Bottleneck question for upgrade possibilities

[TheJTrain]

My rig:
eVGA 680i SLI nForce board (purchased 6/2007)
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz (upgraded to it in 4/2010 from the E6600 I got w/the mobo in 6/2007) - not really OCing but have tinkered with it a bit, up to 3.0 but EVE doesn't seem to like when I OC.
XFX Radeon HD 5850 (purchased 4/2010) - tinkered with OCing to 850/1200, the improvement didn't blow me away
6GB OCZ Platinum DDR2 @ 1066MHz
1920x1080 LCD (only 'cause the x1200 one was just too pricey when I bought it 3 years ago)

Its job:
Mostly graphically-rich RPGs like EVE, The Witcher 2, and Skyrim (neither of the latter have I played yet but I doubt my rig would be able to handle them in all their glory smoothly). My MP FPS days are pretty much over, I just can't keep up; my peak was BF2142, every title since then has been slightly less interesting and slightly faster-paced, leading me to mostly abandon competitive FPS (BF:BC2 was my last, didn't even buy BF3 or MW2/BLOPS/MW3) in favor of the above.

So the big question for a gamer on a budget is where would a few hundred bucks be better-spent:
- replace mobo, CPU, RAM (thinking Z68/1155/Core i5)
- replace GPU (really like the GTX680, a little pricey but I'm intrigued by the "set target FPS and let the clock auto-adjust" feature, like cruise control!)
Assuming I've got ~$400, maaayyyybe $500 to spend I can't replace everything and make any significant headway (at least given the benchmarks I've seen for the sub-$200 GPUs relative to the 5850), so I've gotta pick one. It would do me no good to drop $400-500 on a top-shelf GPU if the Q6600 is what's holding me back.

Can anyone recommend some steps I can take to determine if my performance is being throttled by the 680i/Q6600 (given that it's older than the 5850), or vice versa? If I can determine one or the other that would in all likelihood make my decision for me, as I would obviously replace the bottleneck with something new.

Thanks!
JT

 

[power_hour]

For that rig I would go with an SSD. Considering you prefer RPGs and EVE, maybe another monitor if your dual-boxing? The SSD will definitely help with that also.

If EVE is bitching when you overclock to 3.0 then it might be time to consider a new rig anyway. A barely used Sandy bridge i5/2500K + 580 + SSD would keep you happy for a long while. Food for thought.

 

[HURRIC4NE]

the 5850 is substantial, however i'd reccomend upgrading your cpu/mem/motherboard, also as he mentioned get an SSD if possible, the SSDs are the most viable form of upgrade on the computer

 

[Rifter]

cpu/mobo/ram

 

[LurkerPrime]

Give it a few weeks and you can probably get an I5 3570k, a MB and 16GB of ram for around 400 bucks. Then for another 100 bucks or so get you a 128GB SSD (prices keep going down on these, so keep an eye out in the hot deals section).

Upgrading all that will get you SATA 6gb/s which the SSD needs (it caps on the 3gb/s older standard) and you'll also get PCIe 3 and usb 3 for future use. The I5 3570 has around twice the punch than your 6600, however I'm not sure how much improvement in fps you'll get if you are currently GPU limited in your games. The SSD will also help with seeing micro stuttering when your computer has to wait for new textures to be read from your HDD.

With this setup you'll be good on you MB, RAM and CPU for at least 3-4 years. And at any point you can upgrade your GPU and not have to worry about being limited by your processor or ram.

As for figuring out if your GPU or CPU limited, overclock them individually. Do you see more of a performance improvement from OCing the CPU or more on the GPU. If your OCing your CPU to 2.8-2.9ghz (16-21% OC) and not seeing any fps increases, then thats signalling your GPU is your limiting factor. If that is the case, I would probably go for a radeon 7850 for around $250 and get an SSD. (The 7850 is supposively an OC beast, some people are getting 50%+ OC within the safe voltages on the stock cooling, there is a thread about it in the gpu section).

