OC Q6600 = Bottleneck for GTX580??

[toyota]

My monitor is a 52" LCD, so the highest I can play @ is 1920x1080 or 1080p.. Do you think a 580 is a waste?

Currently I'm clocked @ 3.0ghz

its not really waste for some games but personally I would not spend 150 more bucks for the 580 over the 570 unless I had a cpu that could take much closer to full advantage of it in every game. $500 is lot of money for a gpu and it needs to be paired with a fast cpu to justify that expense IMO. heck the 580 is actually over 500 bucks if you can even find one in stock for more than a couple of hours.

 

[SZLiao214]

No need to worry about your cpu right now. Go overclock it to 3.5 or 3.6 if its the G0 stepping.

 

[toyota]

No need to worry about your cpu right now. Go overclock it to 3.5 or 3.6 if its the G0 stepping.

I believe he said he cant get it that high. I sure hope he has a good cooler on there...

 

[toyota]

I was planning on getting a Sandybridge, but I don't want the entry level offerings coming out in Jan. I am waiting for till Q3 for otco-core Sandybridge to upgrade the cpu. I figured I would get the GPU now.

by the time those come out we will have new gpus and the $500+ gtx580 will look a bit silly compared to what $300 will get you then. a gtx570 is over 150 bucks cheaper and will be a better overall match for your cpu at 1920x1080. not to mention the gtx570 is a very fast card so its not like you are compromising much. and at the end of 2011 you can get juts sale your gtx570 and grab a faster card for the same price you paid for it.

 

[Smartazz]

I was about to post a thread asking the same question, but I figure I'll post it here since I'm in pretty much the same situation as the OP. I have a Q6600@3.2GHz and am wondering if I should bite on the HD6950. I plan to use it on a 1080p monitor with 8xaa where possible. Thoughts on this combination? I see the OP got a GTX 570, but I hear that nvidia cards are more CPU bottlenecked than AMD cards(don't know how true this is though).

 

[SHAQ]

I would suggest a 570 also if you plan to keep your current CPU. I had my 6600 at 3.2 and when I got my i7 it was a huge immprovement especially with SLI. The $150 you save with the 570 can be put towards a future CPU/mobo upgrade. If money is an issue. If not then get the 580 but you probably won't be able to use all of it's power. Even the 570 might not get fully utilized but you will save a good chunk of money. You might even want to look for a 1GB 460 and OC the life out of it.

Edit: bah...missed that you already got the 570. Good choice.

 

[exar333]

I was about to post a thread asking the same question, but I figure I'll post it here since I'm in pretty much the same situation as the OP. I have a Q6600@3.2GHz and am wondering if I should bite on the HD6950. I plan to use it on a 1080p monitor with 8xaa where possible. Thoughts on this combination? I see the OP got a GTX 570, but I hear that nvidia cards are more CPU bottlenecked than AMD cards(don't know how true this is though).

Not really true. Either a 6950 or 570 would be great choices for you if you want a powerful card. Whatever has the best deal really, is what I would recommend.

 

[RussianSensation]

Not really true.

It is true. NV cards are more CPU bottlenecked than AMD cards - at least last generation this was true. Logically, this means GTX580 will be even more sensitive. Even a Core i5 750 can bottleneck the GTX480 at times, nevermind the 580.

I see OP got the 570 which is a far better choice than the 580, esp with that CPU>

 

[Smartazz]

It is true. NV cards are more CPU bottlenecked than AMD cards - at least last generation this was true. Logically, this means GTX580 will be even more sensitive. Even a Core i5 750 can bottleneck the GTX480 at times, nevermind the 580.

I see OP got the 570 which is a far better choice than the 580, esp with that CPU>

Thanks for the link, this pretty much settles it for me. Unless the 570 drops below $300, I'll probably bite the bullet on the 6950 after I get my new monitor. My CPU will clock higher, but it starts putting out a lot of heat, so I'd like to avoid that. This will be my first non-nvidia card since the 9250(almost bought a 4870 though).

 

[tech960]

It is true. NV cards are more CPU bottlenecked than AMD cards - at least last generation this was true. Logically, this means GTX580 will be even more sensitive. Even a Core i5 750 can bottleneck the GTX480 at times, nevermind the 580.

Great link. I wonder how the newer 570/580 cards would do on a test like that.

 

[Smartazz]

Great link. I wonder how the newer 570/580 cards would do on a test like that.

Would be interesting to know, since it has a good chance at impacting which card I end up getting.

 

[tweakboy]

please stop spouting this nonsense in every thread where cpu is mentioned.

Why is it nonsense my friend ?

 

[toyota]

Why is it nonsense my friend ?

because you tested a couple of games only. plus I believe you tested them with your 8800gt. a Q6600 would limit a 580 for sure and is not worth the extra $150 over the $570. IMO a $500+ gpu is not something that you buy unless you can put it full use in all your games.

 

[Smartazz]

because you tested a couple of games only. plus I believe you tested them with your 8800gt. a Q6600 would limit a 580 for sure and is not worth the extra $150 over the $570. IMO a $500+ gpu is not something that you buy unless you can put it full use in all your games.

Yeah, it makes much more sense to save the $150. Tweakboy, look at the link someone posted earlier in the thread where THG detailed the difference between an i7 975 and i5 760. Core speed is important for games since not a lot of games are coded well for quad cores.

