Bottleneck?

[Guest]

Hi there,

 

My pc specs: 

• CPU
  Q9400
• Motherboard
  Foxconn P45A-s
• RAM
  8Gb Dual channel 800Mhz OCZ Platinum at CL4
• GPU
  EVGA GTX660SC

Am I getting bottlenecking in my cpu? If I added a second GTX660 would I see a massive improvement, or is it worth upgrading my whole system?

Thanks

[App4that]

Depends on what you're doing with it?

[WoodenMarker]

You might see a tangible performance increase with a second 660 but there may be bottlenecking depending on the usage. 

Whether it's worth getting a second card may depend on pricing.

[Guest]

Depends on what you're doing with it?

gaming lol. Like Far Cry 3 those kind of games newish titles.

[Guest]

You might see a tangible performance increase with a second 660 but there may be bottlenecking depending on the usage. 

Whether it's worth getting a second card may depend on pricing.

I bought a semi broken card which I can fix for 40 bucks, the card crashes when installing drivers, but If i put it in my system with already installed drivers it may not crash

[App4that]

I'd upgrade ram for sure, modern games want at least 1600mhz. Fallout 4 wants 2400mhz. 8g is enough though

[WoodenMarker]

I bought a semi broken card which I can fix for 40 bucks, the card crashes when installing drivers, but If i put it in my system with already installed drivers it may not crash

That could be worth it if it does end up working--it's definitely a gamble though.

[Vice_Stojcic]

I had a q8400 at 3.2ghz paired with an gtx560 then i upgraded to an gtx660ti 3gb and my frames in bf3 only jumped by 5fps. In the mean time i sold the 560 to a frend with an fx8150 and he had 20fps more then i had with the q8400 and gtx660ti. So i upgraded to an fx8350 and my frames jumped by 60 fps. (not saying you should go with the fx cpu, you shouldn't intel rocks).

 

I wouldn't put anything stronger then that 660 in that system. It's an still capable system. Maybe in a few years you should upgrade to an better socket.  Sorry for my bad English

[Guest]

I'd upgrade ram for sure, modern games want at least 1600mhz. Fallout 4 wants 2400mhz. 8g is enough though

To what? Is it worth it cause DDR2 is old now getting ram is quite expensive.

[Guest]

That could be worth it if it does end up working--it's definitely a gamble though.

Yeah worth it if it works. 

[Guest]

I had a q8400 at 3.2ghz paired with an gtx560 then i upgraded to an gtx660ti 3gb and my frames in bf3 only jumped by 5fps. In the mean time i sold the 560 to a frend with an fx8150 and he had 20fps more then i had with the q8400 and gtx660ti. So i upgraded to an fx8350 and my frames jumped by 60 fps. (not saying you should go with the fx cpu, you shouldn't intel rocks).

 

I wouldn't put anything stronger then that 660 in that system. It's an still capable system. Maybe in a few years you should upgrade to an better socket.  Sorry for my bad English

That's cool man. I am going to upgrade in the next year or so. Probably when the next socket or something comes out. I will overclock it I have to 2.7 but I am only using a stock cooler and don't wanna push it to far since if it breaks I am kinda stuffed. And my overclocking skills are terrible lol, never done much overclocking on cpu's

[Vice_Stojcic]

That's cool man. I am going to upgrade in the next year or so. Probably when the next socket or something comes out. I will overclock it I have to 2.7 but I am only using a stock cooler and don't wanna push it to far since if it breaks I am kinda stuffed. And my overclocking skills are terrible lol, never done much overclocking on cpu's

 

Why not overclock it with a stock cooler i did that. Leave the voltage at default and just cranck up the multiplier or fsb or a combination of both wathever is stable. Don't let the temps go over 72c and you are golden. If it's to hot drop the freuqency.   I remember that i had a cooler master TX3 cooler (upgraded from the stock cooler) it was dirt cheap and the temps when't down like crazy.  If a lightning strike didn't destroy that system with the q8400 i would still use it. The C2Q cpu are facinating altough they are so old now. If i where you i wouldn't change anything exept buy a cheap aftermarket cooler and rock with that cpu and gpu untill the games on low settings wouldn't run at aceptable framerates. Even with the present bootleneck i wouldn't change a thing.  Today games are preaty demanding so i think the cpu won't be a real issue because the gpu will be runing  at 100% utilisation so the cpu altough old will still wait on the gpu rather then the gpu waiting for the cpu to feed it.  

