How bad is the bottleneck with a GTX 970 and a Pentium G3258?

Zuhayr378 · Dec 29, 2014

So the question is up there but I'm only asking to get a 970 because I have plans to upgrade to a 5th gen i5 unlocked in the future. Is the bottleneck of a 970 and a G3258 (for this case, let's say it's not overclocked to keep things more fair) that bad that it gets harmful? For example will my CPU always be pinned to 100% while my GPU would be hovering around 60-70%?

Just wanted to clear these things up because I don't want to suffer for a whole year until I get a new CPU. And yes, I know the 960 is coming out, but I really want a killer machine for the future. I'm going to get an i5 or i7 5th gen sometime to Q3 or Q4 of next year.

4745454b · Dec 29, 2014

It won't be harmful no. You won't get the performance of the 970, but you already know that?

endeavour37a · Dec 29, 2014

Read through this to give you an idea what the 3258 can do for you for the next year or so. It will hurt you of course, more so on games that are CPU bound more than the ones that use the GPU more, such as life it seems. But you have a good plan to work on so just do the best you can until the new CPU's come out. It looks like 1080p screens don't do that bad on medium settings with any games. If you could scrape together another $50 an I3 would at least give you HT that would help, but they say OCing the 3258 can get you near a i3 performance anyway.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-budget-gaming-pc,4021.html

Zuhayr378 · Dec 29, 2014

endeavour37a :

I already have the G3258 first of all, and have already built a Z97 build with a Corsair h80i ready to OC the CPU though it's still not taken the time to OC as well as 8 GB of ram. Just waiting on a GPU to fit in the PC and then an i5 which I plan to fit later.

Zuhayr378 · Dec 29, 2014

4745454b :

When you mention it not being harmful, do you know what kind if things there would be to a bottleneck being "harmful"?

endeavour37a · Dec 29, 2014

Zuhayr378 :

Sounds like a solid plan, did that story tell you where you were going to be at in gaming FPS in general? I think he was using a 270x for his testing, you should do better with your 970 that what he is showing, have fun

Maybe get a decent cooler to OC your rig, you can use it on your i5 also so it will be an investment to your system..

4745454b · Dec 30, 2014

do you know what kind if things there would be to a bottleneck being "harmful"?

I don't understand what you are asking here. I mentioned harmful because you asked in the OP

Is the bottleneck of a 970 and a G3258 (for this case, let's say it's not overclocked to keep things more fair) that bad that it gets harmful?

I was simply trying to relieve any fears you had about a bottleneck somehow harming your machine. Your OC of the Pentium will do more damage to your system then the bottleneck.

Zuhayr378 · Dec 30, 2014

4745454b :

Oh okay that's good. I'm idling around 25-27 degrees idle overclocked so I think everything's on the good side. And I'm good with lower fps because I'm still playing on a 1680 by 1050 resolution monitor lol. XD

But thanks for getting that off my chest.

Zuhayr378 · Dec 30, 2014

endeavour37a :

The Corsair H80i is doing excellent in terms of cooling so I'm good, especially with a dual core at the time. And I'm playing on a 1680 by 1050 monitor at the time with PPI more than pleasing (higher than that of a 24 inch 1080p monitor) so I don't mind lower fps. I've grown up playing minecraft at 20 fps, so I won't mind a tiny bottleneck, also mentioning the cooling on the h80i is stellar. Minimm temps of 24-25 degrees and max temps of 48 degrees are all green to me, but I've only pushed it to 4GHz so I'll see how farther I can push it. But thanks for the extra information...

