i5 2310 bottleneck

[Rambusted]

I am running a core i5 2310 my motherboard does not support oc'ing (asus micro atx h61 chipset) 8 gig ddr3 1333 and currently an HD6870 from XFX. The video card dispenses too much heat into my case forcing me to leave the side open when gaming. That completely fixes the heat issue but its a royal pain in the ass to put it on and take it off everytime I boot up and shut down. I am considering selling the XFX card and getting a blower type card as my previous 4870 had a blower and the components stayed a lot cooler, was louder but whatever. At what point with this 2.9ghz i5 become a bottleneck for a single video card? Will I be able to go all the way up to a gtx 680 for instance?

 

[WiseUp216]

An i5-2300 doesn't hold my 670 back at all. My graphics benchmark scores are right where they should be.

It won't bottleneck any of this generation's cards.

 

[Rambusted]

yeah but your overclocking your cpu like 800 mhz according to your sig, mine is at 2.9ghz and will never be oc'd not even sure how your doing that with a 2300.

 

[Termie]

You might find the benchmarks I did comparing my 860 to my 3770k interesting: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2257414

We could (generously) assume your CPU is as powerful as an 860@3.5, which is what I benched. You'll see that a 670 is bottlenecked in certain games, and even slightly in benchmarks (although that's rarely where you'd see the problem).

Honestly, I wouldn't recommend anything higher than a 660ti or 7870 in your situation.

 

[WiseUp216]

yeah but your overclocking your cpu like 800 mhz according to your sig, mine is at 2.9ghz and will never be oc'd not even sure how your doing that with a 2300.

With my Z77 Extreme4 I can set the multiplier to 35 and the bclk to 105. Anything more than that becomes unstable.

Day to day typical setting is 35 x 100 bclk. No sense playing with it for such small gains.

Not really 800 Mhz. Only 400 Mhz over stock turbo.

 

[WiseUp216]

You might find the benchmarks I did comparing my 860 to my 3770k interesting: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2257414

We could (generously) assume your CPU is as powerful as an 860@3.5, which is what I benched. You'll see that a 670 is bottlenecked in certain games, and even slightly in benchmarks (although that's rarely where you'd see the problem).

Honestly, I wouldn't recommend anything higher than a 660ti or 7870 in your situation.

Thanks for the link. Good info.

The effect seems to be only a handful of frame per second in any real world situation. Certainly not enough that I wouldn't recommend a 670 to OP or feel like I should have bought a lesser card.

 

[moonbogg]

Depends on the game totally. Can't say. Some games need a quad to run well, others barely use 2 cores.

 

[Mallibu]

Depends on the game totally. Can't say. Some games need a quad to run well, others barely use 2 cores.

If you're having a bottleneck with that i5 sandy bridge, even at 2.9 ghz, then I wouldn't want to know what a guy with an FX or Phenom gets

 

[Rambusted]

If you're having a bottleneck with that i5 sandy bridge, even at 2.9 ghz, then I wouldn't want to know what a guy with an FX or Phenom gets

Never said it was bottlenecking my 6870, I was wondering about future upgrades. Looks to me that it will indeed be a minor bottleneck for a 670 and worse with a 680.