GTX 960 and Bottlenecking

ipwnhackers123 · Jul 6, 2015

I well I think I know my Q6600 overclocked to 3.1 Ghz will bottleneck a GTX 960 but with my Sapphire radeon HD 6850 Will I get a bit more performance boost? I am really confused.

I am wanting to record my videos again.

PSU CX600 corsair

CPU:Q6600 3.1 Ghz OCED All cores unparked

GPU RIGHT NOW: Sapphire radeon HD 6850

RAM: Don't know 4GB ddr2.

IAmTheTofu · Jul 6, 2015

You should be fine.

I'd prioritize on upgrading your CPU first.

ipwnhackers123 · Jul 6, 2015

IAmTheTofu :

Well to be honest JUST DO IT my dreams are already happening on getting the GPU I know I need to upgrade but I am very short on money.

IntelTurtleFan · Jul 6, 2015

Just do not get the 4GB 960. It is a horrid idea. The 960 can only use 2GB of it.

ipwnhackers123 · Jul 6, 2015

But the 6850 I have is Faulty. So I need to Upgrade.

techgeek · Jul 6, 2015

ipwnhackers123 :

If you want to know if you have room to improve performance in the games you play, you need to see if you're bottlenecked in the games you play with your old card.

Get Afterburner and make sure that it's graphing GPU usage while you play. Make sure you run your games at the highest settings you can. Play the game for ten minutes or more. Then have a look at the GPU usage graph. Does the graph stay consistently or at least mostly at 100%? Also have a look at your framerate over this span of time. Is the framerate already really high? Or is there room for improvement? For instance if you are seeing 100% GPU usage and your framerate is averaging around 40fps (below your monitor refresh), then an upgrade in this instance would be warranted. Now if the framerate is already averaging 60 or over, then it's not necessary. Of course it goes without saying that if the GPU usage is dipping much below 100% and it's that way for more than 25% of the time, then there is no point in upgrading because you CPU is incapable of keeping your present GPU busy.

Justin Millard · Jul 6, 2015

That's a misunderstanding of how VRAM is used. In games like Assassin's Creed Unity 4GB of VRAM noticeably improves frame rates compared to the 2GB GTX 960. It doesn't make a difference for every game, but it does make a difference in some titles.

Although only the first two 2GB of VRAM tend to get used immediately as the card is not powerful enough to quickly fill all that space, games that have high VRAM requirements get improved performance as the game can store regularly accessed files in the 2nd 2GB of VRAM improving performance.

EDIT: Referring to intelturtlefan
2GB of VRAM isn't usually a bottleneck in any way for the GTX 960, but it can be. It depends on what games the person wants to play and if this becomes a more common issue in the future.

IntelTurtleFan · Jul 6, 2015

The 960 is a great card. The 4GB version is useless.

This is probably one of the best "cheap" GTX 960's.
EVGA 02G-P4-2963-KR

However, a R9 280x is a similar price and much faster

Justin Millard · Jul 6, 2015

Agreed that for raw performance the R9 280X is noticeably better.

ipwnhackers123 · Jul 6, 2015

techgeek :

ipwnhackers123 :

If you want to know if you have room to improve performance in the games you play, you need to see if you're bottlenecked in the games you play with your old card.

Get Afterburner and make sure that it's graphing GPU usage while you play. Make sure you run your games at the highest settings you can. Play the game for ten minutes or more. Then have a look at the GPU usage graph. Does the graph stay consistently or at least mostly at 100%? Also have a look at your framerate over this span of time. Is the framerate already really high? Or is there room for improvement? For instance if you are seeing 100% GPU usage and your framerate is averaging around 40fps (below your monitor refresh), then an upgrade in this instance would be warranted. Now if the framerate is already averaging 60 or over, then it's not necessary. Of course it goes without saying that if the GPU usage is dipping much below 100% and it's that way for more than 25% of the time, then there is no point in upgrading because you CPU is incapable of keeping your present GPU busy.

Yes it does around 96 and so. same with valley Benchmark. I know what Bottlenecking means it's just that I have no clue if I would get a tad bit more performance.

techgeek · Jul 6, 2015

ipwnhackers123 :

Well since your old card is not working / working correctly, you need a new card regardless. So I would say that a 960 is a good option. Low power usage, more performance than your 6850 (though you may not benefit from it fully), and not too expensive.

As for the debate that's erupted over 2GB vs 4GB, if you have game settings that exceed 2GB of VRAM, the GPU is incapable of rendering a frame fast enough to deliver playable framerates. Settings that push VRAM usage are high res textures and high AA settings (not FXAA). Both of these settings will push the GPU beyond what it's capable of in terms of GPU performance. So even though you may have the VRAM necessary for these setting, the GPU isn't fast enough to benefit from it. nVidia did a good job of balancing the GPU speed to the VRAM capacity on this card. So what it comes down to is the 4GB versions are marketed to users that don't know any better, they see a bigger number and having more dollars than sense (pun intended), they flock to it.

ipwnhackers123 · Jul 6, 2015

techgeek :

ipwnhackers123 :

Well since your old card is not working / working correctly, you need a new card regardless. So I would say that a 960 is a good option. Low power usage, more performance than your 6850 (though you may not benefit from it fully), and not too expensive.

