GTX 970 w/ i7 930 4.2Ghz bottleneck

[mabblebrox]

Hi, I'm thinking of getting a GTX 970 and am wondering if an i7 930 clocked to 4.2Ghz would be a bottleneck issue, for 1080p.

Thanks

 

[f1sherman]

Not in a major and game breaking way... mostly
Stay away from Air-sims, STALKER and ARMA

And even if 930 is a clear bottleneck, that does not mean GTX 970 is not the best upgrade option.

 

[f1sherman]

OTOH if you have something like 7970,290, GTX 680,780

CPU upgrade should be a priority

 

[mindbomb]

well, once dx12 is mainstream, I don't think it would be much of an issue. with dx12 or mantle, it's hard to have cpu bottlenecks.

 

[gamervivek]

you can always use DSR to put the bottleneck back on the gpu

 

[RussianSensation]

OTOH if you have something like 7970,290, GTX 680,780

CPU upgrade should be a priority

What? How many games do you know where i7 4790K @ 4.6Ghz is more than 10% faster than an i7 930 @ 4.2ghz when paired with a single GPU? Unless all you do is play strategy games or MMO, there is hardly a difference between 1st and last generation i7 @ 4.2ghz+ when paired with any single GPU card. Otherwise, you need 2 GPUs to see a noticeable difference that actually warrants a new $300 CPU + mobo. In fact, he can go ahead and get a 2nd 970 before even considering a CPU upgrade.

BFG tested a lot of games and a 4790K is barely 6% faster than a stock 2500K. i7 930 @ 4.2Ghz is faster than a stock 2500K for gaming.

He can easily coast to Skylake. At least then he'll get all the modern features of USB 3.1, PCIe 4.0, AVX 3.2, DDR4. There is no point in upgrading to the aging Haswell architecture for him if he waited this long on an i7 930. Might as well wait 12 more months and get the latest Skylake K.