Does my setup bottleneck my video cards?

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batmanbob

batmanbob

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Jun 27, 2013
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I have an AMD Phenom II 955 Black @ 3.2 ghz
12 GB 1600 DDR3 RAM
128 Kingston SSD drive for windows
500 GB WD drive for Games
1 TB WD Green for backup
2 XFX Radeon R7770 Extreme OC in Crossfire
Crosair 650 Watt PSU

I had one of the R7770 and I was very impressed with the performance so I picked up another one for Crysis 3 and I am running on Ultra settings with 43-68 FPS.

My question is whether or not I'm being bottlenecked... I love the crossfire setup and have had no problems that alot of people have mentioned. Any micro-stuttering is not noticeable if there is any at all.

If I am bottlenecking myself what should I change to fix it?

Thanks
 
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nukemaster

nukemaster

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Nov 23, 2004
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Your gpu being bottle necked would mean the cpu is not fast enough to keep them both busy.

You can check this with something like GPU-z. Load up a game and see how much of each card is used.

Please note that settings like Vsync will lower gpu usage as long as the card can hold a frame rate that matches the refresh of your screen. So in those cases, you would LOOK bottle necked, but not actually be.

The higher your GPU load, the less bottle necked you are(so to speak).

This can go both ways, If you have a situation that the video card is ALWAYS at full load and the cpu load is low you may have a video card bottleneck(too much cpu and not enough video).

The key here is balance. Remember each game is different, so you may have to test multiple games to get an idea of what is going on.

This image shows a video card bottleneck. 98% video use and about 47 fps. Please note that game shifts bottleneck back and forth. In large battles the GPU use will drop as the cpu can no longer keep up.
 
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batmanbob

batmanbob

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Jun 27, 2013
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Sorry new to the forum not sure if this is how I respond, but thanks for the speedy response.

how would I view GPU-Z while playing a game? Sorry new to the PC gaming world just started since my 360 crapped out...

Madn3ss795, I already have water cooling... is the OC worth it or am I just over thinking all this?
 
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Madn3ss795

Madn3ss795

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Mar 19, 2013
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Just open GPUZ's sensor tab to check for gpu/ram usage, fan speed, etc.

3.2ghz with that Phenom is a bit low. You should try to push it higher, depends on your board. Higher clock really means faster FPS in games that can only utilize 1 or 2 cores from a CPU.
 
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