As for the debate that's erupted over 2GB vs 4GB, if you have game settings that exceed 2GB of VRAM, the GPU is incapable of rendering a frame fast enough to deliver playable framerates. Settings that push VRAM usage are high res textures and high AA settings (not FXAA). Both of these settings will push the GPU beyond what it's capable of in terms of GPU performance. So even though you may have the VRAM necessary for these setting, the GPU isn't fast enough to benefit from it. nVidia did a good job of balancing the GPU speed to the VRAM capacity on this card. So what it comes down to is the 4GB versions are marketed to users that don't know any better, they see a bigger number and having more dollars than sense (pun intended), they flock to it.

Faulty as in valley benchmark says my card maximum core is 960 and the Memory is 1260 but I go and play a game my card shuts my displays off and the fan goes to 100 and this GPU gets HOT

ipwnhackers123 · Jul 6, 2015

techgeek :

ipwnhackers123 :

Well since your old card is not working / working correctly, you need a new card regardless. So I would say that a 960 is a good option. Low power usage, more performance than your 6850 (though you may not benefit from it fully), and not too expensive.

As for the debate that's erupted over 2GB vs 4GB, if you have game settings that exceed 2GB of VRAM, the GPU is incapable of rendering a frame fast enough to deliver playable framerates. Settings that push VRAM usage are high res textures and high AA settings (not FXAA). Both of these settings will push the GPU beyond what it's capable of in terms of GPU performance. So even though you may have the VRAM necessary for these setting, the GPU isn't fast enough to benefit from it. nVidia did a good job of balancing the GPU speed to the VRAM capacity on this card. So what it comes down to is the 4GB versions are marketed to users that don't know any better, they see a bigger number and having more dollars than sense (pun intended), they flock to it.

Also looking for upgrade to play like Arma 3 and Arma 2 this card now runs Arma 2 Flawless while arma 3 is just poop.

Justin Millard · Jul 6, 2015

The GTX 960 can manage to keep up with settings that use 3GB of VRAM just fine, but you are right. I am sure it hits its limit somewhere between 2GB and 3GB.

techgeek · Jul 6, 2015

ipwnhackers123 :

techgeek :

Yes it does around 96 and so. same with valley Benchmark. I know what Bottlenecking means it's just that I have no clue if I would get a tad bit more performance.

If that's the case (96% most of the time in the games you play), then you will certainly benefit from the extra performance, you just might not benefit from it all. Valley doesn't count really. It's not a game, so it doesn't have to process physics, or user input, game code, etc, that would push CPU usage. It's a great measuring stick for straight GPU performance but it's not indicative of your entire system performance.

techgeek · Jul 6, 2015

Justin Millard :

I've seen reviews of the 4GB models, every game tested had exactly the same average and minimum framerates. There were even a couple that had very slightly lower performance on the 4GB models with the same clocks as the 2GB models.

IntelTurtleFan · Jul 6, 2015

The 4GB version should not even be offered in my opinion. It is a marketing theory used by gurus to trick people into buying something useless to compete with AMD's 3gb r9 280x.

ipwnhackers123 · Jul 6, 2015

tea urchin :

ipwnhackers123 :

This is caused by the thermal paste between the cooler and the gpu chip drying out,and dust in the heat sink.Stripping the card down with a philips 0 screw driver,cleaning the gpu chip with T.I.M clean and re pasting the gpu with a good thermal compound will fix this.
Obviously you can clean any dust out at the same time.
Dont leave it too long,the heat will kill the GPU chip.

I know how to fix it I cant get the card open it's like shut completely

techgeek · Jul 6, 2015

Well I did find one review that showed Assassin's Creed Unity benefited from 4GB. They also showed VRAM usage for Far Cry 4 @ 1080p that was 3.7GB. However if you look at the framerates in the same review, the 2GB model had essentially the same performance. So I am wondering in that instance if the game engine scales VRAM usage based on the available VRAM. This seems to be the case since the VRAM usage @1440p and 4K were 3.86GB and 4GB respectively. One would think that going from 1080p to 1440p with the same detail settings would cause the VRAM usage to exceed the 4GB available if 1080p was already using 3.7GB.

This is a 1080p card. Not many games are going to run at playable framerates at 1440p or higher. So except for the aforementioned ACU, 4GB of VRAM is marketing.

ipwnhackers123 · Jul 6, 2015

I was lol not going for the 4gb I was going for the 2GB version as it is 164 dollars and how did you guy's know I was building a new PC I have my Motherboard and RAM 4gb DDR3 though and I have all the rest of the parts just not the CPU. My birthday is in 5 Days and the only person in my family that can get me something is my dad and I already maxed his Budget.

ipwnhackers123 · Jul 6, 2015

My Motherboard for my new Build is a 760-GM and I was planning on getting the FX 4300

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