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

A good way to find your current bottleneck is to run a CPU & GPU usage monitor in the background while gaming. After a time or at a slowdown alt-tab back to the desktop. If your GPU usage was pegged at around 100% there's your bottleneck. If one or more of your CPU cores was pegged around 100% that's the bottleneck. Basically whichever is under a heavier load is going to be quicker to limit performance.

 

[obidamnkenobi]

If you only $500 to spend now there's no sense bothering with an SSD. It will do nothing for your in-game performance, just load stuff slightly faster. If you care about that stuff, fine. But I would rather wait the few extra seconds and have higher FPS once I'm in the game.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Hard to say if it's the CPU or the GPU limiting you, it will differ from game to game but which is most predominant is hard to say, I'd recommend monitoring usage on both to see which is maxing out and which isn't on the games you're struggle to play.

I'd be tempted to go with a CPU upgrade at this point, the Q6600 was a good chip back in the day but it's really long in the tooth now, the 5850 isn't too bad for the resolution you're using, but that's mostly due to games not really being that demanding today since they're all console ports.

Either way both components are kind of old and so once you've upgraded only one of them to something more modern you're going to have a bigger difference between the components, which that may provide a better experience it's still a bit of a waste. Ideally I'd wait until you can afford a CPU/Mobo/RAM/GPU upgrade all in one go and have a nice balanced rig.

 

[TheJTrain]

Thanks all for chipping in with comments.

For that rig I would go with an SSD. Considering you prefer RPGs and EVE, maybe another monitor if your dual-boxing? The SSD will definitely help with that also.

I'm a cheap bastard who doesn't dual-box - I only have one account (as opposed to a couple of my corp-mates who run 3, 4, or 6 (!) accounts. First subscription game/MMO I've ever played and it took a buddy literally years to talk me into trying it.

If you only $500 to spend now there's no sense bothering with an SSD. It will do nothing for your in-game performance, just load stuff slightly faster. If you care about that stuff, fine. But I would rather wait the few extra seconds and have higher FPS once I'm in the game.

This was my understanding WRT SSDs, and as such I haven't really been tempted to go for one yet - I'm a patient guy who doesn't mind long load times, I'd typically rather put that $ into something that will increase quality/FPS rather than decrease load times.

The SSD will also help with seeing micro stuttering when your computer has to wait for new textures to be read from your HDD.

But then I read that and it gave me pause. What should I be looking for to know if I'm having micro-stuttering problems that an SSD would help with? Texture pop-in? That kind of thing happens all the time in EVE when I land after warping, the structures around me are all represented by the "bracket" icon in space, and it takes a second or two for all the actual art/textures for the structures to show up. Is that what you're talking about here?

How exactly does an SSD fit into the architecture of the PC, anyway? You install Windows on the big non-SSD drive where you'd have other applications, music, photos, etc., and then only install the games you care about performance on the (relatively small) SSD and run them from there? How's that work if I buy a game through Steam, I seem to recall some mention that you can't control what drive Steam installs your games to, or something?

 

[TheJTrain]

As for figuring out if your GPU or CPU limited, overclock them individually. Do you see more of a performance improvement from OCing the CPU or more on the GPU. If your OCing your CPU to 2.8-2.9ghz (16-21% OC) and not seeing any fps increases, then thats signalling your GPU is your limiting factor.

A good way to find your current bottleneck is to run a CPU & GPU usage monitor in the background while gaming. After a time or at a slowdown alt-tab back to the desktop. If your GPU usage was pegged at around 100% there's your bottleneck. If one or more of your CPU cores was pegged around 100% that's the bottleneck. Basically whichever is under a heavier load is going to be quicker to limit performance.

Good advice on both counts. I'll try both of those out a bit this weekend and see what data I can come up with. When measuring relative OC (between CPU OC and GPU OC) to compare, should I always compare %s (as opposed to absolute MHz, given the disparity between CPU and GPU clocks)? So for example, 10% CPU OC yields +10% FPS; 10% GPU OC yields 20% FPS. Conclusion: GPU is giving more FPS/OC therefore the CPU is the bottleneck. Or do I have that backwards?

Would benchmarking applications like 3DMark or Furmark not really tell me that, given they're more likely to stress both the GPU and CPU at the same time?

