Can my old gaming pc still run 2016 games on max settings??

nic55 · Aug 13, 2016

Good day,i had my gaming pc for bit a while now and i never use to have issues running games smooth from 2013 to 2015 on max settings with a previous gpu i had which was a GTX 770 and 8gb of ram.Trouble started at the end of last year,my gpu was struggling to keep up on max settings,the only issue that was holding me back from enjoying smooth games was the 2gb of vram on 1080p resolution,it was terrible so I never played for a few months because i had to save up some money to upgrade to a new gpu.During that time I was dying to play games lol.So now in August I had the funds to upgrade to the GTX 1070 and 16gb of ram to keep up so heres my specs:

i5 3570k
16gb 2400Mhz
MSI GTX 1070 Gaming X
LG 24inch Full HD LED 3D
Windows 10 64 bit

Next year i wanna upgrade my pc to the new i7 kabby lake but for now i just want to enjoy the last few months of gaming with it.Forgot to mention that my cpu is overclocked to 4.9ghz when i played intensive games,i will be playing games like battlefield 1,GTA V,Witcher 3,Fallout 4,Watch Dogs 2,Mafia 3 etc.I would like to hear your opinions.Thanks.

rcald2000 · Aug 13, 2016

So your specs are i5-3570K @ 4.9 Ghz / 16 GB RAM / GTX 1070 and you want to play your list of games on ultra settings at 1080p 60 FPS - 100 FPS? I would think you'd be fine. One question, 4.9 GHz seems like a massive overclock. When you game, what temp does your CPU reach?

If you're unsure, I recommend that you run HWMonitor ASAP and report back the CPU temp to us. I'd also be very curious to know what CPU cooler you're currently using.

atomicWAR · Aug 13, 2016

Your PC is honestly fine until AT least kaby lake/zen launch if not a fair bit longer. Assuming your not gaming at greater then 90FPS. I just added 2 GTX 1080s to a i7 3930k @4.2ghz (4.6ghz capable) with 16GB of ram and a various assortment of SSDs and SSHDs for gaming at 4K. Now there are some games that are CPU hogs like GTA V but even then with the right GPU you should have no troubles maintaining 60FPS or greater. I see people worry all the time about their CPU when there is no need. My wife still uses an i7 970 @4ghz with two GTX 980s and she has no troubles with modern games at max settings for 1080P. Point being, enjoy your rig for as long as you can. When you start dropping below 60FPS even when a game is set to the lowest settings and resolution with a solid GPU...you'll finally have a bottle neck worth getting rid of. Until then Game on!

photonboy · Aug 13, 2016

Your CPU is still quite good. I think upgrading to an i7 Kabby Lake might be a big waste of money.

You might gain a little bit on BF1, but not enough IMO to justify the cost of a new CPU, motherboard, system memory, Windows, and reinstalling everything.

I've got an i7-3770K + GTX680 and my 2GB of VRAM isn't much of an issue. In the few games it matters I've simply turned down the graphical settings and the game run fine (even Crysis 3).

A GTX1070 will get you roughly 2.5X the FPS depending on the game.

atomicWAR · Aug 13, 2016

rcald2000 :

yeah I missed the 4.9ghz. While I have heard of some folks pulling of such overclocks on that CPU it is few and far between as far as the silcon lottery goes and if your not water cooling (even if you are) I would be very worried about temps. I aim for 70C or less when I OC and know some folks go 80C or less but honestly thats as hot as you should be pushing a chip.

photonboy · Aug 13, 2016

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/16

Some games are more demanding, but most are like above with minimal benefit beyond a good 4-core CPU.

rcald2000 · Aug 13, 2016

And @atomicWAR Not only that, but I suspect that the GTX 770 may have previously been causing thermal throttling in the CPU, since it runs a good deal warmer than a GTX 1070. I'm also curious if that was a bigger performance hindrance than the limited amount of VRAM.

