FX 6300 How much will it bottleneck an R9 290

ohh hoh..somehow unselected the current solution..what's this?

Significantly depending on the game. I absolutely despise when people make assumptions that the FX-6300 won't bottleneck if you merely overclock, and they say so based on zero experience. I have a GTX 770, noteably less powerful than an R9 290, as well as an FX-6300 OC'ed to 4.2 GHz, and while on certain games my frame rate never drops and my GPU is constantly working at maximum potential because the game is more GPU bound than anything else (Crysis 2, Battlefield 3, Alan Wake) on other games the FX-6300 will create a very noticeable bottleneck since these games are CPU Bound (Crysis 1, Borderlands 2, Skyrim).

On the CPU bound side of things, Crysis 1 is hell. I've heard other people with an FX-6300 say otherwise but it's simply not happening for me. While monitoring GPU usage I can clearly tell that something is amiss since my GPU usage is constantly low in Crysis 1 and my frame rate jumps anywhere from 25 - 40 fps. In Borderlands 2 I'm usually at least close to 60, but there will be certain areas that just plummet me to as low as 30 fps (and in Borderlands 2, 30 fps looks awful). In Skyrim, I'm almost always at 60 fps with occasional bouts to 45. All of this due to bottlenecking. I'm also overclocked to a very stable 4.2 GHz and it's done very little to remove these instances of low frame rate. At most I've gained 4 - 8 fps through overclocking to 4.2 GHz, so you should know this for certain: Disregard what anyone says, especially those who do not speak from experience: The FX-6300's bottlenecking will not be "minimal" simply because you overclock. It will be there, and it will be painfully noticeable.

In other words, with some games you won't get any perceivable bottlenecking because either the games will be GPU bound, and hence the GPU will maximize it's potential first, or the FX-6300 will only start bottlenecking your GPU above 60 fps so you won't notice it anyway. However, in other games, you'll notice a lot of frame drops of varying magnitudes, mostly with open world games which are usually more CPU bound.

I've owned an FX 6300 and a 7970 (EDIT: just saw your recent post) for testing and I didn't experience any bottlenecking. So if you were referring to me, then no. Of course it's game dependent - I was simply saying for the most part, no.

But if your experience (extensive use) is different then OK, I stand corrected.

Just curious, what games did you play with your 6300 and 7970 setup, because for some games I don't see bottlenecking at all, and for some games I do. So which games were you playing?

My 2c:
It REALLY depends on the games. From my experience: tomb raider at ultimate always 99% GPU use, no bottleneck. Bf3 at 64 maps: lowest GPU usage ~90-95%, but framedrops with 99% GPU usage at heavy action, so more or less no bottleneck. Cs:go 80-90% GPU usage at ultra with 8x as, but constant >120fps, no problem. Lol: all maps 80+ fps at 25-40%, except aram map: drops to 30 fps ( but its known to be bad coded, its the smallest map and should be the least taxing one)
Thats my experience with the rig in my signature.

My 2c:
It REALLY depends on the games. From my experience: tomb raider at ultimate always 99% GPU use, no bottleneck. Bf3 at 64 maps: lowest GPU usage ~90-95%, but framedrops with 99% GPU usage at heavy action, so more or less no bottleneck. Cs:go 80-90% GPU usage at ultra with 8x as, but constant >120fps, no problem. Lol: all maps 80+ fps at 25-40%, except aram map: drops to 30 fps ( but its known to be bad coded, its the smallest map and should be the least taxing one)
Thats my experience with the rig in my signature.

Yea exactly. I have the exact same thing for those games as well (except Tomb Raider since I don't own it) but for BF3 and CS:S it's the same thing, I literally never drop below 60 or even close to it on CS:S, and on BF3 there was literally only a single time that I remember notice dropping below 60. But then there's the games which have poorly thought up algorithms that maximize the time needed for a CPU to execute a program, and while this effects every CPU it effects the ones at the lower end of the spectrum, i.e. the FX-6300, a lot more. Either that or they take advantage of one CPU architecture over another (e.g. Intel over AMD).

CS:S uses the same engine as TF2 + Gmod, correct? Could I ask what kind of FPS you get in those games? Been wondering whether mine are normal recently. Or just your CS:S avg. and min. FPS. Cheers.

Yepp, it does use the same engine. Let's all just take a second to appreciate how genius the guys at Valve are. Seriously, if you've ever programmed, you know how hard it can be to come up with efficient code, let alone code as efficient as that for an entire game engine! Anyway, I certainly get somewhere around the 150 - 250 fps range for those games though I can't tell you the exact numbers. That's just a guess from when I last played it on my desktop at home, which is unfortunately not accessible to me since I go to College a state away.

I was going to ask what kind of settings but I guess you probably wouldn't know.

Was just wondering, mine fluctuates all over the place. My minimum seems to be 80-90, max 290. Average is probably in the 110-150 range. I'll have to keep an eye on my GPU+CPU usage next time I play - this is with everything maxed, slapped on full AA and AF and whatever else there is.

And it's very impressive how they can make a game look so good (TF2) and run so well.

My settings are all maximum at 1920x1080.

Odd that I'm getting lower performance. My GPU load doesn't exceed 27% really and I saw my minimum FPS go down to the 60s, though only for a brief moment. This is in G-Mod btw. Only one core of my CPU is utilised, even with multi-core rendering enabled. Weird.

And I'm on 1360x768 ._. I've heard before that my GPU may be stuck in 2d clocks or something since it's hardly being used. I don't even know. What I do know is that it doesn't drop under 60 and that's good.

I have an FX 6300, I'm upgrading my computer, and I don't want to upgrade my CPU just yet. How much do you guys think an R9 290 will be bottlenecked? And how much overclocking do you think I should do to help elevate the bottleneck? Thanks in advance

in some games yes, o/c will help to relieve it, but will not be sufficient in some games.

ps. I absolutely despise thieves, rapist and murderers, but not people offering their opinions on FX6300 bottlenecking! ;-)