Anyone running tomb raider through an i3 sandy bridge processor?

[k4ever]

I have an i3-2120 and just bought a 7870 xt (le) sapphire card. I just wanted to max out most of the games at 1920x1080 and people told me that a 7850 was enough. I only play at 60fps and wont accept going lower than that. Now my monitor is 60hz 1680x1050 native but I was thinking in upgrading to a 1080p one.
I wanted to check the performance of tomb raider with my current setup to see how many fps I would get on average. I ran the in-game benchmark test and it gave me a 58.7 fps average everything on ultra except TressFX ( better hair quality ) and only FXAA ( no 2x, 4x SSAA ). Now when I play the game everything is smooth, but in the areas where there is rain the frames start to get a hit, not by much but Id rather have no frame loss at all.
Ive been trying to google tomb raider benchmarks with a 7870 card but havent found one thats useful.
Is this normal for this game? Is my dual core bottlenecking my gpu?
I have an OEM HP desktop so overclocking is out of the picture. If I install an i5-2500k (stock speeds) make a huge difference?

EDIT: I forgot to add Im using the latest catalyst drivers 13.2 beta 7.

 

[simon12]

A 7850 is enough to max most games but not with a solid 60FPPs. Tomb raider does seem to not like dual core CPUs but I could not say if its the bottleneck, check CPU usage in Task manager and see if its 100% that will confirm and yes a 2500K @ stock speeds will help but how much depends how much the CPU is a bottleneck.

 

[HEXiT]

its unlikely to be a bottleneck if your cpu isnt hitting 100% your frame rate seem pretty much on the nose for that card. but even so you should be considering moving to a quad core by december as the new console roll out a quad will become necessary even if your dual core does hyper threading.
also your unlikely to be able to fit a quad on the hp desktop, the bios is locked and will likely have a hardware block on it too which would stop it from running the bigger cpu. so when you do decide to upgrade to a quad set some penny's asside for a new motherboard. preferably a z series.

 

[deanpack25]

At least some that can play only a few game

 

[bystander]

its unlikely to be a bottleneck if your cpu isnt hitting 100% your frame rate seem pretty much on the nose for that card. but even so you should be considering moving to a quad core by december as the new console roll out a quad will become necessary even if your dual core does hyper threading.
also your unlikely to be able to fit a quad on the hp desktop, the bios is locked and will likely have a hardware block on it too which would stop it from running the bigger cpu. so when you do decide to upgrade to a quad set some penny's asside for a new motherboard. preferably a z series.

CPU's never hit 100% usage in gaming, even with a bottleneck. It's always a single core that hits 100%, and holds things back, but once the average of the cores is worked out, it is always lower. Sometimes as low as 50%. It is important to watch the individual cores.

 

[jessterman21]

Two things - you will not notice a difference moving from 1680x1050 to 1080p, other than a little wider view. And my i3 doesn't allow me to play most games at 60fps constant. There are always drops when looking at a large vista or a lot of explosions going on. It can run most games at an average at or above 60fps, as long as you have the GPU to get you there, but it will drop below at CPU-intensive points in most games. Save up for a Z77 mobo and an i5-3570K! That CPU is my next upgrade.

 

[voiidwulf]

I think you are getting a bit of a CPU bottleneck there. I can completely max it at 1080P with my i7 3770 3.4GHz and overclocked 7870. (1200 core, 1400 memory.) Since you have one of the Tahiti based 7870s your performance should be better than mine.

 

[k4ever]

On my product specification page at hp, it says that I can upgrade my processor to dfferent i3s, i5s and even 2 i7 processors but they are all sandy bridge of course. For the i5-2500 it gives me the option to upgrade to an i5-2500s, an i5-2500t, and an i5-2500. I even talked to an hp technician when my warranty wasnt expired and he told me that I shouldnt have a problem with the bios, and wouldnt need to flash it. Just take the old one, insert the new one, some thermal paste here and there and Im good to go.

I think you are getting a bit of a CPU bottleneck there. I can completely max it at 1080P with my i7 3770 3.4GHz and overclocked 7870. (1200 core, 1400 memory.) Since you have one of the Tahiti based 7870s your performance should be better than mine.

By max settings you mean everything on ultra even using a tressfx and antialiasing of 4xssaa? I think that by overclocking the 7870 you will get 5 plus frames, but for me I drop around 10 frames when using tressfx and 15 additional frames if using 4xssaa.

If I get an ivy bridge processor I would have to get a motherboard, buy windows 7, buy more hardware here and there and thats something Im not willing to do in the short term future.

 

[k4ever]

Just checked a benchmark at another site noting the difference in the cpu loads:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2305791

Tomb raider seems pretty good optmized to be played with 4 cores, so by me using an i3 2120 Im bottlenecking my gpu by around 30%.
Time to buy an i5-2500k then

 

[Sunius]

I've noticed that I get strange frame drops to 20s for a few seconds as well in some areas. I have i5-2500k, so I don't think it's a CPU bottleneck - let's hope a patch will fix it.

 

[bystander]

I've also experienced a couple spots that have low FPS. The biggest one is when finding the pilot. If I look at the blue smoke, FPS drop to the 20-30's. After updates recently, FPS seem to be more consistent, but I haven't gotten to that bad spot yet on my 2nd run through.

 

[k4ever]

Interesting. Maybe because the game is new and we still havent gotten the latest nvidia/amd drivers, we keep getting this sudden sinks in fps.
I was totally sure that upgrading to an i5-2500 would have solved the problem, but now Im not sure. Most of the games Im playing now are 2011 and before that, and Im only playing tomb raider because I got it for free with the amd never settle reloaded promotion. Im gonna buy farcry 3 and skyrim pretty soon, so I will test my rig with those games and see if Im getting a bottleneck or not.

 

[bystander]

Interesting. Maybe because the game is new and we still havent gotten the latest nvidia/amd drivers, we keep getting this sudden sinks in fps.
I was totally sure that upgrading to an i5-2500 would have solved the problem, but now Im not sure. Most of the games Im playing now are 2011 and before that, and Im only playing tomb raider because I got it for free with the amd never settle reloaded promotion. Im gonna buy farcry 3 and skyrim pretty soon, so I will test my rig with those games and see if Im getting a bottleneck or not.

Well, I've passed the area with the poor FPS I had prior, and still have the drops. I'm not sure if it is a CPU or GPU issue. I'll take a look tomorrow at the GPU usage.

 

[mbossi19]

Ill just through my specs in here. I have a i5 3570k and a 7870 xt and I am playing Tomb Raider on ultimate which is everything maxed out and turned on. I ran the bench marks and my minimum was like 30 fps I think but honestly in game playing on 1080p I see almost zero frame rate drop. If its there I am not noticing it. Also my 7870xt is stock right now

 

[k4ever]

Ill just through my specs in here. I have a i5 3570k and a 7870 xt and I am playing Tomb Raider on ultimate which is everything maxed out and turned on. I ran the bench marks and my minimum was like 30 fps I think but honestly in game playing on 1080p I see almost zero frame rate drop. If its there I am not noticing it. Also my 7870xt is stock right now

When I enable tressfx my minimum frame rate in the benchmark is 30fps too. There was a game-in patch released that improved performance, so my fps got better. Can you post your benchmark results showing the average fps with and without tresfx, as well as what catalyst driver you are using? Also state if you are using vsync or not. Im using double buffer.