Will the Pentium Dual Core E5700 bottleneck the Radeon R9 270x?

S11795

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Jun 29, 2014
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Hello, I’m upgrading my GPU so I have few queries on that. I have a Pentium Dual Core E5700 with Radeon HD 6670 1GB GDDR5 and 4GB DDR3 800 MHz RAM inside my PC. All games from 2011 era work just fine, some even reach 50-60 FPS on medium to high settings at 720p. I’m planning on getting a Radeon R9 270x, mainly for Watch Dogs and upcoming GTA 5. Will these games run just fine? I mean at playable frame rate (about 45 FPS on high to ultra at 720p). Will my CPU bottleneck the GPU much? I know it will but as long as the games run fine it doesn’t matter. I have a 720p monitor, so I won’t be doing any 1080p gaming. I’m not going to do any serious Video Editing or whatever. Also my Motherboard is Biostar G41D3C.

For now, Watch Dogs run at about 10-15 FPS on lowest settings at 720p,
Murdered Soul Suspect run at 30-32 FPS on high settings at 720p,
Mafia 2 at 45-50 FPS on high at 720p,
GTA IV at 25-30 FPS on high at 720p,
AC Revelation at 25-30 FPS on medium-high at 720p etc.

I don’t have the budget to get a new CPU or change the Motherboard and I’ve made my mind on the R9 270x. Please help me on this.

My PSU is 500 W, but I'm going to get a new one (R9 270x probably won't run on this).
 
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I wouldn't pair a 270X with that CPU. If you want a GPU of that caliber, you would unfortunately have to upgrade your system. Now, you could do this gradually, such as buying a new board and CPU and using your current GPU while saving for a faster one.

Watch Dogs, being a Ubisoft title, does not seem to run well on anything and is currently a train wreck performance-wise.

From what I've seen, the G3258 is a fairly capable CPU for a budget chip. It can be overclocked, which would probably help it's performance in games quite a bit. I've seen examples of people hitting 4.0 GHz with one on cheap motherboards. The LGA 1150 socket gives you the possibility of upgrading to a faster I3 or I5 in the future too.

That being said, The new...

bradsctt

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So you haven't bought the R9 270X yet?

I would say that it will bottleneck, the Pentium E5700 is a rather old CPU, and was considered low end even when it was released.

The reason why Watch Dogs is running so badly is because it needs at least 6GB of RAM, and a Core 2 Quad Q8400, which is considerably faster than your current Pentium.

Your HD 6670 would also make your frame rates low, as Watch Dogs is badly optimised and doesn't run well, even on high end systems.

From personal experience:

Up till 9 months ago, I was stuck using a Pentium E6700 (slightly faster than your E5700), with 4GB of RAM and one of my current GTX 760(I was short on money at the time, and my friend had the Pentium sitting around.)

I was able to run games like BF3, but the framerate was around 20-35 FPS, because the CPU wasn't fast enough. Based off that, and knowing that the R9 270X is close to a GTX 760, i would say that you will get a fairly large bottleneck, and gaming will not be enjoyable. Being hit by a lag spike in the middle of action is not fun. :)
 

Ali-90

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Jun 28, 2014
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It surely bottlenecks R9 270x.I had a Q6600 cpu and upgraded my gpu from HD4850 to 270x,i got not much increase in performance,but when i changed it to an i5,the Fps became almost double! (On 720p)
 

BustaRhymes

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If I were you I would keep your GPU and get an overclocked Pentium G3258, with mobo and ram. That should come out to about the same as the $200 r9 270x. You might not have all the eye candy yet but your games would run at an acceptable framerate.
 
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I wouldn't pair a 270X with that CPU. If you want a GPU of that caliber, you would unfortunately have to upgrade your system. Now, you could do this gradually, such as buying a new board and CPU and using your current GPU while saving for a faster one.

Watch Dogs, being a Ubisoft title, does not seem to run well on anything and is currently a train wreck performance-wise.

From what I've seen, the G3258 is a fairly capable CPU for a budget chip. It can be overclocked, which would probably help it's performance in games quite a bit. I've seen examples of people hitting 4.0 GHz with one on cheap motherboards. The LGA 1150 socket gives you the possibility of upgrading to a faster I3 or I5 in the future too.

That being said, The new Pentiums do have drawbacks, they lack quite a few instruction sets as compared to their other Haswell cousins, and they only have 2 cores with 2 threads. While this may not be a problem with badly threaded, GPU bound, or older games, some newer games seem to be taking advantage of heavier multi-threading. This is most likely due to the way many games are ported from the consoles. The curent ones have 8 low performance cores, with a lot of memory and a powerful GPU. One can theorize that games in the not so distant future will begin to leverage more performance out of this type of configuration by using all 8 threads, and using more VRAM and taxing the GPU heavily. In other words, single threaded performance may not matter as much as it does now. Of course, this is speculation though.

