i7 920 2.6ghz & HD 7950 Bottleneck?

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It's up to you how you spend your money.

Adding a 2nd GPU will improve performance on games that can benefit from a...
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Guest

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Hi,

Your CPU is from late 2008, but it still packs a punch.

You could compare your benchmarks with others. But it's not always easy to tell if it's bottlenecking.

If you wanted to, you could up the clocks of your CPU and see how much difference it makes.
 
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Pavel Pokidaylo

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Hey thanks for the reply. I still get really good fps in most games I can max (almost all settings) and be at 60fps. The one setting that makes my dps plummet is shadows. Every game I play I have to dial down the shadows. Crysis 3, Bioshock, Tomb Raider. I can play all those games maxed and be at 60fps but I have to turn down the shadows. I heard it's because of my CPU but I dunno. I do want to OC the CPU though.
I can't really upgrade the CPU to a more recent one because my motherboard is older only supports the first gen i7. Also I would rather spend the money on a second radeon 7950 rather than buy a new CPU :)
 
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Guest

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It's up to you how you spend your money.

Adding a 2nd GPU will improve performance on games that can benefit from a 2nd GPU. Not all games can benefit from this, but most modern games can.

Buying a new CPU should improve general performance (but of course this means you would need a new a motherboard, but you already knew that I guess).

I would say that shaders and shadows tend to take their toll, especially alongside tessellation.

I'm not sure about CPU causing bottlenecks due to shadows. I would say that an older CPU would be slower than current generation CPUs at physics rather than shadows.
 
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sam_p_lay

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Mar 26, 2010
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Yeah I don't think there's anything yet that can really be bottlenecked by an i7 920. Crysis 3 is the only game I've seen to show any benefit with current gen i7s and even then it was something like 65fps vs 55fps on the Nehalem. Not worth upgrading for. I'd stick with it at least until Skylake launches.
 
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vitofarrera

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Jul 14, 2013
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Don't buy a new cpu because 920 for me can last for another 4-5 years. I have mine 920 D0 OC'ed to 3.8ghz and an MSI Radeon 7950 TF3 3gb OC edition - 880mhz core, 1250mhz memory with only 4gb 1866 ram and doesn't even bottleneck. I get 60 -70 fps average ultra on crysis 3 with shadows no problem. Maybe its not your cpu but your gpu's causing the problem. have you update to the latest drivers?
 
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bystander

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My i7 920 is still kicking. And while it is triple channel memory, my motherboard allows for dual channel memory as well. If you OC it to 3.8 or better, it is very comparable to current stock i5's and the fastest AMD CPU's.

This is a guide I used to learn to OC mine: http://www.overclock.net/t/538439/guide-to-overclocking-the-core-i7-920-or-930-to-4-0ghz

It is not perfect, but should get you there. I found with my 920 that 3.9Ghz is the sweet spot. Any higher requires a ton of extra voltage.
 
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sam_p_lay

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Presumably you don't though? If you do, you're dropping your maximum bandwidth from 25.6GB/s to 17GB/s. Triple-channel memory was one of the big selling points of X58 Express vs the mainstream chipsets.
 
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bystander

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I'm not saying I use dual channel, but it is supported and from tests shown, memory speed doesn't affect gaming speeds much at all, so if you are using dual channel memory, it wouldn't hurt you much at all for gaming purposes.
 
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Pavel Pokidaylo

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Thanks for all the replies guys. This computer is an Alienware Aurora. It came with 3 gigs of DDR3 533mhz ram. My friend saw my computer and ended up getting the same one but his was a little more powerful. He got a 2.8 ghz i7 instead of the 2.6, his video card was a 5870 mine was 5770 and his ram was also 3 gig DDR3 but with 637 or w.e mhz instead of the 533. He ended up ordering 12 gigs of newer ram and gave me his old 3 gigs and I put those in with my 3 gigs for a total of 6 but they were 1 gig sticks and I was told thats not so good.

The book that came with the computer says that the 1600 frequency RAM is the highest this motherboard supports and it can be either 4/8/12gigs. 12 gig being the maximum it can support.
 
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Pavel Pokidaylo

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I've seen this guide before. It may be a good guide and one of the more simple ones but it's still confusing as all hell to me lol. I have no clue about where to start even. I've been in the CMOS but I don't really see anything there that has to do with overclocking the CPU. I'm just clueless =/
 
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bystander

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Not all motherboards support OCing. You may have one that doesn't.
 
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