atomicWAR · Aug 13, 2016

photonboy :

absolutely. And exactly why I brought up the greater the 90FPS which your link did a great job of showing BTW. If your CPU can crank out 60 FPS at 640x480...if you have the right GPU it should be capable of the same frame rate at 1080p/1440p/2160P.

nic55 · Aug 13, 2016

I have a phanteks air cpu cooler,it does cool very well with my i5 3570k,my temps dont go as high as 70 degress on that overclock.It hangs in the mid 60's so yeah.I could imagine adding a water cooler to that cpu.Probably hit 5ghz with low temps.

atomicWAR · Aug 13, 2016

rcald2000 :

is possible yes.

atomicWAR · Aug 13, 2016

nic55 :

you hit the silcon lottery in a big way. might want to consider the real lottery if your lucks that good. also with that overclock being stable your CPU is good for even longer then say someone who could only manage 4.2-4.6ghz like most with ivy bridge k series chips. At that speed even a stock/low OC clocked i5 6600k would have trouble matching your frame rate.

rcald2000 · Aug 13, 2016

^ Agreed. Those temps are very good. You really did luck out.

nic55 · Aug 13, 2016

rcald2000 :

My previous gpu had decent temps,it would go as high as 65 degrees and i had no issues with throttling,it ran at boosted clock speeds all the time.The issue is I like all the eye candies on max in games because i prefer quality than performance,as long as there is a balance in performance.

nic55 · Aug 13, 2016

atomicWAR :

Thanks mate,you are right about the i5 6600k overclock,last month i watched a video on youtube,they did a comparison between the i5 6600k overclocked and the i5 3570k overclocked to 4.8ghz,the i5 3570k still beated the i5 6600k in game benchmarks,except the GTA V where the i5 3570k lost by 4 fps,maybe the game benefited with the new technologies in the i5 6600k,i dont know but i was shocked.

Believe it or not,at 4k resolutions,the cpu is not doing the work anymore,its now on the GPU that does the work so even though you have an old cpu,a powerful gpu like the GTX 1070 or the GTX 1080 will still play decently with decent frames at 4k,only on 1080p resolution where the old cpu will begin to struggle with keeping up on too many frames being produced by a GTX 1070 or the GTX 1080.

nic55 · Aug 13, 2016

One thing I would like to point out is why benchmark reviewers don't benchmark their games on max out settings,instead they will only use "Ultra" presets or turn off "FXAA" and AA just to get over 100 fps on games.It defeats the purpose of knowing whether there was an improvement in performance or not in the generation of cpus.

photonboy · Aug 13, 2016

nic55 :

atomicWAR :

Thanks mate,you are right about the i5 6600k overclock,last month i watched a video on youtube,they did a comparison between the i5 6600k overclocked and the i5 3570k overclocked to 4.8ghz,the i5 3570k still beated the i5 6600k in game benchmarks,except the GTA V where the i5 3570k lost by 4 fps,maybe the game benefited with the new technologies in the i5 6600k,i dont know but i was shocked.

Believe it or not,at 4k resolutions,the cpu is not doing the work anymore,its now on the GPU that does the work so even though you have an old cpu,a powerful gpu like the GTX 1070 or the GTX 1080 will still play decently with decent frames at 4k,only on 1080p resolution where the old cpu will begin to struggle with keeping up on too many frames being produced by a GTX 1070 or the GTX 1080.

Your CPU comment shows a common confusion about resolution vs CPU bottleneck.

In general, when you increase the resolution the GPU is stressed more RELATIVE to the CPU. However, the CPU is still stressed more at 2560x1440 than it is at 1920x1080.