In my opinion, you would be best off trying to build off of a better platform. There is the Pentium option, but that could still bottleneck a 270X, and you would probably end up swapping the CPU out again sooner than if you had gone with a higher end option, spending more money than you have to. I would have a hard time recommending it. You'd be by far better off with a Haswell I3, or an FX 4300/6300. AMD CPU's are great for budget building as they generally offer the best performance for your dollars spent. Unfortunately, they offer no real upgrade path right now as your only choices are to go with others out of the limited offerings of the current FX lineup. But they also regularly go on sale too, FX 6300's go on sale for as low as $110 or so. Either the FX, or I3 options would be the best bet over the Pentium or plugging a fast GPU into your current system.

My advice would be to plan out buying a new board, CPU of your choice, and 8GB of RAM and then look into a new GPU while using your current one in the new system. If buying the parts seperately, buy the CPU first as it is by far less likely to be DOA. Then the RAM, then the board.
 
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deathcall666

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Nov 23, 2012
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Fx 4300 is rather poor really. Fx 6300 is way better and with just 10$ more and there isnt really huge diference in gaeming beteewn it and i 3/5/7.
There are games (even last titles) where you just need a cpu. But games like skyrim and crysis 3 will be influenced by cpu a litlle.
 
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Good point there, the 6300 is an excellent CPU, especially for how little it costs. I almost bought one for my current rig, but the 8320 went on sale for $140 right as I was gonna buy the 6300, couldn't pass that up! The 6300 paired with a budget board would be a great platform to build on and would perform very well. I forgot to mention AMD boards are better priced than Intel ones too.

 

deathcall666

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There is a litlle improvement from 6300 to 8320 in gaming (overall) compared to 4350 to 6300.
4350 is way more taked
But beteewn 6300 and 8320 it isnt dat much improvement. You can always OC the 6300 . I saw 4.5ghz oc and even 5( thus i woulnd recomand it no matter how stablle it is)
 
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In reality, they're all about the same except for the multi-threaded performance. The 8320 will always win in heavily threaded apps or anything able to use all of it's cores of course. I was able to hit 4.5 GHz on my 8320 quite easily, but I wasn't comfortable with the heat it was running so I backed it down to 4.2 GHz for my 24/7 overclock. But we're straying off topic a bit here.

OP is on a budget which seems tight, so the least expensive, effective route is what he would need to run his desired card. For that the 6300 is great, cheaper than the I3 option too. But even if he did go with a 4300, this would work just fine too and those go on sale for below $100 at times. Sometimes $10 is a big deal if funding is tight. A stock 4300 will perform on par with a Phenom II X4 965, besting it more often than not. And even though that is an old CPU, it can still game quite well. I have one in my old rig with an HD 7850 that's running games on a 1600x900 monitor on high to ultra settings. And for a card of the caliber he wants to use, a 4300 would work just fine. Either route would be a good base to build from and a good step up from his current CPU, just comes down to exactly what he would want to spend and how tight the budget is.

Yet another option would be to compromise on the chosen GPU, and go with an R9 270 or even an R7 260X to free up more funds for the CPU/Mobo upgrade. A 270X is overkill for 720P gaming, unless he plans on upgrading his monitor, in which case the extra performance will be useful.
 

deathcall666

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Nov 23, 2012
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I partially contradict you
- if you see thia benchmark you see how 4 core are strugling while the 6 and 8 core parts have nearly same results:http://www.techspot.com/review/670-metro-last-light-performance/page6.html
I say partially because its there are
-few games that really do dat(either you need good CPU or you just need even a potato instead of cpu the game being based on GPU95%)
-this performance scale is made with a titan which is a overkill really.
 
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I totally agree with you guys on those points, all I was saying was that for people on a strict budget where $10 more can make a difference, a 4300 isn't a bad option. That chip would most likely struggle against a 6300 or 8320 in games that use more cores (Which is becoming more common), but they can still run them at tolerable frame rates with a good GPU, and waaay better than an aging dual core Pentium would:) I only went with the 8320 because when it went on sale, it was $10 more than a 6300, so in that situation for me in particular, it won over the 6300. And with my OC it's basically an 8350 for less money. Nice link there too Deathcall, that shows a nice breakdown of the differences in a very advanced looking game!