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Originally Posted by Shadowmeph how do you figure out what is bottle necking your system |
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Originally Posted by Mac29 I figure whether I notice 'bottlenecking' or not, say if I picked up a newer game, I'd still be investing in an efficient modern card. |
Simple way to see a bottleneck is to run your favorite game and open a program like MSI afterburner in the background (make sure you have it set to show cpu and gpu load %...it wouldn't show cpu % on my amd setup, so I also opened up task manager and went to the cpu performance tab to get the info). Exit the game and look at the load percentages after playing for a bit. If the cpu is 100% and GPU is not, then you are CPU limited. If GPU is 100% and CPU is not, then you are GPU limited. One of them won't be 100%...unless you have a magical perfectly balanced system for a given game. Just remember that some games won't run all the cores the same. You may have only one core pegged at 99-100%, and it could be limiting you if the game is horribly threaded.
I had an phenom II x3 710 (should be ballpark what the OP CPU is, only one more core, but slower freq), and in most games I was CPU limited with my gtx 460. At times it would be a gpu limit, but most of the time it was a CPU bottleneck. Last fall I went to a i5 3570k with the same gtx 460, and I am now 100% gpu usage all the time in games (the cpu is almost never 100%), so I am now completely GPU limited.
EDIT: I also run 1680x1050. With my upgrade avg and peak fps only went up a bit, but the big improvement was min fps. All of my fps drops or lag spikes that I occasionally had with the x3 710 during high action scenes (large battles in starcraft II, multiple players and expolsions in BF3, etc), were completely gone...smooth game play.