Avoding bottleneck

elahi · February 11, 2014

Could you suggest me a good GPU for my i3 3220 (3.3 Ghz) so that I can avoid bottleneck?

WoodenMarker · February 11, 2014

Anything up to a ~7870 should be fine but it will depend on the game.

Where are you shopping/located? Budget?

Gaming right?

BallisticPeanut · February 11, 2014

Go for an AMD card for sure, Mantle is pretty much made to alleviate CPU bottlenecks. Although very little games actually support it now, since EA is supporting it we will most likely see a lot more titles with Mantle support in the future.

Faa · February 11, 2014

Go for an AMD card for sure, Mantle is pretty much made to alleviate CPU bottlenecks. Although very little games actually support it now, since EA is supporting it we will most likely see a lot more titles with Mantle support in the future.

Theres only 1 game.. I would vote for nvidia tbh because their D3D drivers are so much better and theyre tweaked on the CPU side.

One thing we didn't expect to see was Nvidia's Direct3D driver performing so much better than AMD's. We don't often test different GPU brands in CPU-constrained scenarios, but perhaps we should. Looks like Nvidia has done quite a bit of work polishing its D3D driver for low CPU overhead.

From http://techreport.com/review/25995/first-look-amd-mantle-cpu-performance-in-battlefield-4/2

helping · February 11, 2014

Could you suggest me a good GPU for my i3 3220 (3.3 Ghz) so that I can avoid bottleneck?

Bottleneck is a nasty word around here.

There are some instances where you won't experience at bottleneck at all and some where your CPU will be choking.

It depends on the game and what it takes preferences to. On certain games you'd be fine with (something like WoodenMarker said, 7870, 760ish range GPU) and some games that CPU will hold the GPU back. Different games are bound differently to either CPU performance or GPU performance.

MightyUnit · February 11, 2014

OP I would choose a great card, like a 280x or a GTX 770, nothing less.

FWIW my wife's rig has a 780 to go with her i3 3240. I know that would make most cringe but what is a guy to do with 780 laying around... it has to go somewhere ;-) . I must say, I am surprised by how well the i3 can manage in games like BF4 at 2560X1440 in a 64 player map. I will not recommend an i3 for gaming but still, I am surprised how well it works.