When does the CPU become the bottleneck?

Prelude · Nov 3, 2007, 02:36 PM

Hi guys, I was just playing the crysis demo and was rather dissapointed by my system's performance. Even with 2x AA and all settings on medium the framerate is rather low, at those settings it's just narrowly playable but aiming is difficult. If I were to upgrade my system with a new videocard, when would my CPU become the bottleneck? (specs below)
For instance, upgrading to the 8800GT or the new card that will be released in december; will just upgrading the GPU be enough or will my CPU become a problem then?

My specs:
Asus P5B Deluxe Mobo
Core2Duo E6600 @ 3.2Ghz
2Gb Geil DDR2
GF 7950GX2 at stock speeds

zaim · Nov 3, 2007, 05:03 PM

3.2ghz is quite powerful for the core 2..

a customer of mine has his E6600 @ stock 2.4 and an 8800GTS @ stock speeds, and he runs everything on high smoothly..

there is some sort of bottleneck in your machine, i would have guessed those GX2 cards perform quite well, but something is definitely not right.

are you running the latest nvidia driver for that card?

also I wouldn't go ahead an think about upgrading the CPU as yet until you actually need to. the crysis demo is utilized for dual core but I hear the full game is built to use more than 2. =)

Tipstaff · Nov 3, 2007, 07:17 PM

Couple things:

- Have you tried clocking the CPU back to defaults, or set anything that is overclocked back to defaults to rule it out, and see if it runs more smoothly?

- Have you tried running the card in single card mode only to see if it's an issue with it running in dual mode?

- The 7950GX2 is a very, very finicky card. As such you need to be sure that you have the right drivers for it. By this I mean that the newest are not always the best when it comes to that card. With that card it is usually best to stick with pre 1xx.xx drivers if you can, with the best being the 91.xx to 92.xx series from what I've used of that card.

- As a matter of fact, be sure that your motherboards bios is up to date as there have been numerous (3 to be exact) updates to that boards bios specifically to fix issues between it and the 7950GX2 (even more specifically.. to fix performance issues).

OmegaRED · Nov 3, 2007, 07:45 PM

IMO your cpu is more than capable of handling Crysis but the vid card you have is not powerful enough for this game. Put an 8800GT/GTX in it and you probably would see only a slight bottleneck.

Prelude · Nov 6, 2007, 10:24 AM

Tipstaff, could you recommend one? I use XG drivers and I only hope I can get my hands on some of the old drivers...

CDsDontBurn · Nov 6, 2007, 12:00 PM

as for drivers, try the official 93.71s for your card.

the performance of the 7950gx2 is very similar to an 8800GTS 320MB card.

crysis is still not yet finalized. so, the final game may be either less strenous, or more strenous depending on how it turns out.

you can tell when the CPU becomes the bottleneck when other people with a 7950gx2 are getting 1,500pts. or higher on 3Dmark05/06 than you, and they also state that they are getting roughly 15 FPS to 20 FPS higher than you when playing games.

Tipstaff · Nov 7, 2007, 10:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CDsDontBurn

as for drivers, try the official 93.71s for your card.

Good choice for a driver. I had better luck with some of the earlier ones though, like the 91.92, and some of the beta 92.xx like the 92.91, but quite a few people I've talked to had better luck with the 93.71. If anything I'd try that set first.

Nvidia keeps an archive of all their older drivers which you can get on their site HERE, Prelude. Give the official ones a try first, then move onto some of the modded drivers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CDsDontBurn

you can tell when the CPU becomes the bottleneck when other people with a 7950gx2 are getting 1,500pts. or higher on 3Dmark05/06 than you, and they also state that they are getting roughly 15 FPS to 20 FPS higher than you when playing games.

Or they say they have the same "specs" as you, but don't mention the fact that they don't have, or rather aren't using the same components as you. It's one of the reasons why I hate benchmark comparisons as there are so many variables that people don't take into account when comparing their system to someone else's unit, wonder why they aren't seeing the same results, and immediately jump to the wrong conclusions (ie. that you sold them faulty hardware, or that something is wrong.. when it's not).

**ChaosMinionX** · Nov 7, 2007, 10:36 PM

No core2duo cpu atm is a bottleneck.

CDsDontBurn · Nov 8, 2007, 01:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChaosMinionX

No core2duo cpu atm is a bottleneck.

i doubt that.....what about the e4xx0 series? i'm sure that they would be a bottleneck to an 8800GTX or an 2900XTX

CDsDontBurn · Nov 8, 2007, 01:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tipstaff

Or they say they have the same "specs" as you, but don't mention the fact that they don't have, or rather aren't using the same components as you. It's one of the reasons why I hate benchmark comparisons as there are so many variables that people don't take into account when comparing their system to someone else's unit, wonder why they aren't seeing the same results, and immediately jump to the wrong conclusions (ie. that you sold them faulty hardware, or that something is wrong.. when it's not).

i always just look at the main components (CPU, RAM, MoBo, gfx card[s]) in terms of a 3Dmark score and average FPSes in games.

if they're the same, or similar, like the next model up or down, that's when i would use that machine for comparison purposes.