HomerThompson · Dec 30, 2014

The bottleneck will be absolutely horrendous. I was one of the early adopters of the G3258 and I wanted so bad to go that route too, but came to my senses and matched my GTX 970 with a Xeon E3-1231v3 to create a balanced system. To show you how bad this bottleneck will be, here is a video someone made matching a GTX 780 (weaker GPU than the 970) with an i7-4770k with two cores disabled, hyperthreading disabled, and overclocked to 4.5GHz to simulate a very good G3258.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub3lzTplYxM

The GPU usage is terrible, as you can see. Even worse, a real G3258 has only 3GB of cache while this crippled i7 has 8GB, so the real G3258 will perform even worse. It would be a really bad investment to pay $350 for a GTX 970 to only get R9 270 level performance out of it in most new games.

Zuhayr378 · Dec 30, 2014

HomerThompson :

But that is because the i7's single threaded performance is worse than the G3258 AND I plan to upgrade to an i5 later. I'm only asking for if it would be to the point of being harmful and besides...I play on a 1680 by 1050 monitor. I also overclocked the Pentium and it outperforms the i7 in the single threaded performance some times. And the i7 has 8 mb. I don't want to upgrade my GPU as the 970 is already a hard investment.

HomerThompson · Dec 30, 2014

I don't think buying the GTX 970 and waiting to upgrade to an i5-5xxx makes any sense whatsoever. For one, Broadwell is just a process shrink from Haswell, so a fifth generation i5 probably won't be any better than a fourth generation i5 in anything other than benchmarks. For two, if you're waiting a few months to play games at high framerates and are ok with 20FPS on medium low resolution right now, why not game on the HD 4600 graphics with the i5. Then in a few months you can get an R9 380x or R9 390x that should be better than the GTX 970. The 970 is an incredible card right now if you have the CPU to drive it, but to buy it now and wait a few months to get a proper gaming CPU makes no sense when there will be better cards out in a few months. Way better to just buy the i5 now and the GPU later I think.

HomerThompson · Dec 30, 2014

Zuhayr378 :

HomerThompson :

But that is because the i7's single threaded performance is worse than the G3258 AND I plan to upgrade to an i5 later. I'm only asking for if it would be to the point of being harmful and besides...I play on a 1680 by 1050 monitor. I also overclocked the Pentium and it outperforms the i7 in the single threaded performance some times. And the i7 has 8 mb. I don't want to upgrade my GPU as the 970 is already a hard investment.

That i7's single thread performance is worse because it's at stock 3.5 GHz/3.9 GHz turbo in that benchmark you just posted.

Zuhayr378 · Dec 30, 2014

HomerThompson :

I ALREADY SAID THIS. I have bought the pentium with a corsair h80i and a z97 motherboard along with 8 gigs of RAM. I'm talking about the future! Not now!

HomerThompson · Dec 30, 2014

Zuhayr378 :

If you want a killer machine for the future why are you buying the CPU in the future when it won't be much better while buying the GPU now when in a few months there will be way better GPUs out there? I don't get this at all. Just because you have the Pentium now doesn't mean you should stick with it at the expense of paying top dollar for a GPU that won't be top of the line once you get the CPU to drive it. Might just be better off to buy the CPU now and sell the G3258 while it has some value.

Zuhayr378 · Dec 30, 2014

HomerThompson :

Zuhayr378 :

If you want a killer machine for the future why are you buying the CPU in the future when it won't be much better while buying the GPU now when in a few months there will be way better GPUs out there? I don't get this at all. Just because you have the Pentium now doesn't mean you should stick with it at the expense of paying top dollar for a GPU that won't be top of the line once you get the CPU to drive it. Might just be better off to buy the CPU now and sell the G3258 while it has some value.

Technically it is illegal to resell an Intel CPU and secondly I don't have the money to upgrade to a CPU and GPU at the same time. I feel like my plan is much better. Besides I don't plan on going too overkill. Honestly a 970 is more than enough. I wouldn't be able to afford anything more and in Canada I have to pay 420 dollars for one. And close to 500 with taxes.

4745454b · Jan 2, 2015

The only CPUs that are illegal to sell are engineering samples. Otherwise you can resell any CPU you want.

How bad is the bottleneck with a GTX 970 and a Pentium G3258?

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