Bottleneck?

[ajl2011shooter]

I got a 670 a few weeks ago and really liked it so I got another one to run in SLI. After installing the 2ed card and loggin into BF3 my FPS didn't change much so I opened MSI afterburner and GPUz and the load for both cards was averaging about 50%. They were running in SLI. I have 2d surround on and a AMD FX 8150. Is this a bottleneck thing or is there a setting I might not have turned on or off? I'v done a ton of searches and can't seam to find a solid answer. For what it's worth I'm playing on 3 monitors at 4320x900 and get between 45 and 55 FPS on ultra.

Thanks guys!

 

[geekapproved]

Probably.

You can find out by overclocking the cpu a couple hundred mhz, if your fps goes up, you know you have a bottleneck.

 

[ajl2011shooter]

I'v never overclocked a cpu, I wouldn't even know where to start....lol

 

[paddys09]

You'll definitely be limited in some way by the CPU....

What is your motherboard make and model?

 

[ajl2011shooter]

You'll definitely be limited in some way by the CPU....

What is your motherboard make and model?

ASUS M5A99X EVO

 

[paddys09]

Should be ok, thought it may have been a lane bandwidth issue, Are your cards in the blue and white slots?

 

[ajl2011shooter]

Should be ok, thought it may have been a lane bandwidth issue, Are your cards in the blue and white slots?

yes in the blue and white

 

[paddys09]

Cool no problems there the, I'd go ahead and do what geekapproved suggested and overclock to determine wether or not you have a CPU bottleneck...

If you don't know how to overclock then I suggest doing a little research beforehand, think there is a sticky in the CPU section of this forum....

You should be able to get a small overclock by just adjusting the multiplier a bit to give you an idea if is the CPU, make sure you have a decent heatsink and keep an eye on your temps....

 

[gamerkila57]

Yeah that CPU will bottleneck any really powerful GPU setup like 670 SLI (although I'm surprised this happens at triple screen resolution...). That's probably your problem.

not true at all my Friend currently uses a FX 8150 at 4.8GHz and 3x HD 7970's with no problem in BF3 fully maxed. back to the question i highly suggest overclocking your cpu it's very easy as it's the only way to gt the most from a Bulldozer Chip

Edit: also don't expect a lot of FPS at that high of a res on Ultra

 

[gamerkila57]

+1 go into the BIOs set the mutliplier to 20x and you won't have to change volts. also you will need to disable Turbo and C1E. should now be clocked at 4GHz

 

[geekapproved]

not true at all my Friend currently uses a FX 8150 at 4.8GHz and 3x HD 7970's with no problem in BF3 fully maxed. back to the question i highly suggest overclocking your cpu it's very easy as it's the only way to gt the most from a Bulldozer Chip

Edit: also don't expect a lot of FPS at that high of a res on Ultra

Since when is a stock 8150 4.8ghz..........lol

 

[gamerkila57]

Since when is a stock 8150 4.8ghz..........lol

i never said anything about stock

 

[ajl2011shooter]

+1 go into the BIOs set the mutliplier to 20x and you won't have to change volts. also you will need to disable Turbo and C1E. should now be clocked at 4GHz

lol......I cant find any of that stuff in my bios

 

[gamerkila57]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb2Uzbm6PVU

 

[geekapproved]

i never said anything about stock

You quoted someone who was talking about a stock cpu and then told them what they said isn't true.

 

[gamerkila57]

That's the way people roll when trying to defend faildozer.

Although in this case I was wrong - BF3 is one of very few games that can take advantage of all the cores an 8150 has and so not bottleneck.

i wouldn't can't it a faildozer as it still performs good maybe not as good as an i5 or i7 but who cares as the prices are a big difference

 

[gamerkila57]

True, it's not really faildozer at its current price of $190. I call it faildozer because of AMD's marketing & hype behind it / the crazy delays releasing it / their original pricing scheme / the fact that it doesn't really game any better than their previous generation Phenom II chips and in some cases is actually *worse*.

It's actually a very good deal at $190 for some types of workloads, but gaming isn't really one of them. And in the vast majority of games, it will bottleneck 670 SLI unless it's overclocked a lot.

yea that's true but the past few new games released the BD beat the Phenom II

 

[ajl2011shooter]

Well I just bit the bullet and got a i7 3770k and a new mobo. I get it all put together tonight and see how it goes.

 

[ajl2011shooter]

Best answer selected by ajl2011shooter.