Upgrading GPU from Nvidia GTX 660

Shaun Boerner

Shaun Boerner

New Member
Hello, I am looking to potentially upgrade my GPU here in the near future from a GTX 660 to something from the GTX 900 series. My main concern is that my cpu that I currently have would bottlneck the performance benefits that I would get from the GPU. My current cpu is the intel i5-3570k @ 3.4ghz that can be overclocked to 4.00ghz. I don't really mess with overclocking, but if I were to purchase a GTX 960/970 would I have to overclock the CPU? I'm also wondering if it is worth the wait to wait for the new pascal architecture coming in the GPU's from next year. If I were to wait for a pascal GPU would that definitely merit a CPU upgrade? I don't really have it in the budget to do both the CPU and GPU upgrade.
 
The 3570K is definitely not going to bottleneck anything yet unless you're pushing top of the line graphics cards. At least not to a degree that would justify an upgrade.

That said, overclocking would probably net you a little bit of gain and is really easy to do if you wanted a little extra performance. A 30 dollar air cooler could boost your CPU performance easily.

Waiting for "better" hardware is usually a waste of time unless you're only waiting a few weeks and have a definite launch date. Hardware and prices changes so fast that you could just end up waiting indefinitely for something just a little better. Get what's good now and don't look back, IMO.

Judging by your avatar, I'm guessing you're prepping for F04, which would benefit from a 970 over a 960. The GTX 970 is a solid GPU, although I believe the R9 390 is slightly faster and usually slightly cheaper last I checked.

Finally, what Power Supply do you have?
 
Your cpu is fine and will not bottleneck any card even in a cpu demanding game like gta5.
That a look at this link and you can see that the Intel Core i3 4330 is the point at which this GTX980 starts to get bottlenecked in GTA5 and your cpu is faster than the i3 4330:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/1357
 
Darren said:
The 3570K is definitely not going to bottleneck anything yet unless you're pushing top of the line graphics cards. At least not to a degree that would justify an upgrade.

That said, overclocking would probably net you a little bit of gain and is really easy to do if you wanted a little extra performance. A 30 dollar air cooler could boost your CPU performance easily.

Waiting for "better" hardware is usually a waste of time unless you're only waiting a few weeks and have a definite launch date. Hardware and prices changes so fast that you could just end up waiting indefinitely for something just a little better. Get what's good now and don't look back, IMO.

Judging by your avatar, I'm guessing you're prepping for F04, which would benefit from a 970 over a 960. The GTX 970 is a solid GPU, although I believe the R9 390 is slightly faster and usually slightly cheaper last I checked.

Finally, what Power Supply do you have?
Click to expand...

Thanks for all the replies. That makes sense. And... My power supply is a Corsair CX600.
 
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