Bottleneck on GTX 670 on PCI Express 2.0?

Yes, PCI Express 3.0 Graphics cards are compatible with 2.0. And there is no performance difference. Also your CPU won't bottleneck your system.

Happy hunting!, your good to go!

The PCIe bus will not bottleneck your card, but your CPU, RAM, and other system buses will. I'm not saying that you shouldn't get the card, in fact you should go for it, and PCIe 2.0 will not be a problem.

Interesting. Posted this on other forums also and opinions are torn in regards to if cpu needs an upgrade.

As far as ram goes, The gist I am getting is that RAM is not that important for gaming and 4gb ddr2 should do fine. Would you all agree?

I will say your cpu will be a bottleneck , if you can overclock it , it will elleviate the bottlenecking and will perform much better. Another option is to grab a used Core2Quad from ebay , like a Q9650, they arent cheap tho.
Games like BF3 on Ultra 1080 will exceed 4GB, Ive seen mine go as much as 5.5 gb whilst in game.
You will not get a bottleneck with pci-e 2.0
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Ivy_Bridge_PCI...

definitely your cpu and ram are weaker for handling a gtx 670 even i5 760 can't handle it on it's stock speed so squeezing up your cpu will not make any better improvement i'd recommend not to go with gtx 670. If you want to taste a real performance of gtx 670 then change your entire system and get new one with i5 3570k.

i love that board i have one too, you can flash the bios to display your own picture during startup. the cpu and mobo would bottleneck before.

please provide some proof of that.

a Q6600 OC'd to 3+Gz will still handle any single graphics card and quite a few dual core will too.  

No, it won't, not nearly. A 2500k @4.4GHz bottlenecks a 670 in many single and dual threaded games, so let's just call a spade a spade.

lets provide some proof so to better educate me than give an opinion please  

hahahah are you kidding ya!! Or just really?
Ok you've said that q6600 3+ghz handle any single gpu then show me where its powering up a gtx 680..or 690 hehe..
You've also said a few dual core will handle too aahhh i can't seem any dual core which provding a complete power to gtx 670 or 680 first you'll show some proof then i'll show you a dozen..

you drunk? Why are you speaking like that

Neither has shown proof. Its hearsay vs hearsay.

also not true, however 2500k is still good enough this cpu could handle even gtx 680 sli... With no bottlenecking..

kindly back up your claim sir,


do not ask me to provide something you are refusing to do yourself. it has been a endless debate as soon as someone asks about a graphics card immediately a bunch of ignoramuses scream "bottleneck".

so kindly back up your B.S.

@ PaperRockBazooka What speed is your Q6600 running? You'll have a CPU bottleneck regardless. However, if you overclock your CPU over 3.0Ghz then it'll be less noticeable. I think that's the main consensus here.

your right, i *may* have to admit a bit of trolling with my dual core comment  

Q6600 @ 3.0 or better will still provide resonable CPU performance, I have had mine at 3.8 for a little better than a year now and 3.2-.34 is more that possble depending on the CPU revision

lol @ Looniam. This isn't League of Legends! Constructive criticism only :-p

also not true, however 2500k is still good enough this cpu could handle even gtx 680 sli... With no bottlenecking..

I can only speak from my own experience , I had 560ti SLI which would be of similar performance of a 670.
I was running an E8500 overclcocked and it was topping out. So I purchased a QX9650 and my set up was running brilliantly.
The Q6600 for instance will need a good overclock, with a good cooler they overclock like crazy and will give you enough juice to push the 670.
Going from 4GB to 8GB of ram also helps alot in intensive games like BF3, I found 4GB of ram with the older Core2Quads would struggle in BF3 and would stutter , going to 8GB fixed it.
So grab the 670 a good cooler and overclock the hell out of that Q6600 add more ram for intensive games like BF3 and you will get good performance.

I don't understand the issue of bottleneck vs not as important.

Get the 670. It will be fine in 2.0. If you need to upgrade the rest then do so. It seems free to try it on you set up b.c you have it. So try it. If you get 50+FPS you will be fine. There may or may not be a need to upgrade.

4 gigs of ram have been reported to be an issue by some members in games like Bf3.

Anyhow, http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-7970-cpu-scalin...

I'd also like to point out, if you purchase a GTX 670 now, when you purchase a new mobo/ram/CPU you can just buy a 2nd GTX 670 and SLI it up.

670 SLI would be awesome!
I purchased the 680, words cannot express how happy I am with its performance.
Every game runs as smooth as silk.

I could not get my hands on a GTX 680, Nvidia can't pull it's head from it's ass. So I bought a Sapphire 7970 OC. I have no complaints thus far.

Yeah fair enough, the 670 difference in performance to a 680 isnt that huge , so it makes it a better buy than the 680 at 100 bucks less.

i know i should just leave it alone BUT
Test System And Benchmarks
AMD Radeon HD 7970 (about the same league as a 670/680 right?)

but yes this is a bottleneck  

however don't think a dual core can't do it, not the most desirable, but it games with a high end card
. .feh.

I can attest to the fact that a q6600 even at 3.2Ghz can be a serious bottleneck for a gtx670, because thats what i had up until this past thursday. I too was convinced by 99% gpu utilization in BF3 ultra 1920x1200 sp; 99% utilization in Saints Row 3 and others. These games stayed above 60fps. But crysis 1 still struggled to go past 20's fps in some places; gothic 4 stuggled to keep above 30 fps. And risen 2 fluctuated in the 20s as well. These games ran around or below half utilization of the gtx 670.

i was sorta mixed about the 6600. this thing was legendary for me. 5 years pretty much to the day and 5 Gfx cards later most stuff was smooth or super smooth. So i so wanted to stretch that CPU to the 7 year mark. That would have been awesome. However the upgrade bug hit me.

So i had a new rig slappd together with a i7-3770@ 4.5Ghz. Crysis 1 now runs 60+ fps everywhere - no dips at all. rather than dips into the mid and low 20's at times. Impressive running high settings on single GPU at that speed. Gothic 4 runs more than 2 x the speed with 60+ fps. And Risen 2 i have yet to test as im on vacation  . But the point here is i had 99% utilization on the card withh a smoking new cpu.

Moral of the story is : if your game rig runs a game at 99% utilization be happy with your q6600. if not you are missing out. that is irrefutable. and the proof i think you are asking for looniam.

i appreciate your response though the games you gave "testimony" to struggling, struggled under any set up with the way they were poorly ported. they were not used for any benchmarking in reviews on sites with crysis being the exception for a short time just for that reason. upgrading to a i7-3770 @ 4.5 would provide a serious difference in performance.

i am still waiting to hear the B.S talkers back up what they stated; the dozen benchmarks for every one i provided. even the second bench i posted help their cause but you think they understand that?

bottom line. you CAN run into one component restricting another under certain circumstances . . that doesn't mean it bottlenecks in all situations.

Aye Looniam, I too have seen benches that make zero difference to what quad core you are running. The heaven 3.0 benchmark is an example. Makes not one iota difference with an OC Q6600. I would have to say if theres a game you end up dissatified with, you can mothball it   Plenty of good stuff that isn't running slow on a q6600 and a gtx 670 by a long shot.

PaperRockBazooka I hope you stretch that q6600 few more years ! I speak with my local computer store techs and they love that CPU as well. Prob one of the best ever. It was good for me even with a stock cooler it never complained !