E6750 Bottleneck?

[Oppobrium]

I currently have an E6750 oced at 3.0ghz atm on my system. Just wondering if I should be worried about any bottlenecks from the ATI 4xxx and 5xxx series or the Nvidia GTX2xx/GTX3xx series? Thanks!

Complete System Specs:

E6750 @ 3.0ghz
4GB GSkills 5-5-5-14 @ 750mhz
8800GTS 320mb
MSI P6N SLI Platinum

 

[cbn]

You are worried about your CPU "bottlenecking" a game?

An easy way to figure this out is to set resolution to 800x600 or 800x480 and see what your frame rates are. If your frame rates are too slow @ really low resolution with a 8800 GTS then your CPU will be too weak no matter what Video Card you use.

But seriously a E6750 is pretty fast. What are you trying to do?

 

[Leyawiin]

A C2 Duo @ 3.0 Ghz is fine with current cards. Who knows about the DX11 ones on the horizon.

 

[Grinja]

I currently have a 6750 @ 3.2 ghz with a HD4870 512mb.
I would say you don't need to worry about CPU bottlenecks in this gen (single gpu at least) running anything at 1920x 1200. We will have to wait and see what next gen games bring to the table ...

 

[vj8usa]

In just about anything other than GTA4, your CPU's fine.

 

[Oppobrium]

Originally posted by: Just learning
You are worried about your CPU "bottlenecking" a game?

An easy way to figure this out is to set resolution to 800x600 or 800x480 and see what your frame rates are. If your frame rates are too slow @ really low resolution with a 8800 GTS then your CPU will be too weak no matter what Video Card you use.

But seriously a E6750 is pretty fast. What are you trying to do?

Yeah I was just wondering if it would be a problem in the future, i'm just making sure because I'm about to update my computer in a couple of months and wanted to get a feel of how long this CPU might last me. Just being extra precautious is all.

Also I'm running it at 1440x900 right now and it seems fine other than hitting low 30s on Left 4 Dead with 8xCSAA and AF 16x. But that might be just because of my GPU.

Originally posted by: vj8usa
In just about anything other than GTA4, your CPU's fine.

Yeap, i noticed the huge performance drop going from other games to GTA4.

 

[cbn]

Originally posted by: Oppobrium

Originally posted by: Just learning
You are worried about your CPU "bottlenecking" a game?

An easy way to figure this out is to set resolution to 800x600 or 800x480 and see what your frame rates are. If your frame rates are too slow @ really low resolution with a 8800 GTS then your CPU will be too weak no matter what Video Card you use.

But seriously a E6750 is pretty fast. What are you trying to do?

Yeah I was just wondering if it would be a problem in the future, i'm just making sure because I'm about to update my computer in a couple of months and wanted to get a feel of how long this CPU might last me. Just being extra precautious is all.

Also I'm running it at 1440x900 right now and it seems fine other than hitting low 30s on Left 4 Dead with 8xCSAA and AF 16x. But that might be just because of my GPU.

Yep Try lowering resolution as far as possible to see what the max frame rate your CPU is capable of.

For example in this Anandtech test of Fallout 3 max frame rates with Core i7 is ~60 FPS no matter what Video card or combination of video cards is used. (clicking on the 1680x1050 results clearly demonstrates this)

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3517&p=9

So if your CPU is capable of getting FPS in the 100s with a certain game but increasing resolution/AA?AF/details settings causes a decrease.....then you know you have a GPU bottleneck.

If your CPU is only capable of 10-15 FPS with a game no matter how low the resolution and detail settings....then this would be a CPU bottleneck. Adding a stronger GPU in this case won't be able to increase past 10-15 FPS no matter what.

 

[cubeless]

are you oc'ing the vid card? those cards are usually pretty oc'able... the lack of vid memory will be a problem in newer games before 3.0 ghz will be...

another thing to do is start task manager; click the performance tab; stretch the window as far across your screen as possible... run your game, stop it, and see if it tops out both cores... and you should probably be able to get another 300 or so mhz out of that chip... mine's running happily @ 3.5ghz in a p45 board... but it has a vendetta2 on it and is in a antec 300 case with lots of fans... and it plays most everything @1680 with a 4850...

 

[cusideabelincoln]

The reason L4D drops to the 30s on your computer is definitely because of the high AA/AF you are using. That is just a bit high for a 320MB 8800GTS.

Your processor is completely fine. It won't be much of a bottleneck in games which aren't heavily multithreaded. There are only a few games which do take good advantage of a quad, such as GTAIV, Far Cry 2, WiC, Hawx, and a few more.

 

[BFG10K]

I'm running an E6850 @ 3 GHz (stock), and I can confirm modern games I play are far more bottlenecked by my GTX285 than by my CPU. In many new games like Fallout 3 and Clear Sky, I have to dial back to 1600x1200 & 2xAA to keep them playable.

Also when I benchmarked my upgrade to a GTX285 from a GTX260+, that same processor allowed over a 30% performance gain in many situations, which is a figure higher than many other websites attained.

So in conclusion, any half decent processor can properly push even a high-end single card.

 

[Oppobrium]

Originally posted by: cubeless
are you oc'ing the vid card? those cards are usually pretty oc'able... the lack of vid memory will be a problem in newer games before 3.0 ghz will be...

another thing to do is start task manager; click the performance tab; stretch the window as far across your screen as possible... run your game, stop it, and see if it tops out both cores... and you should probably be able to get another 300 or so mhz out of that chip... mine's running happily @ 3.5ghz in a p45 board... but it has a vendetta2 on it and is in a antec 300 case with lots of fans... and it plays most everything @1680 with a 4850...

I've tried ocing my GPU but nothing fancy just yet. As for my processor I can't get past 3.0ghz with my current motherboard. It's probably cause my board uses a 650i chipset, which I've heard from a lot of people is pretty bad for overclocking.

Originally posted by: cusideabelincoln
The reason L4D drops to the 30s on your computer is definitely because of the high AA/AF you are using. That is just a bit high for a 320MB 8800GTS.

Your processor is completely fine. It won't be much of a bottleneck in games which aren't heavily multithreaded. There are only a few games which do take good advantage of a quad, such as GTAIV, Far Cry 2, WiC, Hawx, and a few more.

Yeap I'm just waiting on the DX11 cards for ATI or Nvidia for now, until then I guess I just gotta stick it out!

 

[cubeless]

left4dead now has a 'multicore rendering' (and some other steam games?)option... try turning it on... the kids say it smoothes the game out a bunch...

get rivatuner and crank up the fan (after pulling the card out and making sure it isn't full of dust) and push it up to around 630/900...

 

[brblx]

left4dead can churn out well over 60fps on one of his cores.

i know because i'm running a 3ghz core2 and disable multicore (it used to cause stutter, maybe they fixed it), and can max the game with 4x/4x at 1680x1050 on an 8800gt. maybe at 1920 with even higher AA you might see an effect, but i'd doubt it. source is just old, the stressing parts of it are on the GPU.