Ahem to that! I think I know why that is happening but yes, I have seen that too.Originally Posted by kmckelvin
While my main gaming rig is leased out to a company requiring a bit more processing power, I had to revert back to my LAN pc which sports an i7-950 CPU, (released Q2-2009) and I paired that with a GTX780ti. I agree with you that a better GPU will increase frames but I disagree that your CPU is not bottlenecking you. How can I explain this, ok, let's take a hard drive (say a 7200RPM drive) for instance which I think we will all agree is one of the slowest components in your computer. Run a benchmark on your harddrive, (copy files between two folders) your throughput on your harddrive is say for argument sake 100MB/s. Now, underclock your cpu with 50%, run the same benchmark on your harddrive, your throughput will still be 100MB/s. Increase your CPU overclock to say 50% above normal, your hard drive will still only give you 100MB/s. Doing that test you know that your harddrive is indeed the bottleneck in your system. When you drop your CPU to something stupid like 50MHz or something, then your CPU will become the bottleneck and then that is the slowest component.Bottom line about my comment though is that I'm running a 2 year old CPU architecture with a top of the line gfx card, and the bottleneck is still the GPU, not the CPU or memory bus. And if there's any question about disk speed, running a mid-range Sandisk SSD I'm almost always the first person to spawn in on a map load.
Now, let's do the same thing with your GPU as you say your GPU is your bottleneck. If your GPU is the true bottleneck, then what one should expect is that as we underclock the CPU, at some stage the CPU will become the bottleneck and no longer your GPU. (obviously the CPU will become a bottleneck much sooner than the HDD example when it only becomes the bottleneck at say 50Mhz). Now, if you are saying that your GPU is bottlenecking you, then if you double up the speed of your CPU you should NOT see any difference in performance of the GPU. (the hard drive did not increase from 100MB to 120MBs just because we overclocked the CPU). However, I am prepare to bet you my rAge2014 ticket that when you increase your CPU speeds on your current rig that you will get better performance from your GPU thus your GPU is NOT your bottleneck.
It is very dangerous to assume just because your CPU is sitting on 30% util and your GPU on 99% that your CPU (or something else) is not also holding you back. Building a fast system, and understanding what is causing what bottlenecks is a very complex situation. You can only say that your GPU is bottlenecking you if you see no improvements when you increase the speed of your CPU.
Back to my original statement above, as mentioned, I have a GTX780ti running in an old i7-950. Let's compare that to BadA$$ machine, he currently has a GTX660ti paired with a socket 2011, 3820 CPU. Running one of my favourite graphics benchmarks, he scored 28,089 points, compared to my score of 27,578. BadA$$ with a bottom of the range LGA2011 (non overclocked) and a comparitively no-starter GPU (compared to my GTX780ti) still manage to out scored one of the fastest GPU's on the planet with the main difference the CPU. Saying that, I hit 200FPS, dropping to 120 on occasions, in BF4 (that was before I stripped my moer for EA and Dice) with everything on Ultra apart from the last three things in the GPU options.
Either way, Paul, good luck with your decision, and I am looking forward to recall this thread in 3 years time when you start the thread again by saying... "ooo.... guys help I need to upgrade my computer as my game sucks and I am not able to get anything more then 40FPS...."
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