GPU related, but the calculations for bullets etc are done on the CPU. In fact, for this game they had to lock it down on TWO cores. Even the fastest CPU's can drop a bit.

It's also worth noting that DX12 (when utilized properly) is likely to minimize even more of CPU bottlenecking. Unless they start putting in code that requires more of the CPU we may not even need much more than an i5-4460 in most future DX12 titles (that are coded properly). Wait and see.

SC2: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-processor-frame-rate-performance,3427-8.html

This is pretty much a WORST-CASE example for games people still play, but I find it interesting.

Note the i5-3550 was dropping below 30FPS (it will go even lower for short times). An i5-4460 for reference is almost EXACTLY the same performance.

So again, most games aren't like this, and it's not really an issue, but it's nice to understand the technology if you're going to have a discussion on this or simply want to buy a graphics card etc.

(So i5-4460 + GTX1080 = awesome fun)
 
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lol thanks
 
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I'm getting a GTX1080 BTW. I'm upgrading from a GTX680.

I find my GTX680 very capable still for most games, but held off buying several games recently until I can really crank up the visuals whilst still being a smooth 60FPS experience at 1440p.

I won't buy until closer to Christmas though. I always hold off until a great reference design is out and out long enough to ensure quality.

I'm expecting up to 3X the performance of my GTX680 (similar to GTX770) though.

Other:
Some people complain about the pace of CPU development on Intel's side, but frankly I'm glad there hasn't been a big need for it. I do not want to rebuild my system any time soon.

If my i7-3770K CPU or motherboard don't die I'll be using this and the GTX1080 until about 2020.
 
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i5-4460 tweaking?

I'm not familiar with Haswell, but is there any way to adjust your multipliers when the CPU is non-K?

Turbo mode has multiple frequencies depending on the load. For my CPU for example at stock it was 3.9GHz (light usage with Turbo kicked in) and 3.6GHz (full load). I'm curious if you can bring up any of those multipliers. Maybe gain up to 300MHz full load?

Just an idea.
 
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2020? Damn! I will probably not upgrade my GPU when I get the 1070 until 2019 or 2020. For my CPU probably in the next year or two. Also, my ram I will upgrade that before the years out to 16gb because 8 is so cheap.

 
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Update:
I said GTX1080 for some reason but everything I wrote still applies to the GTX1070.

16GB (GB not gb):
Arguably not a big deal now, but at least one game has already stated "at least 8GB" as the minimum. I have NEVER gone above 8GB usage with 16GB installed though. Never. Ever. Not once, though I also never have browsers open when gaming or edit video.

CPU upgrade from i5-4460?
You may want to justify that at some point, and of course the motherboard (and CPU cooler) must support this.

If most of your games don't benefit by more than 10% it's probably not worth it, especially if you are already at a good FPS.

You can look up "CPU scaling" for a game, but look at THIS and guess how much these particular games would benefit (you'd be just above the i7-4765T for reference)->
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8227/devils-canyon-review-intel-core-i7-4790k-and-i5-4690k/5
 
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Hi there! I'm new here. I saw your comment and I wondered, when was the last time you upgraded your cpu? And how long do you think cpu's and motherboards will last? Could they last 10 years for instance?

Side note: At the moment, I have this setup: i52400, GTX 770, 8gb ram DDR3 psu=750Watt. I'm planning to buy the 1070 GTX. But I wanna stay safe for atleast another 5 years. I know I need to upgrade my cpu, cause it will bottleneck with the 1070 for sure. I'm going for an i76700k (with a new motherboard ofcourse), since my cpu starts to having troubles with black ops 3. When it closes, it takes a few minutes to work properly back again. I'm also upgrading ram to 16gb. I'm just hoping I can stay safe with this setup till 2025. That would be awesome.
 
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phil7990,
PM me for more info as I don't want to hijack this but...

1) i7-3770K (I said above)
- I tweaked that so minimum Turbo is 4.2GHz (was 3.9GHz max, and 3.6GHz min by default)
- ignoring hyperthreading, that puts me about 30 to 35% faster than an i5-2400

2) 10 Years is quite possible, but there are many factors. Quality of the motherboard, frankly not screwing with it once it's working.. CPU's in my experience fail rarely after they've been shown to work for a few months reliably.

*CPU life in terms of gaming is a different story. We're slowly switching towards DX12 and Vulkan which when properly coded for use the CPU a lot better. It can use MORE of the cores/threads than normal, AND the code is more efficient as well.

The biggest factor in CPU life is probably if games add functionality that eats up even more CPU processing power. AI, CPU physics or whatever. It's really hard to predict that.

3) GTX1070 - just see my above comments. I'd estimate somewhere between NO bottleneck and 40% bottleneck depending on the game (compared to the best CPU like an i7-6700K). 20% may be more typical but games vary a lot.

4) BO3 - I doubt your closing issue is related to the CPU. That sounds more like a software problem. CPU's tend to just CRASH the system when they fail

5) 16GB upgrade?
If switching to Skylake, might as well just wait on that as that uses DDR4 memory. As I've said 8GB is fine for now.

6) 2025 - well. good luck with that. Having said that, I'm in my mid 40's so gaming isn't a huge deal to me, though enough that I can justify the GTX1080 (or maybe wait for GTX1080Ti).

I'm planning to run my system into the ground, in part because I've built a big catalogue of games thanks to Steam sales. By 2020 I'll probably end up with a couple games I'm happy to play for a few more years after that.

I expect Star Citizen will run fairly nice on a GTX1070 or GTX1080 once it's optimized. They're working hard on DX12.

Heck, I still haven't finished Skyrim and I got that in 2011. I've put in over 500 hours though (a few restarts). Do I love it? No, but it's mindless fun to unwind. I also plan to add more graphics mods once I upgrade my GTX680.

7) VR is another thing though. I love the concept, but in reality I don't want to stick that thing on my head. The GTX1080 was shown to get about a 50% boost when using VR (left eye and right eye have common elements so you can optimize for that).

So that puts the GTX1080 pretty far ahead of the GTX970 (it's approx 3X as fast in VR if you factor in everything, assuming it's optimized for the above), and the GTX970 is the current minimum for VR and likely to remain the target for the next two years or so.
 
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Haven't been on here for a while. I'm not going to upgrade to a 1070 just yet. I'm satisfied with the system I have now. Whenever I see fit, I'll upgrade, but I need to pay bills so 😛
 
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