Will my CPU bottleneck a GTX 480?

1000FPS

Distinguished
Jun 4, 2009
138
0
18,690
Hey guys
I'm thinking of upgrading my overclocked GTX 460 768MB to a GTX 480 or a HD 69** card, but I'm unsure if my current system will be able to max it out to its best performance. I have a Phenom II x4 955 @ 3.6GHz (cant OC it any higher), a cheap Asus M4A78L-M motherboard and 4GB DDR2 800MHz RAM. So my question is, will my CPU bottleneck those graphics cards? I will be gaming at 1920x1080, hopefully with a bit of AA :)

I have a Thermaltake 650w PSU so power isnt a problem

Cheers :D
 

of course it will depend on the game but I would think that any bottleneck that may occur will be a very minimal one, you might be looking at a few fps difference but who wants to spend 500 dollars on a high end i7?? If you ask me the 955 is one of the best gaming processors you can have and there are certainly people that run 480s with less of a cpu than that. Overall i would excpect very low no to bottleneck
 

1000FPS

Distinguished
Jun 4, 2009
138
0
18,690


Thanks for the quick answer... yeah I don't think it will be much of a bottleneck and I agree, the 955 is awesome for the price
 
+1 to snurp85 that about sums it up, especially at high res most games are more gpu demanding, but definatley having a real quad core like you have will do nothing but help your cause and i would say 3.6 is a pretty good clock per core, you will be fine and happy with the 480 upgrade, afterall the 768 mb 460 is not much better than a 5770 in relative performance whereas a 480 will be at least double the performance on your gpu basically you will get similar performance (but more minimum fps) to having the 768mb 460s in sli.
 
Even a 4ghz i7 will become a bottleneck at some point so don't worry. It is sli and playing at low ress ware a cpu doesn't hold up very well and it will be at least another year to two years before games like GTA IV become common that make it lag like a Slugtium 4. So go ahead and get your GTX 480 and enjoy your rig. As for mine try living with a low clocked 8250e @ 2.7ghz :(