GPU Bottlenecks. FX6300 overclocked | Need best Nvidia card

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Michel7788

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May 7, 2014
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Hello there,
Reading a lot about bottlenecks and I have a FX6300 havent OC yet but going for around 4.0Ghz. My board is the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 with 8GB ram. Now I need a card and I can't seem to find clear numbers that say what card speeds can a 6 core 4ghz cpu handle. Also I want to spend $200-300 at the most on the card. So the options would be either go for a Gforce 7XX series or should I go for a higher speed 6XX series? for example if the cpu can't handle 660 speeds should I dumb down to X50 and go up a series (So 750). Any advice would be great, I'm okay with landing under cpu bottleneck if that saves me money instead of having a gpu that's too fast.

Thanks
 
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photonboy
I can answer your question:

CPU bottlenecking:
The FX-6300 can definitely become a bottleneck, however it varies between games mainly by how well they are coded to use all the threads. Per core it is weaker than an Intel CPU so the FX-6300 works best if all 6 threads can be fully utilized. Examples:

a) Battlefield 4 (singleplayer only): FX-6300 bottleneck is very minor, and often not at all.

b) SKYRIM: Significant bottleneck up to 40% roughly depending on video card though that's likely much LESS once the CPU is overclocked. Starcraft 2 is similarly bottlenecked as it doesn't use more than two threads well.

Graphics card?
Since bottlenecking can be NOTHING at times we'll just simply get the BEST card in your budget.

GTX670:
Nope...
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photonboy

photonboy

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Jun 20, 2006
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I can answer your question:

CPU bottlenecking:
The FX-6300 can definitely become a bottleneck, however it varies between games mainly by how well they are coded to use all the threads. Per core it is weaker than an Intel CPU so the FX-6300 works best if all 6 threads can be fully utilized. Examples:

a) Battlefield 4 (singleplayer only): FX-6300 bottleneck is very minor, and often not at all.

b) SKYRIM: Significant bottleneck up to 40% roughly depending on video card though that's likely much LESS once the CPU is overclocked. Starcraft 2 is similarly bottlenecked as it doesn't use more than two threads well.

Graphics card?
Since bottlenecking can be NOTHING at times we'll just simply get the BEST card in your budget.

GTX670:
Nope. All currently way overpriced that I can find (going out of stock I guess).

GTX760:
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-video-card-gtx760dc2oc2gd5
or
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-02gp42763kr
 
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Solution
photonboy

photonboy

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Jun 20, 2006
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First, here's a useful benchmark I meant to include:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/R9_270X_Direct_Cu_II_TOP/26.html

(The Asus GTX760 is 4% over stock before overclocking. A stock GTX760 is 9% faster than the Asus R9-270X so that's roughly a 13% difference though in some instances that shrinks with any CPU bottleneck.

The PRICE difference between $250 and $210 is 20%.)

Update: on AMD cards:

If you don't have a specific need for NVidia features (Shadowplay, Gamestream, PhysX, G-sync monitor support) then AMD cards are an alternative.

The main advantage now is MANTLE support which only affects BF4 right now but some games down the line. Whether Mantle will fizzle and die is unknown. Star Citizen for example will use Mantle apparently but it's uncertain if it will support DX12 as well.

The MAIN advantage of Mantle (and DX12) is it makes better use of the CPU thus reducing the bottleneck. It requires an HD7000 or newer AMD graphics card.

AMD cards:
R9-270X-> Not quite as fast as the GTX760 but cheaper as well:
My recommended card:
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-video-card-r9270xdc2t2gd5

R9-280/280X:
The 280's appear so new that I couldn't find benchmarks I trusted and the R9-280X cards start at $300. That's in your budget but every $300 model appeared to have issues such as the Gigabyte version which was reviewed to very noisy.

*Regardless of the card you decide on, look around for customer reviews (Amazon, Newegg etc) and Techpowerup or similar professional reviews.

SUMMARY:
No easy choice I guess, but if you want to RECORD or STREAM the answer is easy. Get the Asus GTX760. G-Sync is very, very awesome but requires an expensive monitor. Prices will drop on that and if you think a new G-Sync monitor is a possibility in this cards lifetime factor that in (Google Linus Techtips G-Sync and watch the video).

PhysX can be neat, but I consider it additional "eye candy" and would not use it if it drops you below 60FPS. For example, in Batman Arkham Asylum it does a really great job of the smoke and I'm pretty sure you can handle full quality at 1920x1080 with PhysX enabled (in Batman AA PhysX and DX11 both have issues and should be disabled to avoid stutter. That's Rocksteady's fault not NVidia's.)

If budget is a factor, or MANTLE feels important consider the Asus R9-270X.
 
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Michel7788

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My monitor isnt going to be anything crazy right now and I havent looked at computer hardware for the last 7 years so im very behind on the new technologies. Yeah I wish they had something easy like "The GTX750 needs 3ghz of cpu power" or "760 needs 3.2" ha but there doesnt seem to be. I'm planning to play BF4 and the Division or something later down the line. Maybe I'll just find something on sale somewhere and that will decide for me. I was thinking, if there is no bottlenecks, I would just drop to a lower series and go for the higher speeds like a 680 cause I don't see what huge benefits in technologies that the 7 series has over the 6 and cheaper power seems to be a better idea right now.

Anyway all this information brings me to another question that I've always wondered about. would it be better to use an AMD card with an AMD processor because they are built by similar ideas so maybe they will utilize each others power better? since mantle seems to be a good example of this, would mantle do better on an AMD because of the mutliple threads? I used to be an ATI fan way back in the day, since then it seems nvidia is the better choice these days. I'll take a look at some of the AMD cards
 
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Michel7788

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May 7, 2014
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I'm sure there's no problem, but If I have a 6 core AMD I should probably go for mantle to utilize all of them?

"For now, Mantle matters most for AMD CPUs. The 10% gain for the Core i3 and Core i7 in BF4 is a nice bonus, but it’s the A10-7850K’s 23% jump in Battlefield 4 that really stands out. AMD’s cores benefit disproportionately because it’s AMD’s cores that are clearly being bottlenecked before their Intel counterparts. We see this in Star Swarm as well, where the AMD chips are held to roughly 60% of Intel’s frame rate in overwhelmingly CPU-bound scenarios.

That doesn’t mean Intel chips can’t still benefit, as our benchmarks also show. Again, we didn’t have time to put a full range of chips through their paces. Enthusiasts with older, slower CPUs, particularly Pentium and Celeron-branded parts, may see improvements closer to what AMD put up on the board."

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/175881-amd-mantle-benchmarked-the-biggest-innovation-in-gaming-since-directx-9/4

Do you guys feel that getting an AMD card will unlock my AMD CPU's full potential? Or will I benefit fine getting an nvidia. I havent shopped for computer hardware in 7 years so all this new info is a little overwhelming. I found a refurbished GTX 780 FTW for around $400 on newegg (btw I increased my budget due to giving myself more time to research and landing a new job) but I'm wondering if I should just go for the R9 290x?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487033
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121820R

I believe I must buy the 290X instead of 290 to get the same performance as the 780 right?
 
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