Am I bottlenecking with my specs?

Ryan Collins

Honorable
Aug 4, 2013
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10,510
Hey all,

I was just looking for a quick analysis from someone to see if my system is bottlenecked somewhere. I feel like I should be getting slightly better performance with my new graphics card than I do.

Motherboard: MSI 970A-G46 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

GPU: MSI HD7950 Twin Frozr II (3GB)

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition

Hard Drive: Samsung 840 250GB SSD

PSU: APEVIA ATX-AS680W-BL 680W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready Power Supply

RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model F3-14900CL9D-8GBXL

My first guess would be that my mobo is a bit lame, but it could also be my CPU choking my GPU? I'm considering upgrading to an AMD FX-8350.

I play a huge range of games, from MMOs, FPSes, strategy games, Sims 3, a heavily modded Skyrim, racing games, etc.

Thanks ahead of time!

Ryan
 
Solution
Honestly I think if you aren't getting the performance you expect (be reasonable) then the only logical conclusion is that its the CPU. The phenoms were phenomenal (heh, wordplay) for a good while. Good price/performance ratio aswell IIRC. Though they certainly can't hold much stock next to an i5. Moving to an 8350 might be worth it since you already have the mobo and would save you 120+ bucks.

But I would look up how to get rivatuner/afterburner OSD to tell you more details, vram, cpu usage, ram usage, etc. I can't remember how though :p.

egilbe

Distinguished
Nov 17, 2011
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It could be a little bit, I don't know if going to an 8350 would show that much of an improvement. Those Deneb core chips are monsters, especially if overclocked. Try OC'ing it first to see if you notice any improvement.
 

soggynuggetz

Honorable
Jul 29, 2013
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Do not OC on that motherboard! I have heard many reviews on that motherboard about it getting fried from OC'ing. That motherboard is great if you are not planning on OC'ing.

Also I do not think that motherboard supports AMD's 8 core processors.
 
Honestly I think if you aren't getting the performance you expect (be reasonable) then the only logical conclusion is that its the CPU. The phenoms were phenomenal (heh, wordplay) for a good while. Good price/performance ratio aswell IIRC. Though they certainly can't hold much stock next to an i5. Moving to an 8350 might be worth it since you already have the mobo and would save you 120+ bucks.

But I would look up how to get rivatuner/afterburner OSD to tell you more details, vram, cpu usage, ram usage, etc. I can't remember how though :p.
 
Solution