Phenom II X2 545 Processor 3.00 GHz bottleneck 560 Ti

I have a roughly 3 year old Phenom II X2 545 3.00 GHz dual core processor. I'm thinking about upgrading my video card to a 560 Ti.

Would the processor bottleneck the 560 Ti, and if so, how much? I mostly play Skyrim and a little bit of Battlefield 3, so that's what I'm concerned about.

It also depends on your gaming quality and resolution. However Skyrim is only optimized for two threads so your fine. But In order to not bottleneck high end cards it is best to use a quad core CPU. Also, I would hold off on the 560 Ti. Kepler and Radeon 7800 series is right around the corner. They offer better performance at the same price range.

Hard to say exactly what that setup would do, but I'd expect some significant bottlenecks from that CPU, especially with Skyrim. Is it a black edition cpu?

Assuming you have a socket AM2+/AM3 motherboard, I'd recommend picking up a phenom 960T for ~$125, a Hyper 212+/evo cpu cooler ($30/$35), and overclocking that to 4 GHz or so, which should help remove CPU bottlenecks.

Don't pay too much attention to the absolute fps numbers in tomshardware benchmarks of Skyrim, though. They didn't use any of the available CPU optimization mods (skyboost/tesval) and so they get pretty bad performance. My 960T, unlocked and OC'd to 4.0 GHz results in minimum framerates in the 40s with 1.3 skyboost (paired with a 7970, 1080p with all settings & AA maxed).

Actually, a 960T Zosma at $125 would be a better deal in my opinion.

Thanks for all the responses. I decided to upgrade my CPU and purchase the 560 Ti.