• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Is this bottleneck?

T

tomi19

Junior Member
I have the following system (I know it's a little crappy)

Athlon II X2 250 3.0GHz
3GB RAM DDR2 @800Mhz
Sapphire HD 7770 1GB GDDR5 OC
CoolerMaster eXtreme Power Plus 460W

And when playing a game like BF3 in ULTRA my GPU usage is like 50-55%, never more than that. When playing in LOW or MEDIUM the GPU usage is 15-20%.

This means I have a bottleneck issue right?

Also, if I play in ultra the game stutters like hell. It just keeps freezing for 2-3 seconds, then back to normal for 30 secs and freezes again. This does not happen if I play on medium or low.

Also, I'm buying a Phenom II X4 955 BE on Thursday. Will that fix the low GPU usage problem?
 
Perhaps the CPU will help. See in two days. On the other hand, for things that don't take advantage of 4 cores I wonder how much the difference would be.

Another thing, maybe the freezes on Ultra settings are because there's only 1GB on the graphics card.
 
more ram would definitely help, and a better video card. an old dual core, while might be ok for some things BF3 is not one of them.
 
BF3 does like its fair share of cores. The Phenom II will help out with the stuttering thanks to it L3 cache and more cores, but playing at Ultra smoothly would still be unlikely if gaming at 1080p.
 
Nothing wrong with the PSU. Those AMD CPUs might not be the most power efficient but still nothing extraordinary. The graphics card is lightweight.
 
Those games have complex engines that do most of the processing. What seems to be most intensive on the system when graphics are maxed is the map rendering. Essentially, the whole thing gets loaded in RAM and then spills over to system cache or a page file.

I'd start by maxing your RAM to whatever the motherboard will do. It will give you the most performance boost for your buck. Look and see if you can find out how much memory the game is using when it's running from task manager's resource monitor.
 
Come on guys - I'm surprised a lot of you don't mention the CPU as the #1 issue. You can't play BF3 on a dual-core.

Next problem is that he'd need a card twice as powerful to run Ultra. He should set it at medium, and once he gets the quad-core, it will run well.

The last step would be RAM, but I'm fairly confident that IS NOT his problem.
 
sheh said:
Nothing wrong with the PSU. Those AMD CPUs might not be the most power efficient but still nothing extraordinary. The graphics card is lightweight.
Click to expand...

You have experience with that PSU? It doesn't need an extraordinary load to vent the capacitors.
 
If you want to play BF3 on ultra you're going to want a video card with at least 1.5GB of Vram. Otherwise just switch off MSAA and turn the textures down a notch to fit into 1GB.
 
Yes, I know I can't play on Ultra. I was just testing it. Also, I play on 720p

The main doubt I have is that if having the GPU usage on 15% when playing on medium means that my CPU is bottlenecking my graphics card?
 
I would say definitely the cpu is the bottleneck. The fact that he never sees more than about 50% gpu usage indicates that. Granted BF3 is more demanding, but I have played Warfighter single player at 1080p, medium to high, with a 7770. (They have the same engine I believe.)

Also, since you have only 3 gb ram, is your OS 32 bit? If so you would need to upgrade to 64 bit to utilize more ram.
 
Termie said:
Come on guys - I'm surprised a lot of you don't mention the CPU as the #1 issue. You can't play BF3 on a dual-core.

Next problem is that he'd need a card twice as powerful to run Ultra. He should set it at medium, and once he gets the quad-core, it will run well.

The last step would be RAM, but I'm fairly confident that IS NOT his problem.
Click to expand...

A voice of reason! Agree 100%.
 
Alright guys, thank you very much for your answers. My Phenom arrives on Thursday, when I get it I'll do some testing and tell you how it went.

Cheers
 
Your results should be very positive. An FX-6300 would've probably cleared the bottleneck completely and make the GPU the bottleneck. But I don't know if you have an AM3 board or AM3+ board.
 
I just installed my Phenom II X4 955.

Now I can play BF3 on HIGH with 45-70 FPS on 1360x768. Also, my GPU usage is 90% 🙂
 
now upgrade your OS and get more ram. Nowadays 4gb is maybe not getting the job done. 8GB is the new minimum, even if people say otherwise.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top