Where is my bottleneck? Whats slowing me down?

[MasterWilliam]

Hi everyone,

I am new to the community and wanted to ask for you guys expertise. I recently bought 2 new nvidia 480 GTX to use in 2 way sli for gaming. Well I just installed them yesterday and enabled SLI and tested it on some games such as Skyrim. I was disappointed with how it performed. I previous had 2 nvidia 9800 GTX+ in 2 way sli configuration.

9800 GTX+ in 2 way sli configuration: I am getting about 30-35 frames in the cities and anywhere from 30-45 frames per second in all other places.

Newly bought 480 GTX in 2 way sli configuration: I am getting about 35-40 frames per second in the cities and about 35-60 frames per second in all other places.

I am assuming my cpu is bottlenecking. I am not sure though. Here are my specs.

CPU: Q6600 Intel core 2 quad operating at 2.4 GHZ
Video Card: GTX 480 in 2 way sli configuration
Ram: 8 Gigabytes of Kingston HyperX operating at 800 MHZ
PSU: 1000 Watt Thermatake


I just dont understand why its such a small increase in performance when I feel it was a substantial increase in video card power.
If you guys could help me out, I would be very thankful. Thank you for reading my post.

 

[WR2]

What kind of performance do you get with just 1 GTX 480?

 

[cyansnow]

I am thinking that your bottleneck is the Core 2 Quad, at 2.4 ghz.

 

[MasterWilliam]

WR2, I am getting I would dare say identical performance with 1 card performing alone as I am with both cards in SLI configuration. Whats up with that? Thank you.

 

[WR2]

It's an issue with SLI scaling. And that could be a driver issue.

 

[WR2]

Actually......it's looking more like it's a game issue:

 

[WR2]

I think you want to run by one of the Skyrim forums and see what other CFX/SLI owners are doing to get better performance.
It's possible a game tweak or a special driver can fix that lack of SLI scaling.

 

[MasterWilliam]

Thank for helping me WR2. I will check the Skyrim forums and see whats goin on. But do you think I am bottlenecking at my CPU as mentioned above by Cyansnow?

I tried other games that are on the list of SLI supported games and the performance with my new 480 GTX in 2 way sli is so minimal and almost the same as my previous setup of 2 9800 GTX+ in 2 way sli.

And I have also tried just one of my new 480 GTX alone on other games and it is similar in performance as 2 480 GTX in sli. Why is the performance the same? Nvidia says 2 video cards in sli should give about 2 times the performance.