Will a GTX 970 be bottlenecked by my PC?

[Karl87]

My computer is serveral years old and I would like to know if it would cause any problems for that GPU.

Im running windows 7 64 bit
AMD Athlon II X4 630 processor
8 GB DDR2 Ram
Gigabyte GA-MA785GT-UD3H motherboard.

 

[toyota]

yes you would limit a 970 by quite a bit. in most games you will be lucky to get much more than half of what that card is capable of. and its a playable limitation too as several games cant even get more than 40 fps average with that cpu on the settings a 970 could run.

 

[KaRLiToS]

Yes, your CPU will bottleneck the GTX 970.

Nice name you have there ( I'm also Karl )

 

[Karl87]

Okay so any suggestions on what parts to upgrade to?

 

[toyota]

sadly you will need to upgrade everything if you want to run a fast modern gpu like the 970. you could do a stopgap upgrade to a Phenom 2 X4 cpu but even then I would not put a 970 with that.

 

[Karl87]

Any recommendations on which motherboard/processor to get? I'm having difficulty finding dimensions of motherboards to see if they would fit in my case.

 

[KaRLiToS]

What is your budget?

 

[Karl87]

$300-$400 for both of them ?

 

[toyota]

this will probably need to be moved to general hardware at some point.

 

[KaRLiToS]

$300-$400 for both of them ?

I would get the GTX 970 then and live with the bottleneck if you only have that as a budget.

 

[toyota]

I would get the GTX 970 then and live with the bottleneck if you only have that as a budget.

he could get a 750 ti and have the same "playable" experience with his current setup.

and I think he was saying he had 300-400 bucks for the mobo and cpu which will get him something nice. if he means total budget of 400 then no luck.

 

[Karl87]

Yes sorry for the confusion guys, I meant $300-$400 for the motherboard and CPU.

 

[Techhog]

Yes sorry for the confusion guys, I meant $300-$400 for the motherboard and CPU.

What case do you have?

 

[f1sherman]

Too bad about 8GB DDR2...


Your options are

1. quad core i5 4430 - i5 4690(K)
2. 2/4+HT cores i3 4130 - i3 4370
3. AMD FX 8320 - 8370

Option 1 being best overall. Also you will need something like

GIGABYTE GA-Z97MX-Gaming 5
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-716-_-Product

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) (at the very least)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231445

Biggest decision proly being to OC (K) or not. And if not you can get cheaper MOBO.
And 8GB or 16GB of RAM. RAM is kinda expensive...

 

[Karl87]

Thanks for the help. quad core i5 4430 and GA-Z97MX-Gaming 5 are on the way.

 

[KaRLiToS]

I would have spend another 50$ and get the i5 4690k but that is just the enthousiast in me.

 

[Karl87]

Would it really make much of a difference? Just want my GPU running smoothly.

 

[KaRLiToS]

With a i5 4690k, you can overclock the hell out of that CPU. While the other is limited.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Seems these days anything outside of a i5 with a high end card is a waste.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Would it really make much of a difference? Just want my GPU running smoothly.

The 4430 should work nicely, but I tend to agree with karlitos. If you are dropping the coin for a GTX 970 it might have been worth it to have gotten at least a 4690, which would have given you a faster base clock and better turbo-- probably about 20% faster at turbo on all 4 cores.

 

[Karl87]

Appreciate the help guys, insanely fast responses to my questions.