Will my CPU bottleneck my new GPU?

[ces160]

Hello All,

 

My brother has an old computer rocking an Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66Ghz.

He is starting to get into more demanding games after playing Mine Craft and his current 6450 is just not cutting it any more.

 

He is looking at getting a Nvidia 760 or a AMD R9 270X.

 

Will the CPU hold back either of these cards and if it will what GPU would you recommend as a match for that CPU.

 

Also he only has a monitor with a native resolution of 1280 x 1024 so he's not pushing to many pixels.

 

Thanks

 

-ces160

[Cokeman]

YES

[ShadowCaptain]

Yes, but pretty much every GPU will be!

 

having a bottleneck is not the end of the world

[AlwaysFSX]

Only a little bit.

[Interfectorem]

The R9 270X supports Mantle, which is supposed to reduce "bottlenecking" between the GPU and CPU, but is only supported in few games at the moment. (Thief, Battlefield 4 etc.) But I have a feeling your CPU will bottleneck those GPUs. Shouldn't be the end of the world though.

[TheRunningOtaku]

The R9 270X supports Mantle, which is supposed to reduce "bottlenecking" between the GPU and CPU, but is only supported in few games at the moment. (Thief, Battlefield 4 etc.) But I have a feeling your CPU will bottleneck those GPUs. Shouldn't be the end of the world though.

I think Mantle is only helpful if you have more cores though so I doubt it'll help that much

Though I'm not expert on it, and it's better than nothing. 

 

The 270x is a great upgrade path, you can always put in a new Motherboard, RAM and CPU later on when you have the budget! (quite a few people do this actually since the GPU usually makes the biggest difference in modern games)

The bottlenecking won't be that big of an issue if you're planning to upgrade later, and it's not like you're getting a 780 or 290X.

[n0x1ous]

Yes - modern games really need 4 quality intel cores these days.  2 cores will be a huge bottleneck