Give it a few weeks and you can probably get an I5 3570k, a MB and 16GB of ram for around 400 bucks. Then for another 100 bucks or so get you a 128GB SSD (prices keep going down on these, so keep an eye out in the hot deals section).

Upgrading all that will get you SATA 6gb/s which the SSD needs (it caps on the 3gb/s older standard) and you'll also get PCIe 3 and usb 3 for future use. The I5 3570 has around twice the punch than your 6600, however I'm not sure how much improvement in fps you'll get if you are currently GPU limited in your games.
...
If that is the case, I would probably go for a radeon 7850 for around $250 and get an SSD. (The 7850 is supposively an OC beast, some people are getting 50%+ OC within the safe voltages on the stock cooling, there is a thread about it in the gpu section).

Yeah I'm definitely a "wait for the new generation to come out and buy one generation back when the prices drop precipitously. Good to know on the 7850 - from what I'd read it didn't really perform all that much better than a GTX560Ti or even an OCd 5850 (its strength seemed to be reduced power consumption). I'll check out that thread and keep it in mind.

Hard to say if it's the CPU or the GPU limiting you, it will differ from game to game but which is most predominant is hard to say, I'd recommend monitoring usage on both to see which is maxing out and which isn't on the games you're struggle to play.

I'd be tempted to go with a CPU upgrade at this point, the Q6600 was a good chip back in the day but it's really long in the tooth now, the 5850 isn't too bad for the resolution you're using, but that's mostly due to games not really being that demanding today since they're all console ports.

Either way both components are kind of old and so once you've upgraded only one of them to something more modern you're going to have a bigger difference between the components, which that may provide a better experience it's still a bit of a waste. Ideally I'd wait until you can afford a CPU/Mobo/RAM/GPU upgrade all in one go and have a nice balanced rig.

Yeah after reading these replies I'm leaning towards a CPU upgrade, given the resolution I'm running. I'll still try to do some data-gathering to confirm, and watch for price drops. Part of what's made it a dilemma is the relatively good performance of the 5850 even after a couple/three years and the lack of newer-but-affordable (~$150) GPUs available that would give me a meaningful bump. Given that even the fastest CPU that would fit my 5-y.o. board wouldn't really be that much of an improvement (and they're still around $300), it's probably a pretty good indication that it's time to switch sockets/generations.

I see your point on the "they're mostly console ports", and it's a shame it's come to that, but to be fair, two of the three games I mentioned are not (Witcher & EVE), and the other (Skyrim) was made by a dev with significant PC history (and rig-humbling history at that!). And the trouble with waiting until I can upgrade it all at once is that when you're a family on a budget it's hard to make that happen - you don't tend to sock away the $400 you *would* have spent on upgrading, letting it get dusty until the budget allows for the *next* $400 upgrade, at which point you do a $800 upgrade. Ideal in theory, hard to make happen in practice.

Thanks again all, keep the thoughts coming if there's more!

 

[LurkerPrime]

But then I read that and it gave me pause. What should I be looking for to know if I'm having micro-stuttering problems that an SSD would help with? Texture pop-in? That kind of thing happens all the time in EVE when I land after warping, the structures around me are all represented by the "bracket" icon in space, and it takes a second or two for all the actual art/textures for the structures to show up. Is that what you're talking about here?

Eve and most MMOs do it more gracefully usually. Some other games though the fps will drop to almost nothing while it pulls the textures from the HDD, so it slightly stutters.

As for benchmarks, I just got my new rig (so been running benchmarks), and the unigine graphics benchmark doesn't even touch my CPU. Some of the other graphics benchmarks might tax your CPU more, not sure. So if you overclock your CPU, you might have to actually play a game to see if it makes any difference at all.

As for the SSD, their is a utility called steam mover than can be used to move games to your SSD from your HDD and vice versa. Works great.

You might be able to get a 7850 in the near future from around $220, or sub $200. I easily OCed mine 30%, with that OC it'll be around a 50-60% improvement over what you have. Plus you get an extra gig of memory out of it.