No bottlenecking if older games?

[Mac29]

So this one seems obvious to me. If I invest in a GTX 750 and only play older games, up to say 2008, then I won't be bottlenecking what I play (with a Phenom II X2 550). It depends on what I throw at the system. I know it won't cause any problems.

Thinking I'll reassess a build towards the end of the year. The more I read up on i5s or FX vs. older Phenoms the more I think I might buy an all in one water system, read up on unlocking and OCing, do that and wait.

My antique card causes a lot of heat here in Florida. I could pop in a cheap solution or put the $ towards what I think I'll want later.

Would love to have a 750 in an i5 box and stop thinking about efficiency. Meanwhile mulling wants vs. needs.



Cheers,

Mac

[Shadowmeph]

I also think that it depends on games some games like Wow use allot of CPU others use GPU I haven'tr heard of any real Bottle necking in years .

[YoungMan]

Not too familiar with the prices in the states, but you wanna get the card that JUST crosses the line into the higher end. So a 760 or a 650ti boost/660. If you're down for AMD; 7850 or r9 265/270.

[Bond007]

As mentioned it really depends on the game if the x2 550 will bottleneck or not. Games like civilization, Starcraft, WOW, etc are quite CPU heavy at times and could cause a bottleneck for you .

[Mac29]

Yea I thought is was silly to even post the Q. Don't know if any modern games would suffer on my Phenom cranked up but I'll keep a 650ti or r9 265/270 in mind as well.

[Dragonstongue]

bottlenecks do happen, they do all the time, just folks don't see or know it. The phenom definitely will be a bottleneck vs the new generation of video cards how much depends on resolution and game of course. AIO are expensive considering many aircoolers cool just as well if not better in some cases. Ambient temps will effect cooling period, a custom loop however decimates any other cooler IF its a decent one. any lower end card will be ample for older games really, I would say a 4850 level of graphics card will be ample for virtually everything, save power a 4670 level so that really really opens up choices for AMD as well as Nvidia. 750Ti is an awesome card considering the performance it does have vs the power it uses I do not think any other card is anywhere close in all honesty and I hate Nvidia as a company. The problem with the 750Ti, cost.

what resolution?

[Shadowmeph]

I actually wonder ,if a system is bottle necking how do you figure out what is bottle necking your system, since prretty much all hardware is very basically the same but also different , eg take 2 cpus or graphics card that are the same then will not perform the exact same. so how does one figure out if somethong is bottlenecking.
Hmm maybe I should actually make a new post on this

[Mac29]

Yeah I was thinking a good water solution for either this old Phenom, or my Athlon II w/ should unlock to a Deneb (hopefully stable) could tide me over till I can go for whole i5 build. Or the AIO could be used on an FX. I only do 1680x1050 right now, obviously would like to up the eye candy.

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. The fact that I've seen better prices for water systems since last time I looked makes me lean that way. I just want to get a good balance between needed IPC and heat.

I'd rather use air, like a quiet Noctura. My wallet couldn't fathom any custom loop, in fact depending on price I'd probably skip OC and just put it towards a faster cpu. Right now it would solve a problem.

I'll have to read up on why some dislike Nvidia since what I've read recently makes me think their game is all over AMD going forward. Of course some will always say just take the best card for price that week.

Shadowmeph the only way I'd be able to tell is to post. Nice to get educated, like discovering I'd want better than 1600 ram next time.


Thanks much,

Mac

[Bond007]

Originally Posted by Shadowmeph

how do you figure out what is bottle necking your system

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.

[Shadowmeph]

Originally Posted by Bond007

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.

wow I can't believe that I didn't think of that lol thanks