i7 930.GTX 560 SLI cause a Bottleneck?

[fvnzion101]

Hey all

I recently did a SLI setup on my PC with two Gigabyte 560 ti oc cards.

I have a Gigabyte x58a-ud3r motherboard with an i7 930 at stock levels.

I have 6gb 1600Mhz DDR3 RAM in tri channel.

So question is would or could the 560SLI setup cause a bottleneck and if so how likely will it happen?

Any suggestions and advice would be appreciated

 

[bwrlane]

My set up is very similar to yours and I have some reasonably detailed experience of the factors influencing performance. Mine is i7 920, 6GB, two MSI 560 ti.

I'm assuming you run games at max settings at 1920x1080.

The answer is that it depends almost entirely on whether you overclock your CPU. Running at stock (similar for 920 and 930), the CPU tends to bottleneck the system, except in very complex scenes.

Some people aren't too sure about overclocking, but we have one of the most overclockable chips in history. I run mine at 4GHz and it's set-and-forget. I've not needed to dive into the Bios for ages.

Running at 4GHz, games are mostly GPU bound with the 560Ti SLI setup.

So yes, your graphics set up will still bottleneck your games performance, but it's powerful enough a system that it will very rarely be a problem. I still get some choppiness in some of the very most demanding games, like Battlefield 3. It's the GPU, not the CPU that's the limitation in these situations.

One exception is Skyrim. Skyrim seems more CPU bound than most.

 

[arunphilip]

So question is would or could the 560SLI setup cause a bottleneck and if so how likely will it happen?

What resolution are you running at? Is there a multi-monitor setup involved?
Which games are you looking at? Different games stress the CPU/GPU to varying extents.
Also bear in mind that different games benefit from SLI to varying extents.

The 560 Ti in SLI is quite a powerful combination, its quite likely to result in CPU bottlenecks for MMO games like Skyrim.
Shooter type of games (Battlefield 3, Crysis) tend to stress the GPU more than a CPU.

That said, your CPU is no slouch - its only about 10-15% slower in gaming than the i5-2500K, which is a strongly recommended CPU for gaming (http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/47?vs=288 compares the i7 940).

 

[fvnzion101]

I run everything at 1920x1080.

Thanks for the replies. It seems that I will have to do a slight overclock but its not that big of an issue.

 

[rayt160]

I run everything at 1920x1080.

Thanks for the replies. It seems that I will have to do a slight overclock but its not that big of an issue.

if u do o/c just make sure ur cooler is up2 the job and check ur temps.. besides that.. happy gaming..

 

[fvnzion101]

Best answer selected by Fvnzion101.