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How Badly Will i3 2120 Bottleneck HD 7970?

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Okay, so I came to the conclusion that we will never really know when Nvidia will release their high end Kepler, so I said **** it. I'll just make a two-three year commitment to XFX Black Edition HD 7970, but I have an issue, I just purchased an i3 2120. How badly will this processor bottleneck the HD 7970. I got the i3 because I'm waiting for Ivy Bridge and I don't want to wait 2-3 months without a gaming rig.

** Just a note. I've read on this website that Skyrim was once dependent on the processor, but that is not the case now.

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Graphics card Master

Depends on the game, the i3 will have no problem playing games which aren't multithreaded but it will be a pretty bad in some games like bf3 multiplayer.

as above, the it definitely depends on the game... and the lack of 4 threads would have a really noticeable impact on performance with newer games that you have to be looking to play if you want a 7970. I just don't see any game being so GPU dependent that you would see higher performance from a 7970 than say a 6970 without starting to bottleneck the cpu. If you plan on sticking with the CPU for a while, I'd save some money till u go quad core.
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The single core performance of the Core i3-2120 is about the same as a Core i7 SB processor. So in games that are optimized for 2 threads you would see no slowdown at all. In fact, in these cases you're better off with the Core i3 as opposed to a Phenom II X4.
In some of these newer games that are optimized for a quad-core you will sometimes take a hit. A good indicator is if your CPU usage is near 100%.

I think the move you made is pretty sound and I wouldn't be too worried about it.

Regardless, it will only be 2-4 months when Ivy is coming out. I doubt I will see anything because I haven't played video games since 2005 anyways. I'll just sell it for dirt cheap, or plaque it when Ivy comes out.
Graphics card Master

bystander said:
That's more in line what I've seen in benchmarks. The i3 handles 4 thread games just fine, better than most 4 core processors.
the only game where more than 2 main threads were use the i3 lost to the phenoms in that review.
Graphics card Master

esrever said:
the only game where more than 2 main threads were use the i3 lost to the phenoms in that review.


I didn't say the i3 beat everything in every game, I said they handled 4 thread games just fine, as in, only a couple of AMD's CPU's beat it, and by a very small margin. Wouldn't you consider that handling 4 threads fine?
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