6770 being bottlenecked?

[skipsneeky2]

Due to some recent unfortunate events with my previous pc tower,i have been forced into buying another pc tower while on a budget with the following specs.....

amd athlon x4 9150e@1.8ghz
6gb ddr2 memory
600gb hard drive
19'' gateway 1280x1024 lcd
700w gs700 corsair psu<brand new
xfx r6770 core edition@850/2000 out of box<brand new
12.8 cat drivers installed

The tower is a gateway dx series tower.

Kinda at a lost while i am playing BF3,performance is not that terrible even at 1280x1024 ultra,but almost any setting nets me nearly the same fps,the only noticable difference is when i enable 4x msaa.

Played for a couple hours last night enabling osd thru msiafterburner and noticed even with ultra 1280x1024,gpu usage is mostly in the 60-80% area,lowering settings and resolutions only makes usage lower,with no fps difference.

Strangely enabling 4x msaa makes gpu usage hike to 97-99% usage but gameplay is simply unplayable when it is enabled.

Thinking i want a 7700 to max this game at 1280x1024,but my findings suggest the money which i can afford to spend little of might be better off going into a newer cpu/mobo due to a bottleneck?

 

[Jaydip]

@ That resolution games are mostly cpu bound.I would suggest to get a better cpu/mobo combo.

 

[ViRGE]

I concur with Jaydip. You're running what amounts to a cache starved K10 at 1.8 GHz; lightly threaded CPU performance is going to be abysmal, and even if you loaded down all four cores it wouldn't be much better. You're definitely CPU-bound.

 

[NTMBK]

A Phenom II X4 960T should be a good drop in replacement, assuming your motherboard has forwards compatibility.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Got bored earlier and checked out how low i could clock this 6770 while noticing no difference in performance,i got the core to 650 and the memory down to 1,000 from 850/1200 respectively which tells me there is certainly a bottleneck.

Hell BF2 as a whole too simply hates this chip,i get dips all the way into the 60s with gpu usage in the 30-35% range and a 6770 should easily max that game and sustain 100fps....almost hard to think its that bad off.

I seem to average in BF3 in the 45-55 fps range with the max being into the mid 60s,some dips into the upper 30s,this is 1280x1024 high with ssao enabled with post aa at medium with no msaa.

 

[KingFatty]

You are thinking of it backwards - the problem is not the GPU in your situation.

The card is perfectly capable of being maxed, if you could only use it to its full potential. But the CPU is preventing that from happening.

So the % usage of the GPU card being low does NOT mean the card is unable to keep up. Instead, the card is sitting there waiting on the CPU and just waiting and it's not even breaking a sweat because the CPU can't push it any more.

So the low GPU % usage just means your aren't taking advantage of your existing video card. The low number means it is being held back.

You could blame the GPU only if the % usage for the GPU was stuck at 100% all the time.

In your situation, even if you bought the most expensive video card, you'd see the same problems, except the % usage of the GPU would be EVEN LOWER. It would get lower and lower for GPUs that were faster and faster.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Did not expect all to much for the price i paid for the tower and all,6770 is sorta low end and between this quad core and the card,there is certainly a major bottleneck cause of the cpu.

BF3 is pretty playable but just got out of a BF2 round and am shocked to see during a couple explosions i was dropping into the 40's and was shaking my head thinking how this cpu from 2008 is still holding back a card in a game from 2005......

Guess when money permits,i will drop a core i3 2100+mobo in here,trying to keep to a budget and not spend more then i need to.