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Forums - PC - CPUs as performance bottlenecks

Slimebeast on 22 May 2011

Never chicken out on the GPU if you are interested in gaming. All these noobs on forums tend to recommend these powerful Intel CPUs but they dont understand anything about gaming performance.

 A good rule of thumb is that you will on average spend at least twice as much money on the GPU than the CPU to keep proper balance, and yet it will be the GPU who bottlenecks. (But note that you can elegantly do that buy buing two equally priced GPUs in the lifetime of only one CPU)

Today, a $100 CPU is fast enough to drive a $200 GPU (and still the GPU will bottleneck 95% of the time).

A $200 CPU is fast enough to drive the best of the best $550 GPU.



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NJ5 on 22 May 2011
Slimebeast said:

 A good rule of thumb is that you will on average spend at least twice as much money on the GPU than the CPU to keep proper balance, and yet it will be the GPU who bottlenecks.


Interesting because I did the exact opposite :D (bought Phenom II X6 @ 2.8 GHz when it cost around $200 and a HD 5750 for a bit more than $100).

But I use the CPU for non-gaming purposes too, for gaming it's definitely overpowered and a cheaper quad core would have been fine.



My Mario Kart Wii friend code: 2707-1866-0957

wfz on 22 May 2011
tarheel91 said:
wfz said:

Oh! Mind if I pop in here and ask a question? I was thinking of getting a new PC and I was going to go with these:

1) Studio Phenom II X6 1075T (3.0GHz)

2) ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024MB GDDR5

3) 8GB DDR3 SDRAM,1333MHz, 4x2GB

What do you guys think?


I just wanna confirm you're going 64-bit.  Otherwise, 4x2GB is too much, and a 1GB graphics card could actually hurt performance.

Yes I'm going 64 bit. =)



VetteDude on 22 May 2011

Well the bottleneck in a computer is always the Mechanical HDD. But that's not used much for games. The new Intel CPU's with no Front Side bus anymore (RAM is connected directly to the CPU) will never be the bottleneck. The new DMI bridge Intel uses is faster than any GPU and CPU can feed. So basically get a good GPU, and your CPU and RAM will be fine.



Xen on 22 May 2011
Slimebeast said:

Obviously u should get a Radeon 6950 rather than the Geforce 560Ti. Faster for the same price and it's AMD instead of Nvidia.

The Core i5 2500K is overpowered for either of those GPUs but it's good as a future proof since you can switch GPU to a twice or three times as fast in a couple of years and still keep the CPU to feed it without a problem.
(id buy a Phenom II personally but that's it's because I don't like Intel)

Basically Khuutra you need to make a choice and ask yourself if you will keepthe whole package for 3-4 years or if you will want to go with the split strategy and upgrade the GPU in two years. Because in the first scenario the CPU is overpowered for the whole lifetime.

That doesn't make it better, that only makes it worse. Driver support for ATI cards is another kind of horrid. And Intel's CPU's run circles around AMD's these days, you're not in 2005 anymore. In any and all benchmarks that I've seen Phenom II's got beat by i7's.

You have a good build lined up for you, go for it Khuutra.

 



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NJ5 on 22 May 2011
Xen said:
Slimebeast said:

Obviously u should get a Radeon 6950 rather than the Geforce 560Ti. Faster for the same price and it's  AMD instead of Nvidia.

The Core i5 2500K is overpowered for either of those GPUs but it's good as a future proof since you can switch GPU to a twice or three times as fast in a couple of years and still keep the CPU to feed it without a problem.
(id buy a Phenom II personally but that's it's because I don't like Intel)

Basically Khuutra you need to make a choice and ask yourself if you will keepthe whole package for 3-4 years or if you will want to go with the split strategy and upgrade the GPU in two years. Because in the first scenario the CPU is overpowered for the whole lifetime.

That doesn't make it better, that only makes it worse. Driver support for ATI cards is another kind of horrid. And Intel's CPU's run circles around AMD's these days, you're not in 2005 anymore. In any and all benchmarks that I've seen Phenom II's got beat by i7's.

You have a good build lined up for you, go for it Khuutra.

 

ATI (now called AMD) graphics drivers are just fine today, it's not 2005 anymore...



My Mario Kart Wii friend code: 2707-1866-0957

Xen on 22 May 2011
NJ5 said:
Xen said:
Slimebeast said:

Obviously u should get a Radeon 6950 rather than the Geforce 560Ti. Faster for the same price and it's  AMD instead of Nvidia.

