Bulldozer's best GPU?

[Pedwar]

Okay so recently after playing BF3 I've noticed that the my 550Ti SLI is bottlenecking my AMD 8150 Bulldozer.. It caused the game to stutter a LOT until I turned the textures and shadows down, but atleast now I can play it. What's the best card I can buy, that won't bottleneck the CPU, and will also be reasonably priced (I'm only 16 so money is kinda a problem and I don't wanna waste any more on crappy hardware like the 550Ti and tbh the Bulldozer, should've bought a 2500k in the first place). So what's the best GPU I can buy, for cheap, and won't bottleneck? Or will I have to save up to avoid any kind of bottleneck?

[JJThomp]

What resolution are you playing at? At 1080p my gtx 560ti plays bf3 on high perfectly.

[great_big_abyss]

best bang for the buck, I think would be a 560Ti.

Alternatively, for a little less money you can get a 6870 which I think performs almost as well.

[Pedwar]

I can play at 1080p too with medium textures, everything else on high and AA off. I was hoping 2 550Ti's would be as good as a 570 or a 560 at least. But no, they're pretty much garbage, a single 560Ti like you have is a much better choice. Also what processor you got? According to AMD a Bulldozer is reccomended to run with a 6990, but that thing will cost more than my entire setup by itself. I'm pretty sure an Intel CPU wouldn't bottleneck as bad as this..

[Pedwar]

Are you sure a 560Ti won't cause any bottlenecks?

[JJThomp]

I have an i5 2500k but that would only make maybe .5 FPS avg of a difference, an 8 core bulldozer is not ideal but it is good enough for BF3. Are you sure that SLI is set up? A 550 ti should run 60 fps on medium. From the reading I have done you really should be doing better than my 560 ti.

Anyways if SLI is working correctly the only cards that aren't going to bottleneck your CPU in BF3 are 7950, 7970's, gtx 580 OC'd a bit. Actually they will still bottleneck your CPU but you will be able to run BF3 at 1080 really high settings smoothly anyways.

If you just want to run all high settings pick up a 560 ti Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 Ti Fermi 900MHZ 1GB 4.0GHZ GDDR5 2XDVI Mini HDMI DIRECTX11 PCI-E Video Card - Gigabyte - GV-N560OC-1GI

This one only a little over $200 before MIR and you should be able to OC it to between 950/1900/2200 and 1050/2100/2350 or maybe even higher which will give you buttery smooth frame rates on high settings.

I'm using a GTX 560ti Twin Frozr II and I can run it at 980/1960/2300 but I keep it backed down at 960/1920/2300 because after that I see no noticeable performance gains and my card stays nicely below 65 C

Edit: I just read your last comment and pretty much any card is going to bottleneck your CPU so you might as well get best bang for your buck if you are a student.

[Pedwar]

It's weird, apparently 550TI SLI is suppossed to be inbetween a 560ti and a 570, but mine just don't seem to perform. I have an ASUS Sabertooth 990X motherboard, so it can't be that, I have a 700W PSU aswell so definitely enough power. The only other problem can either be the CPU or the RAM. Now my RAM is pretty bad, it's just some kingston 4 GB 1333 MHZ. Could the RAM be a problem? When playing BF3 it usually fills up to 3.5 GB and it's not very fast. So could it be that? RAM's really cheap nowadays anyway so buying better ones wont be a problem.

[JJThomp]

Ummm your ram could be affecting you a bit but not that much. Do you have the CFX bridge connected properly? do you only have one connected (you should only have 1 connected)? Is crossfire enabled in catalyst?

[Masteroderus]

Originally Posted by Pedwar

Okay so recently after playing BF3 I've noticed that the my 550Ti SLI is bottlenecking my AMD 8150 Bulldozer.. It caused the game to stutter a LOT until I turned the textures and shadows down, but atleast now I can play it. What's the best card I can buy, that won't bottleneck the CPU, and will also be reasonably priced (I'm only 16 so money is kinda a problem and I don't wanna waste any more on crappy hardware like the 550Ti and tbh the Bulldozer, should've bought a 2500k in the first place). So what's the best GPU I can buy, for cheap, and won't bottleneck? Or will I have to save up to avoid any kind of bottleneck?

The 8150 isn't bottlenecking your 550ti. You can keep throwing better/more gpus at the 8150 and you'll always see an increase. The 8150 is very comparable to a 2500K for gaming (except it's more money and less good at lightly threaded apps!). Don't expect a miracle from the 2500k with a 550ti setup.

You should go for a good single card solution, what is your budget?

I would say that the increase from dual 550ti to a single 560ti shouldn't be a crazy amount of fps more, mabye say 10? 20?

I'm sad to say that i'd recommend at least a single 580 to run bf3 at competitive frame rates on ultra settings.

I mean, who wants to play FPS with antiailiasing off?

[Pedwar]

Yeah.. I hate the fact that I can't play with max settings.. guess I'll just have to start saving up for a 580 then. Thanks for everyone's help anyway, it's cleared a lot up and at least I have an idea of what I need to do next. :)