Help!: Video Card being bottlenecked by CPU?

jtype01

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Sep 5, 2011
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18,510
Dear Tom's Hardware Community,

- I play on a single 1080p monitor.
- My processor is: AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2 GHz, OCed to 3.7 GHz.
- My graphics card is: GTX 580, OCed by 15%.

If you would all be so kind as to answer two questions of mine, I would greatly appreciate it!

1. Is my CPU currently bottle-necking my GTX 580?
2. If I upgrade in the future to GTX 580 SLI (as well as the power supply), will my CPU be bottle-necking my GTX 580 SLI?

Thanks for all the help,

Jeff
 

cuecuemore

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Copied from the other thread, for emphasis: Firstly, we don't have enough information to accurately answer the question. What games do you play? I have a very similar setup, X4 965 @ 3.8-4.1GHz and 2x GTX 460 in SLI, running on native 1080p, and I'm heavily CPU bottlenecked in many of the games I own. The cold, hard fact of the matter is that you could be running your CPU on LN2 @6GHz and still be CPU bottlenecked against a 580 in some situations (I know, I've tried it).

But if you tell us what games you play, we can make recommendations as to how to optimize your play experience :) And don't get me wrong, the bottleneck will rest squarely on the 580 in many situations, where it should be:)

So, based on my experience:
1)Sometimes, but you should be pretty well balanced.
2)Get a new CPU before adding a second 580