The Core i5 2500K is overpowered for either of those GPUs but it's good as a future proof since you can switch GPU to a twice or three times as fast in a couple of years and still keep the CPU to feed it without a problem.
(id buy a Phenom II personally but that's it's because I don't like Intel)

Basically Khuutra you need to make a choice and ask yourself if you will keepthe whole package for 3-4 years or if you will want to go with the split strategy and upgrade the GPU in two years. Because in the first scenario the CPU is overpowered for the whole lifetime.

That doesn't make it better, that only makes it worse. Driver support for ATI cards is another kind of horrid. And Intel's CPU's run circles around AMD's these days, you're not in 2005 anymore. In any and all benchmarks that I've seen Phenom II's got beat by i7's.

You have a good build lined up for you, go for it Khuutra.

 

ATI (now called AMD) graphics drivers are just fine today, it's not 2005 anymore...

1. True. And yet, what logo do you see on the GPU boxes? Ah, yes, ATI.

2. If they were, I wouldn't have said that they are problematic. Prowl around some newegg Radeon GPU reviews.



Slimebeast on 22 May 2011
Xen said:
NJ5 said:
Xen said:
Slimebeast said:

Obviously u should get a Radeon 6950 rather than the Geforce 560Ti. Faster for the same price and it's  AMD instead of Nvidia.

The Core i5 2500K is overpowered for either of those GPUs but it's good as a future proof since you can switch GPU to a twice or three times as fast in a couple of years and still keep the CPU to feed it without a problem.
(id buy a Phenom II personally but that's it's because I don't like Intel)

Basically Khuutra you need to make a choice and ask yourself if you will keepthe whole package for 3-4 years or if you will want to go with the split strategy and upgrade the GPU in two years. Because in the first scenario the CPU is overpowered for the whole lifetime.

That doesn't make it better, that only makes it worse. Driver support for ATI cards is another kind of horrid. And Intel's CPU's run circles around AMD's these days, you're not in 2005 anymore. In any and all benchmarks that I've seen Phenom II's got beat by i7's.

You have a good build lined up for you, go for it Khuutra.

 

ATI (now called AMD) graphics drivers are just fine today, it's not 2005 anymore...

1. True. And yet, what logo do you see on the GPU boxes? Ah, yes, ATI.

2. If they were, I wouldn't have said that they are problematic. Prowl around some newegg Radeon GPU reviews.

I never had problems with ATI drivers in my whole life (well a little occasionally, but nothing out of the ordinary) and I've used only ATI cards since 2002. ATI's driver team is famous for being pro.



Xen on 22 May 2011
Slimebeast said:
Xen said:
NJ5 said:
Xen said:
Slimebeast said:

Obviously u should get a Radeon 6950 rather than the Geforce 560Ti. Faster for the same price and it's  AMD instead of Nvidia.

The Core i5 2500K is overpowered for either of those GPUs but it's good as a future proof since you can switch GPU to a twice or three times as fast in a couple of years and still keep the CPU to feed it without a problem.
(id buy a Phenom II personally but that's it's because I don't like Intel)

Basically Khuutra you need to make a choice and ask yourself if you will keepthe whole package for 3-4 years or if you will want to go with the split strategy and upgrade the GPU in two years. Because in the first scenario the CPU is overpowered for the whole lifetime.

That doesn't make it better, that only makes it worse. Driver support for ATI cards is another kind of horrid. And Intel's CPU's run circles around AMD's these days, you're not in 2005 anymore. In any and all benchmarks that I've seen Phenom II's got beat by i7's.

You have a good build lined up for you, go for it Khuutra.

 

ATI (now called AMD) graphics drivers are just fine today, it's not 2005 anymore...

1. True. And yet, what logo do you see on the GPU boxes? Ah, yes, ATI.

2. If they were, I wouldn't have said that they are problematic. Prowl around some newegg Radeon GPU reviews.

I never had problems with ATI drivers in my whole life (well a little occasionally, but nothing out of the ordinary) and I've used only ATI cards since 2002. ATI's driver team is famous for being pro.

In contrast, I always had them, since... 2003-4. Can't remember exactly. With a Radeon 9200, 9600, x1850, and 4650HD. I always managed to resolve them eventually, but with Nvidia it was a simple install/reboot. Not trying tons of fixes and grinding the crap out of system restore/driver sweeper.



disolitude on 22 May 2011
Slimebeast said:

I never had problems with ATI drivers in my whole life (well a little occasionally, but nothing out of the ordinary) and I've used only ATI cards since 2002. ATI's driver team is famous for being pro.

ATI were widely known for driver issues up to and including the 4000 series GPUs. Lately they've been better but I still find their catalyst setup very messy and not user friendly compared to Nvidias.