Will the i3 Bottleneck my GPU?

[ZOiD-C]

The title says pretty much all of it... By the way I don't need a high end processor because I don't do too many CPU intensive tasks. The GPU that I'm looking at is a Sapphire R9 390X. Will an i3 bottleneck this GPU?

 

[nymzy]

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/faq/id-2729891/bottlenecking-guide-chart-2015.html

look in tier 3, it will not bottleneck.

 

[ZOiD-C]

Okay, what if I run 2 in SLI later down the road? Will it bottleneck then?

 

[chamko]

Its gonna definitely bottleneck the gpu while gaming but if you are sure that the tasks you mentioned arent CPU intensive than go for it however my heart of an overclocking fan would take a pentium G3258 over I3. its cheaper, unlocked and in benchmarks it defeated most of the i3s while being overclocked to a 4,5ghz with the stock cooler !

 

[nymzy]

Okay, what if I run 2 in SLI later down the road? Will it bottleneck then?

yes it will in games that use the cpu, 2 970's=980ti
and it's recommended that u get a i5 with that

 

[Quixit]

Honestly, if you're thinking long-term you're better off with one of the cheaper i5's. There is not a huge price difference. That way you're set up for future games, that will likely require a quad-core processor. Some current games even require a quad-core. It's cheaper to upgrade a GPU than a processor down the road because the sockets change so often that you normally need to buy a new motherboard and maybe even RAM every time you upgrade your processor.

But if you already have the i3 there is no reason to upgrade it yet.

 

[ZOiD-C]

Honestly, if you're thinking long-term you're better off with one of the cheaper i5's. There is not a huge price difference. That way you're set up for future games, that will likely require a quad-core processor. Some current games even require a quad-core. It's cheaper to upgrade a GPU than a processor down the road because the sockets change so often that you normally need to buy a new motherboard and maybe even RAM every time you upgrade your processor.

But if you already have the i3 there is no reason to upgrade it yet.

Thanks, link to an i5 that would be suitable? I haven't bought anything yet, I wanted to get the opinion from some people that know more than me 😀

 

[nymzy]

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646i54690k
get this 1 if you have a z97 or z87 motherboard

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646i54590
get this 1 if not

 

[ZOiD-C]

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646i54690k
get this 1 if you have a z97 or z87 motherboard

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646i54590
get this 1 if not

Okay, seems a bit pricy as I want to devote most of my budget to the GPU. If there are any good cheaper AMD processors that would be suitable for my situation I would appreciate if someone could toss in a link, as stated before I don't do anything that requires a super powerful CPU.

 

[doctor8ball]

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/faq/id-2729891/bottlenecking-guide-chart-2015.html

look in tier 3, it will not bottleneck.

There certainly will be some bottlenecking, although fairly minor. Demanding games like gta v on medium/high settings will really show bottlenecking though.
An i3 and 390x combo will not be completely free of bottlenecking for every single game out there.
I recommend an i5 to eliminate it and future proof for much longer than an i3 would.