Will a quad Q8300 bottleneck gtx 560 Ti ?

[matt133821]

i bought my XPS 630i a couple of years ago and im looking to upgrade my graphics card. the PC came with SLI GTS 240's.
im looking at either getting two GTX 460 768mb or the 1gig or a GTX 560 Ti 1gig. will either of these bottleneck with my setup

intel core 2 quad Q3000 @ 2.5 GHz
4 gigs of DDR2 kingston 400 MHz max bandwidth.
nForce 650i SLI MCP motherboard

 

[Derbixrace]

depends on your monitor resolution

 

[matt133821]

im on a 24 inch monitor at 1902x1080

 

[matt133821]

1920 x 1080*

 

[Derbixrace]

the best way IMO is to OC your CPU to 3ghz or more and then get the GTX 560 TI 1GB.

by OCing you would prevent any major bottlenecking.

then your PC would max out the most games on that resolution without having to hassle with SLi

 

[matt133821]

ive never oc a cpu you before how would i go about doing that. would the fact that i bought the xps from dell online stop me from oc the cpu. i think i read something about the option eing locked.

 

[mdd1963]

Any of the XPS rigs come with 'tinkering/OCing' allowed in the BIOS?

Given an older DDR2 based system, I'd resist dumping more money into yet another pair of gpus, waiting instead until you can upgrade everything....(A single GTX460 would not be a large improvement, and a pair of them is a rather large investment, possibly requiring yet more money spent on a new PSU as well...)

Your current cpu, while still adequate, is capable of cranking out just barely over half the frames/second (at 16x10) an i5/2500 is capable of, but, at least your chosen resolution is fairly high, shifting most of the bottleneck to the GPUs....

I'd stand pat until you can swing: i5/2500, H61/67, and a 6950

 

[matt133821]

well right now im paying for college so i wont have the money to upgrade a whole lot anytime soon. if oc my cpu to 3.0 GHz or more, which ive read people doing with not much problem id would like to go that way for now then look to upgrade the other stuff down the road.

in new to oc CPUs but ive tried some guide on how others have oc the same cpu i have but all tha happens to me is that my moitor goes into power saving mode and my cpu fan gets really fast (im assuming thats a bad thing)

 

[flashfir]

You can overclock easy pie, I didn't know how to do anything and I learned how to do it. Albeit mine is a Black Edition but I've stuck my head into reading about FSB overclock too and tried it myself.

I recommend to go for the OC! Just be safe and read up!

 

[Derbixrace]

i dont know if that XPS have OCing options in the bios :/

 

[matt133821]

well if anyone knows how to oc a intel core 2 quad Q8300 @2.5 GHz. ive tried doing what others with my cpu have dont and it has not worked

my pc uses dell xps 630i phoenix bios not sure is theres different virsion of it if there is ill post it.

 

[chriskrum]

It depends on the game. But in most cases no. (Technically perhaps. You might only get 85fps vs 100fps because of CPU bottleneck but since you'll mostly be safely over 60fps it's a rather irrelevant difference.)

Go with a single GTX 560 or 6950 (about the same price now). Don't bother with SLI or crossfire at your resolution--the single card is sufficient and will cause fewer headaches.

Upgrade now and enjoy it now. You do not have to replace the entire system--utter nonsense.

And seriously look into over clocking. You don't need to do anything drastic with voltage increases, etc. to get a couple more ghz out of that CPU.

 

[matt133821]

i can change the CPU voltage the the FSB which is set at 1333.3 and ive read people set it to 1578, that puts the speed at 2.9ish

 

[matt133821]

well ive tried my friend's GTX 460 and in rift i was getting 25-35 fps on medium setting and final fantasy 14 im getting low 20s mid 30s running around outside but in large cities or crowded areas i drop to 15-27ish. i got the gtx 560 Ti 1gig from best buy with a 30 day money back. and im not gettting much better fps. on the ff14 benchmark test theres not much of a difference between the gtx 460 and gtx 560, but should'nt there be ?

 

[Helltech]

I wouldn't trust that benchmark with my life, it never really did well for anyone here back when it came out.

Try a different benchmark. 3Dmark Vantage, 3Dmark 11, Heaven, although the conclusion you draw might be the same. Which would mean a CPU bottlenck is apparent.

 

[matt133821]

tried heaven averaged fps in mid 30s with the gtx 560

ive read that if you get around the same fps in different resolutions you might have a bottleneck. is that true?

 

[chriskrum]

@matt
You've got something else going on. Neither Rift or Final Fantasy are terribly demanding. You should check to see what other processes are running. Clean and reinstall all your drivers. Etc. You should've gotten better fps from the GTX 460 and even better from the 560 ti.

http://www.dpigaming.com/rift-benchmark-ultra-quality/

 

[Helltech]

If you have the same FPS with a better GPU then yes, that means you have a CPU bottleneck. Try overclocking it. Try cleaning up tasks and processes that suck CPU power (as chriskrum said).

 

[matt133821]

@ chris

i have not tried rift with the gtx 560 the 460 i uses was just the 768mb if that make much of a difference. with ff14 i was running everything at highest and aax8. on standard im getting 40-50fps

as for extra processes running i close anything thats not needed in msconfig and task manager

 

[matt133821]

well im downloading rift again going to see how the gtx 560 does on it

@helltech
do you know much on oc cpu ive never done it before ive tried following some guides only but it never works.

 

[Helltech]

What do you mean it never works? You don't need to do anything insane on that CPU just a slight overclock (no voltage bumping needed or anything).

 

[chriskrum]

The games you're talking about are not going to bottleneck on a 2.5 ghz intel quad core due to the cpu. Their recommended system specs are a fair margin lower than what you have and for dual cores. If they do bottleneck, it'll be at some hi fps that will likely exceed 60fps and doesn't matter.

With a single monitor at 1080p any modern single card in the range of a 460 1gb or 6850 (or better) will be more than sufficient for high frame rates at high settings. As I've said before, avoid SLI or crossfire setups. They introduce lots of issues and only make sense when multiple monitors or at very high resolutions.

I'm not sure what you are doing with your over clocking attempt. You shouldn't have to touch the voltage--just the FSB. You may have to lower your memory multiplier first.

Post in the overclocking forum for specific advice. I'm sure there are some peope lurking who have OC'd your exact system.

 

[Sameer15557]

the best way IMO is to OC your CPU to 3ghz or more and then get the GTX 560 TI 1GB.

by OCing you would prevent any major bottlenecking.

then your PC would max out the most games on that resolution without having to hassle with SLi

Hey can the 660ti be good with my Q8300 at 3GHz?