Bottleneck?

SuperDuperMe

SuperDuperMe

New Member
How can you tell a bottleneck apart from bad hardware?

I ask as i think my cpu may be bottlenecking my gpu but i know my hardware is bad anyway.

I think its bottlenecking as i am not getting performance that benchmarks suggest i should be getting, at first i thought it was the gpu was just not as good as previously said but after reading a lot online i am under the impression its a bottleneck.

For example, hwmonitor says that my card should be getting average 35 fps in bfbc2 maxed out at 1920x1200

Settings: High Quality
AA: 4x
AF: 8x
Resolution: 1920x1200
Test Machine: Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)
GeForce GTX 460 35 FPS
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB 35 FPS

However, i play at 1366x768 and if i enable aa and af i cant even play it, i can play with everything on high so long as aa and af is not activated.

Is my cpu bottlencking my card?

Or is there something else i am not getting?

If it is any help to diagnosing my problem, i also have immense microstutter in mw2 and fallout 3


EDIT: thats the benchmark of the 512mb version of my card, i have the 1gb version of the 3870x2
 
I think your CPU and GPUs compliment each other by amount of power and all that, but I think the main cause is that a E6600 at 2.4GHz is pretty weak, but then again, 2 3870s aren't what they used to be. Just a little dated system.
 
BFBC2 is coded for a quad core. The E6600 is holding you back there. The 3870 x2, while a bit dated, still will have quite a bit of power in it.

Have you tried it in games that do not require a quad core? How does it run?
 
@salvage, would upgrading cpu cause a good amount of performance boost?

@claptomann its not 2 seperate 3870's its a 3870x2 1gb
 
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possibly but I have no idea how much. I couldn't bump up the resolution in BFBC2 until I upgraded from a Athlon x2 to my 955. Have you tested it in other games yet? I want to make sure that the 3870x2 is running properly before I go and tell you to spend any money.
 
BFBC2 is a really CPU intensive game.
I got a huge bump in the FPS when I overclocked from 2.66 to 3.84, @Full HD res bottlenecked by my GPU.
I think specifically for BFBC2 a change in processor would help a lot.
 
@claptoman...Thats my mobo http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_775/P5W_DH_Deluxe/

@salvage, i notice stutter in mw2, bfbc2, cod4 and 5 9this is trying it maxed out)

EDIT: on mw2, i get just under 30fps with all setting on and maxed at 1366x768 but still notice considerable stutter :/

However, i can absolutly max out hawx at 1366x768 with a constant 55+ fps with vsync on.

I was thinking of going for a phenom 2 as an upgrade, 1 because it is so much cheaper than intel sandy bridges and 2 as it will only get cheaper with bulldoze coming out.

Are phenom 2's good for gaming? If they are good enough which one would be good for as cheap as possible?
 
Yeah the Phenom IIs are good for gaming. Especially on a budget. A 955 with a good cooler would be a great choice. I have mine at 3.8 and it hangs with my gpu in all the games I play.
 
hexa cores are only used by fsx, no other game is threaded to use more than 4 cores, so the extra 2 at a lower speed for a good bit more money is a waste for anything other than en and decrypting or ultra-tasking
 
It looks like a good bundle but the hexcores are not used in gaming yet. There are some engines that will make use of them but unfortunately those are also the games that do not need a lot of power (source engine/Left4Dead for example). The motherboard is not capable of Bulldozer Or at least that is not the chipset you wanted if you were planning to upgrade sometime.
 
I was planning on getting just a normal am3 socket as i wont be able to upgrade for a while and by then bulldozer will probably be taken over by something else, so no point in my putting money into a mobo that id need to upgrade again.

For a budget of £200 could you recommend, mobo, cpu and ram?
 
£200=$326 if the converter I found was right.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128519
Or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131631
and
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103674
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231303

You still have enough money left over to get a decent cooler to OC the CPU a bit.

EDIT: I have no idea where you buy parts from so I picked newegg. I can try to find parts elsewhere if that helps
 
well newegg doesn't ship outside us and can, so with euros i'm guessing the place to look is going to be overclockers.co.uk or one of those, that's the only i ever remember.
 
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