7970 bottleneck with i7 860?

Hi everyone,
I am wondering if a 7970 will be bottlenecked by an i7 860 @ 3.6Ghz?
Thank you!

The 7970's are not even released released for sale yet.

it wont really be bottlenecked. you could get 5-10% more performance with a 2500k at same speed but thats enough to justify the $300 it would cost for the upgrade.

At stock speeds, even the Sandy Bridge can be a bottleneck with hardware acceleration equal to or greater than the 6970.

I can only imagine that it would be worse with the 860, but that is only my guess, albeit an educated one based in experience (I have both the i5 2500k and 6970).

Unless you plan on doing some serious overclocking, it is time for an upgrade.

Sorry.

My Sandy Bridge bottlenecked my 6970X2 pretty badly. I gain performance in considerable amounts up until about 4.20GHz (where it is now), after which I no longer notice a significant gain (from overclocking further).

At 3.30GHz, I averaged about 5-10 fps lower than what I am getting now (depending on the game). At 4.5GHz it stays about the same it is now in all but the most CPU intensive games.

I really don't see how his first generation i7 would be any less a bottleneck than the Sandy Bridge.

To be honest even current cards are pushing the limits of even the best cpus out there now but what you got is still what most can still consider a very nice cpu. Even if there does turn out to be a small bottleneck you can always overclock the cpu or look to other ways to balance that out.

You can at least get around 3.8ghz or more if you choose your settings right and the board is solid.

+1

That's because you have 3 cards. The Nehalem chips have 32 PCI-E lanes per chip, the sandybridge have only 16

The PCI-E controller for GPUs is on the CPU. The Z68 simply expands the available 16 PCI-E lanes into various configurations, either 1x16, 2x8 1x8 + 2x4, etc... as well as adds a few of its own which aren't connected directly to the CPU (8 I think) that serve up the the smaller 1x (and sometimes 4x) slots, Ethernet, onboard audio, etc... These additional lanes communicate over DMI

high 60, even mid 70s is perfectly fine for a stress test load. That may seem really hot to us but it's warm at best for electronics. Overclocking is dangerous and results will vary dramatically, hence the binning process which guarantees that chips will work at the frequencies advertised. You may not be able to obtain the desired frequency, nor may you be able to replicate someone else' results.

Best of luck

If you game at 1280x1024, then ALL high-end chips will be bottlenecked, even some mainstream GPUs. The CPU arranges the to-be-rendered scene (as objects and loading the textures), so at a certain FPS every game will be CPU-limited. The question is, can the card give those FPS? That's why you see some games more CPU-limited than others.
But if you game 1920x1200 at 8x or 16x antialiasing, then I think even a i5 will not limit the 7970. Triple-monitor and it's even better for CPU. SLI/Crossfire however has an added CPU overhead.
I would say stick with your CPU, get the new card and maybe 6 months later get a new CPU. Afte all, my 5850 was bougth when I had an E8400.

It is like feeding pigs. If the pigs can eat faster than you can dump the slop, then you're a bottleneck.

And the current-gen CPU's most certainly are, at least at reasonable speeds.

Well then, one would have to ask, why game at 4.6GHz? Do you just absolutely love the prospect of decreasing your CPU's lifespan by overclocking 30%?

It depends on the resolution and refresh rate. At 1080p with a 60hz monitor, you are limited to 60 FPS being displayed, so in all reality, the GPU is just not needed in most games.

But at 1080p and 120hz monitor, you can then use that graphics power, but then your CPU will sometimes bottleneck you unless you overclock it a lot. (and that CPU can overclock quite easily)

Now if you use eyefinity with 3 1080p monitors, the 7970 will still hold back performance and be the bottleneck, not your CPU. Two on the other hand would run it nicely.

Then a 2550x1600 monitor, then everything will likely be balanced out of the box.

Your monitor setup means everything, yet no one ever asks about it. (mathew7 did bring it up late)