Once you bottleneck the CPU it is in turn going to bottleneck the GPU because it can no longer send additional draw calls etc to the GPU.

atomicWAR · Aug 13, 2016

photonboy :

Now your are correct there is a slight (very slight CPU increase at higher resolutions and only when your GPU can saturate the resolution well past 90FPS the GPU takes the brunt of the force). But what i was pointing out was that generally speaking it should be very close to what you can do at lower resolutions and checking at lower resolutions makes it easier to spot the bottle neck. but I stand by what i said that for the most part if your CPU can handle X amount of frames at resolution A then it can do X amount of frames at resolution B. This is a commonly accepted in the gaming community. no its not perfect but its close enough for advice. to prove my point. I am posting darksiders 2 Deathfintive editon shots at 640x480, 1280x720, 1920x1080 and 3840x2160. thing to notice is the CPU use goes down as resolution goes up. Game is actually on fairly high setting minus ambient occlusion and no vsync to make the GPU crank out as fast as it can and in turn work the CPU as hard as possible.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/exxttjdto0rjfhf/DS2%20deathfinitive%20640x480.JPG?dl=0 640x480
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pp6f8n0mlh7mufn/DS2%20deathfinitive%201280x720.JPG?dl=0 1280x720
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3gxg7wf7fa2m6f7/DS2%20deathfinitive%201920x1080.JPG?dl=0 1920x1080
https://www.dropbox.com/s/i35siaaqoq5s90l/DS2%20deathfinitive%202560x1440.JPG?dl=0 2560x1440
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gmqfxgrzsuf0zgr/DS2%20deathfinitive%203840x2160.JPG?dl=0 3840x2160

As you can see if you look at the performance monitor while the game is on...with each resolution jump the CPU usage goes down as the GPU can't crank frames out fast enough to challenge the CPU. Which was all I was saying. Again just use facts. not belief or what you say is just true.

J_E_D_70 · Aug 13, 2016

You will be fine and maul most games, especially at 1080p. As far as being frame limited due to cpu it depends on the game. If I drop back to 1080 from 1440 my fps in BF4 ultra preset goes into the 180s from 140s (Metro map - drops a bit outside). Witcher 3 goes from mid 60s (ultra and hairworks 2xAA) to mid 80s.

Highly recommend a gsync monitor if its in the budget. Really smooths framerate jumps and no tearing.

atomicWAR · Aug 13, 2016

J_E_D_70 :

the games he dropped in were as i mentioned greater than 90FPS to begin with and he saw gains in witcher 3 as it is a GPU crippler and at a lower resolution it can go even faster as the GPU can stretch it's legs a little better. Point is you should have zero issues with your setup.

photonboy · Aug 13, 2016

atomicWAR,
You appear to be correct. I was wrong.

I'm not sure how I got that into my head, so I better give this some more thought before I comment on this topic.

atomicWAR · Aug 13, 2016

photonboy :

happens to all of us, so no worries. your generally a great poster!

nic55 · Aug 14, 2016

Thank your'll for your input,i appreciate it.

photonboy · Aug 15, 2016

atomicWAR :

Thanks for being civil. I often get slammed hard, even when I'm correct.

When I get the time I'm going to experiment with a bunch of games to see how the CPU usage scales with resolution.

atomicWAR · Aug 15, 2016

photonboy :

I know the feeling. While you and i have collided in the past over PSUs and wattage requirements...generally we see eye to eye from the posts i remember. To be fair PSUs are always a controversy on toms. You get the reserved types like me who rather spend more on wattage i may or may not use and others who like to be more frugal on their wattage requirements. Point being there is rarely a 100% dead on answer. Everything in tech has exceptions. Even in here. For example racing games that actually do use more Ram bandwidth (and apperantly fallout 4 is a new one that does too) so a newer CPU platform can give you gains you would not normally see across most titles even though the CPU IPC is same/close because of the higher spec ram frequencies. I always try for the best OVERALL advice. You can never cover all the bases sadly.

PS eager to see what you come up with in the titles you test. My guess is you'll find some exceptions but i am curious all the same.

Can my old gaming pc still run 2016 games on max settings??

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