Is my GPU being bottle necked?

[PrinceVampiro]

OK so recently I made an upgrade to my sytem and ended up getting a new graphics card. Now, dont get me wrong.. the graphics card has shown very noticeable FPS increase in games over my old card(XFX 5770). But when I read reviews and benchmarks, I'm not getting near the performance improvements that I thought I would. So I'm starting to think that I may be bottle necked somewhere. The PC is originally the HP Pavilion P6720f. I have just kept it upgraded for gaming purposes by changing some of the hardware.. I am thinking the issue could be a CPU or Ram bottleneck mainly. I will provide some links at the bottom of the page for some of the more hard to find components, let me know what you guys think could be bottle necking my GPU the most if at all.

Windows 7 64 Bit
Gigabyte HD7950 3GB Graphics card
6GB DDR3 10600 ram 1333mhz I believe.(came with pc on purchase, only 3 out of 4 RAM slots are in use)
AMD Phenom ll x4 840T processor. 2.9GHZ (3.2GHZ turbo)
N-Alvorix-RS880-uATX motherboard
OCZ Modxstream Pro 700w psu
Seagate Barracuda Sata 3.0GB/s 7200RPM 1TB HD

Processor - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113171

Hard Drive - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148433

Motherboard - http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c02560084&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=5049516

 

[Deemo13]

It could be the source of the bottleneck in the computer, yet if the computer is still giving respectable performance, it should be alright imo.

 

[PrinceVampiro]

It could be the source of the bottleneck in the computer, yet if the computer is still giving respectable performance, it should be alright imo.

What could be the source? :/ Is my processor bottle necking my GPU's full potential? Or how about the ram? Does it matter much that i'm only using 3 out of 4 slots. Curious of what I can do exactly to achieve full potential for my GPU.

Any suggestions for upgrades will also be much appreciated.

 

[Deemo13]

The processor. 4GB is all you really need for gaming.

Are you getting good performance though? If you are getting satisfactory performance you may as well just stick with what you have.

 

[PrinceVampiro]

Yeah, I can max any game I play at 1920x1080 and still achieve 30-60FPS. Its just that some games I barely notice a slight improvements in my FPS over my old XFX 5770. Maybe those are more CPU intensive games and my CPU is the bottle neck there.. so i'm not sure.

 

[DarkSable]

^Hit it right on the head. From the sounds of it, that's exactly what's happening.

 

[Deemo13]

Yup, those are bottlenecking symptoms. To be sure, you should check your CPU and GPU usage while in game.

 

[xFriarx]

Its the CPU. I had a AMD 965BE and it held my 670 back a little. Once my i7 got in (damn slow shipping), it raised my FPS and benchmark scores quite a bit.