 

[tech960]

Well after spending some time testing this GTX 570, I can say for sure the Q6600 is bottlenecking my frame rates.

in F1 2010 Running 1920x1080 @ 8x AA - 32 FPS average. Much lower than the benchmarks charts I've been drolling over while hbconsidering the purchase.

in BC2, same resolution, I'm seeing FPS around 30-50.. very disapointing. I guess I'm in the market for a 2600K SB

and yes, the cpu is OC

 

[scrubman]

Dont feel bad. I believe you made the right choice either way. I firmly believe now after much research that its time for the Q6600 to step down after a 3 year exceptional performance run. I am in the same boat as you and many others. I actually just installed my new GTX570 as well! Its nice to see the imporvement over my 8800GT SLI setup but like I said, its time for a refresh. I am planning on getting the 2600k Sandy Bridge and most likely run it at no less than 4GHz. I just found this review which confirmed what I already thought and put some more specific numbers together. From the review I expect to see about a 50% performance increase across the board with games. This is with the GTX570 using the Q6600@3.2 going to the Sandy Bridge with the GTX570. I'm pretty confident that even though its still only a Quad core it will last for another 3 years at which time software should have caught up and made it worth while to get Hex core plus CPU's. And of course somewhere in between going to SLI with the another GTX570.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cpu-benchmark-mainstream.html

 

[scrubman]

It is true. NV cards are more CPU bottlenecked than AMD cards - at least last generation this was true. Logically, this means GTX580 will be even more sensitive. Even a Core i5 750 can bottleneck the GTX480 at times, nevermind the 580.

By the way, I would not call the nVidia cards being more "CPU bottlenecked" since its not slowing FPS down compared to similar AMD cards. I would prefer to say that nVidia cards are more "CPU rewarding" than the AMD cards!

 

[SickBeast]

I would say the cpu _is_ a bottleneck, but ... here's the thing. Are you pulling 30+fps on your favorite games? If so, going to something like say i7 920@4ghz will pull say 100fps, but it will hardly matter beyond the magic 30.

There is a huge difference between 30 and 60FPS IMO. 60FPS is ideal if your monitor is 60hz, and yes, anything beyond that is overkill and a waste.

If you have a 120hz monitor, I'll bet you could tell the difference between 60 and 120fps.

 

[Smartazz]

There is a huge difference between 30 and 60FPS IMO. 60FPS is ideal if your monitor is 60hz, and yes, anything beyond that is overkill and a waste.

If you have a 120hz monitor, I'll bet you could tell the difference between 60 and 120fps.

On a 120hz games look very fluid over 60fps. It's actually a bit hard to go back to a 60hz monitor after using a 120hz one for a while.

 

[tech960]

Another dead give away that I'm bottlenecked is when I lower the IQ down to Medium and turn off AA/AF, I have the same exact frame rate as when it's set to Ultra/High - 32xAA, 16xAF.

$$ is not a problem, but I'm not sure I feel like buying another Case and PSU. So I guess I'll have 8gig gskill ram and a Q6600/MB on the shelf.

.. Back to waiting for MB reviews.

 

[MustangSVT]

There is a huge difference between 30 and 60FPS IMO. 60FPS is ideal if your monitor is 60hz, and yes, anything beyond that is overkill and a waste.

If you have a 120hz monitor, I'll bet you could tell the difference between 60 and 120fps.

here we go again~.

 

[tweakboy]

well, since he has a cpu bottleneck, he can now up the image quality like AA AF, texture sizes and a faster card will keep the same fps but with more eye candy.



I was just setting an example here when I said 100fps.

Explain to me how his CPU is a bottleneck when all the games I play right now
COD BlackOps , Mafia II NFS hot pursuit NBA 2K11 use 30 to 70 percent of CPU power.

Once a game uses full 100 percent CPU power then its time for CPU upgrade, but hes fine, even if its not OCed, Grab a 580 there is no bottleneck trust me.

 

[toyota]

Explain to me how his CPU is a bottleneck when all the games I play right now
COD BlackOps , Mafia II NFS hot pursuit NBA 2K11 use 30 to 70 percent of CPU power.

Once a game uses full 100 percent CPU power then its time for CPU upgrade, but hes fine, even if its not OCed, Grab a 580 there is no bottleneck trust me.

it has already been explained to you many times. also I believe a mod told you to knock it off with your can of spam response every time the word cpu is mentioned.

 

[TekDemon]

It can definitely be a bottleneck, particularly in games that don't use all the cores. For example you'd be totally CPU limited in Starcraft 2, and you'd probably see really lousy FPS in Ultra because a lot of the features utilize the CPU very heavily on Ultra but the game will only use 2 cores. For games that distribute over all 4 cores you'd fare better.
Something like an E8600 clocked sky high is about the minimum these days to not be practically CPU limited (meaning that you'll still be limited but it'll almost always be over 60FPS so it doesn't really matter), the extra cache and higher clock (and other improvements) make it noticeably faster in a lot of games.
Still, if you don't have good cooling I'd probably start by buying a cheap but good heatsink like the hyper 212+ or thermaltake contac30 or xigmatek HDT 1283 or something ($20-30 for all of these) and trying to hit about 3.6Ghz.