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Not happy with 6970

ixelion

ixelion

Senior member
I was looking into upgrading my Q9550, mainly for BF3, however, from what I have seen this would not provide a significant FPS boost?

At 1680x1050 the game dips into 40s maybe 30s especially when l look at unto the landscape with lots of buildings/trees etc or when theirs a lot of chaos.

So I am currently looking into the GTX 680, my issue really is minimum frame rate, I believe this card will provide me with over-all more consistent FPS, instead of spiking around between 40-80 which is really jarring.

Any thoughts/recommendations? Do I need a new CPU as well?
 
I am currently using the 6970 it is producing the results I reported in the OP

Q9550
6970
4GB
1680X1050
 
From what I've heard BF3 is a CPU hungry monster, some people even building SB-E systems just to satisfy it. Also the 680 is a waste more or less, the 670 performs almost as well for a good chunk less money.

I don't think the Q9550 is holding your system back that much but you probably would see an increase in minimum framerates with a newer CPU architecture.
 
I highly doubt that a 6970 should be holding you back at those resolutions unless you're trying to turn EVERY setting up to max, and even then I'm not so sure.

Do you have a budget for an upgrade or are you just asking to see what kind of upgrade you'd need?
 
I am just asking to see how to get a significant improvement in fps, I dont want to upgrade my whole system.

From the benchs I have seen CPU upgrades provide minimal performance increases, GPU is more significant, but if I am wrong then I'll happily upgrade to an Ivy and leave my 6970 alone.
 
ixelion said:
I am just asking to see how to get a significant improvement in fps, I dont want to upgrade my whole system.

From the benchs I have seen CPU upgrades provide minimal performance increases, GPU is more significant, but if I am wrong then I'll happily upgrade to an Ivy and leave my 6970 alone.
Click to expand...

Even if benchmarks show that the video card upgrade is the bigger improvement, you have to remember that this is being tested in a theoretical no CPU-bottleneck environment when doing so. If your Q9550 really is the source of the bottleneck in your system, getting 2 680s wouldn't improve your framerates all that much as the CPU still can't handle all the information that it has to process.
 
well I am sitting at around 80% CPU utilization while my 6970 is completely maxed out, however I want to test out a 32 or 64 player map and see if that doesn't max out the CPU.
 
ixelion said:
well I am sitting at around 80% CPU utilization while my 6970 is completely maxed out, however I want to test out a 32 or 64 player map and see if that doesn't max out the CPU.
Click to expand...

A 64 player map should completely max out your Q9550 as it can draw some serious loads from modern i7 systems.
 
Usually it can get a lot worse than this especially that I normally play with some AA: this is a 64 player map with graphics set to the absolute minimum settings, I also disabled AA. During the game the CPU never breached 91%

The game really dips with lots of dust flying around but as can be seen in the pick CPU utilization fluctuated within mid 80s sometimes going to 90s but never reached 100%.

GPU on the other hand was flat out 99% continuous, not even budging a percent.

I have no doubt a CPU upgrade will provide a nice boost, but if I can only go CPU or GPU I thing a gtx 670/680 may go a lot further, but again I am open minded about this if some one can convince me to do a CPU upgrade, but currently I don't think the benefit would be as great.

Untitled.jpg


86% CPU utilization
Minimum settings, no aa
49 FPS
 
Last edited:
It isn't your GPU. It is the CPU. I could play really nicely with a 2600k 4+ and 6970 stock at max settings without MSAA without FXAA. I think it was probably at 19x10 and FPS rarely went below 50s or 60s in single player.

It is your CPU. Just getting a 3770k or 2600k will make your minimum FPS rise by 50%+ and avg FPS by 20-40%+.

The GPU won't help with this.
 
Do you normally play in windowed mode? That can really kill your framerate in a lot of games.

Anyway, the reason that your GPU is always maxed out is that since you don't have vsync turned on, the GPU is rendering frames as quickly as possible, even if you don't see them.

Since minimum frame rates seem to be your issue rather than average rates, I agree that the CPU is what is holding you back. The Windows CPU monitor is just polling the CPUs every so often to see your utilization, it cannot capture instantaneous spikes that cause the framerate to drop. An IB CPU upgrade would give you a lot more headroom for these spikes.
 
4x MSAA kills the performance of the 6xxx series AMD. Enable it in CCC and watch the FPS boost. Also, turn off motion blur, that kills performance as well.
 
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