CPU Bottlenecking GPU?

[riceazns]

Hi, so I recently was able to get my hands on two gtx 660s for the price of one, both brand new. I decided to put them into SLI but I notice that the performance i get doesn't change by a lot. I was wondering if my stock clocked fx 4300 may be bottlenecking my graphics cards? and if so, what can I do? Should I overclock it? will the overclock be enough to allow my system to completely use the SLI, or should I buy a new cpu and mobo?

Thanks

[dizmo]

Does CPU usage hit 100%?

 

Also welcome to the forum.

[AnotherTechGuy]

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[Shd0w2]

Congrats on the steal, but it seems like that it might be bottlenecking.

[StormEye]

Double check you've enabled SLI and they both have sufficient power

^That

 

When something changes in nVIDIA's driver or system setting, it resets SLi to non-SLi.

 

I forgot about it and went on playing games for few days before. LoL

[Faa]

Does CPU usage hit 100%?

 

Also welcome to the forum.

Anything below 99% gpu load is a cpu bottleneck. You can have at 100% cpu load 99% gpu load on all your cards so practically your cpu didnt bottleneck. Lately with all the multicore cpu's we have and most games still not pushing a quadcore higher than 50%, the cpu usage starts to mean nothing as an indicator for bottlenecks really.

[riceazns]

Double check you've enabled SLI and they both have sufficient power

I have enabled SLI and I believe 750W is enough power.

 

Does CPU usage hit 100%?

 

Also welcome to the forum.

I don't think my CPU Usage hits 100%

and thanks for welcoming me

 

^That

 

When something changes in nVIDIA's driver or system setting, it resets SLi to non-SLi.

 

I forgot about it and went on playing games for few days before. LoL

It did not reset to non-SLI mode.

[AnotherTechGuy]

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[Imabigmac]

I have enabled SLI and I believe 750W is enough power.

 

I don't think my CPU Usage hits 100%

and thanks for welcoming me

 

It did not reset to non-SLI mode.

you are going to have to tell us the usage on the gpu's when gaming the and the game. Also what did you have before for a gpu?

[riceazns]

System specs?

CPU: FX 4300 @ 3.8GHZ

MOBO: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 2 x 4GB DDR3 1600MHz CL9 Dual Channel Kit

GPU: 2 x MSI N660 Twin Frozr OC GeForce GTX 660 2GB PCI-E

HDD: WD 500 GB, unknown 300GB both for storage

SSD: Crucial m4 128GB for start up

PSU: Corsair TX750M

[AnotherTechGuy]

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[DJHoro]

Your fx 4300 might be holding back your cards a little but not by alot. Overclocking will help. just check temps and voltages. It also depends on what program/game you use/play. Some things are better SLI optimized than others.

[Faa]

I don't think my CPU Usage hits 100%

Monitor your gpu loads instead because games are barely utilizing 4 cores. Turn off vsync and use something like Playclaw 5 (its free) or msi afterburner/evga precision but theyre a bit more harder to setup. Anything below 99% gpu load is a cpu bottleneck. Keep in mind if you get 50% max and you have 30 fps orsomething you would have at 99% 60 fps. The load scales pretty much lineairly with your frames.