Possible bottleneck with core i3

vibrantxxninjas

Distinguished
Apr 14, 2011
202
0
18,690
hi everyone,
i recently purchased a sapphire 6870 for an upgrade to my computer and was wondering if my cpu was possibly bottle necking my gpu... also i have my gpu OC'd to 975/1150 (standard was 900/1050)

i was wondering because i am not seeing actually any fps increase while running fraps in my games after i OC'd it

so would it be worth it to OC my cpu?

also is there any cpu overclocking software you can recommend to me since i already tried to OC through my bios, however unfortunately my bios doesnt have that option to overclock

thanks in advance!
 
Solution
Frankly the OC on the GPU isn't that big. Also it could be that the memory isn't stable at that speed - GDDR5 will give better results to a point, then worse results, then they'll crash. I'm at 1200 mem on my 5850, 870 core. I was OCing and OCing, up at 975 core I didn't see much change in FPS so I bumped mem to 1210, and saw a decrease in FPS... Dropped back to 1200, and FPS was better. I actually did this last night, btw, using Metro 2033 benchmark.

So, IMO, try 1140, 1130, 1120 etc until you get an FPS boost over stock.

vibrantxxninjas

Distinguished
Apr 14, 2011
202
0
18,690


I believe i said earlier that i overclocked the core to 975 and the memory to 1150, so thats a 75MHZ increase in the core and a 100MHZ increase in the mem. clocks

and yes, i saw no extra frames gained after the overclock i ran a crysis benchmark and a metro 2033 bench and heres what i got:

BEFORE OC:
Crysis: 4xAA 16xAF 1920x1080 very high settings
min: 27.4fps
avg: 32.8fps
max: 47.5fps

Metro:4xMSAA 16xAF 1920x1080 very high settings DX11 enabled, tessellation enabled, DOF disabled
min: 22fps
avg: 26fps
max 36fps

AFTER OC:
Crysis: same settings
min: 27.3fps
avg: 31.9fps
max: 48.2fps

Metro:same settings
min: 23fps
avg: 25fps
max:36fps
 
I have a feeling he's talking about a Lynnfield i3.


The Sandy Bridge i3-2100 has no problem running GTX580 without bottleneck and I'm sure it could probably keep up with something even faster than that.

Even at the relatively low resolution of 680x1050 there is no cpu bottleneck with GTX580. It still gets more fps than X6 1100T or X4 975BE.


 

vibrantxxninjas

Distinguished
Apr 14, 2011
202
0
18,690
yes geekapproved is correct, i am running a lynnfield (first gen) core i3-550 hence how i mentioned it at the beginning of the thread :p

and ok while im not sure why i might be getting no increase in my fps during games is there any software for OCing an intel CPU that anyone would suggest and no bios is not an option for me thanks
 

vibrantxxninjas

Distinguished
Apr 14, 2011
202
0
18,690


oops my bad, thankyou for pointing that out.
its odd cause on almost every thread i start i always list my full specs :S
 

ghnader hsmithot

Distinguished

I think that his cpu isnt the bottleneck because if it was we would see fps increase as he OCs.
 
Frankly the OC on the GPU isn't that big. Also it could be that the memory isn't stable at that speed - GDDR5 will give better results to a point, then worse results, then they'll crash. I'm at 1200 mem on my 5850, 870 core. I was OCing and OCing, up at 975 core I didn't see much change in FPS so I bumped mem to 1210, and saw a decrease in FPS... Dropped back to 1200, and FPS was better. I actually did this last night, btw, using Metro 2033 benchmark.

So, IMO, try 1140, 1130, 1120 etc until you get an FPS boost over stock.
 
Solution

vibrantxxninjas

Distinguished
Apr 14, 2011
202
0
18,690


hmmm interesting i tried what you said and saw my fps increase

i lowered the clock to 1125 and i am now seeing 5-10fps more depending on the scene

thanks for your help, i didnt know that increasing the mem clock could do that if you did it too much?
 
From my understanding, GDDR5 is more stable than other forms of memory because it can resend the info packets... so the problem is that if it's set too fast then it will be constantly trying to resend, so you lose performance. The key is to find the fastest point that it doesn't do that.
 

vibrantxxninjas

Distinguished
Apr 14, 2011
202
0
18,690


ohh true, i never even thought about how gddr5 has a much faster effective mem clock (like 5 times or something), thanks again and your theory makes sense to me. its like its trying to send more info before it even got the first set back so it has to wait which actually slows it... gotcha