 

Again sorry for the bad English.

[ApolloX75]

I'd upgrade ram for sure, modern games want at least 1600mhz. Fallout 4 wants 2400mhz. 8g is enough though

It's a DDR2 board. Max he can go is 1066MHz and there won't be a tangible difference.

[Guest]

It's a DDR2 board. Max he can go is 1066MHz and there won't be a tangible difference.

Ah okay, thanks

 

I guess ill try overclocking it if I can, any easy guides to follow?

[ApolloX75]

Ah okay, thanks

 

I guess ill try overclocking it if I can, any easy guides to follow?

Eh, there's some on YouTube I'm sure, never used guides personally. I've been overclocking and tweaking since Thunderbirds came out.

 

Now for some personal tips? I can do that.

 

Your motherboard uses the P45 chipset, which is a superb late model with a neat feature. This feature is the ability to unlink your RAM bus speed from your CPU bus speed settings. You'll find an option in your BIOS labeled "CPU:DRAM Clock Ratio" (located on page 24 of your manual, which is available http://www.foxconnchannel.com/ProductDetail.aspx?T=motherboard&U=en-us0000394 for your convenience) and this has several options including "Auto" and "Disabled". So if you set it to Disabled you can now overclock your CPU independently from your RAM and achieve a much higher clock speeds without hitting a RAM limit. Or you can keep it at 1:1 and your RAM will ramp up with your CPU, it's okay to do this but you're much more likely to hit a stability wall very quickly.

 

DDR2 RAM isn't meant to run at high speeds like DDR3, what DDR2 has is nice and low latency (roughly half of DDR3) so even at 800MHz DDR2 can work quite well. Unless you have really high quality DIMMs I kind of doubt you'll get much past 1066MHz, and you may not even get that high either.

 

For your CPU you can use the FSB (Front Side Bus, located on page 24 as well, labeled "CPU Clock") to adjust your frequency and if you're lucky you can change the multiplier, but I don't think you can with the regular Q8xxx series IIRC. Moving your FSB up from the default of 333MHz will increase your CPU core clock (calculated using Core Multiplier x FSB Speed) but of course this will have another adverse effect. You'll need to up the North Bridge Chipset voltage (page 30, O.V. Configuration, labeled "MCH Voltage Control"), vCore voltage settings for your CPU (same page and section) and of course the "VRAM" setting for your RAM if you have played with the ratio and FSB for your DDR2.

 

Your Q8400 generally operates between .85v to 1.2v-ish depending on the workload. You'll need to keep an eye on heat output and try not to go crazy with the vCore values, keep it under 1.4v (Intel's recommended is 1.3625v) and keep it under 75C at 100% load. Use Intel XTU, AIDA64 or Prime95 to stresstest it for several hours to make sure everything is stable. You can use voltage offsets later to keep the power savings and idle downclocking abilities of SpeedStep but for now just keep it on manual and get everything where you like it.

 

Last tip: DO NOT do everything in one go. Pick a part and start small, bump the FSB by 10-20MHz at a time and test it for at least 20-30 minutes. If it seems stable boost it a bit more. If it blue screens bump your voltage by .05V-.10V. Keep notes on what you've changed and what order you did them in, you'll need them when something goes wrong.

 

*Edit. A note on DDR2, 800MHz operates at about 1.8V and 1066MHz is around 2.1V in general. So a 900MHz overclock should be easy to achieve using about 1.9V. Be gentle on the RAM, it's more sensitive and has less safety nets than your CPU.

 

*Another edit: Harrynowls guide to Core2 overclocking is excellent and contains even more info than I'll remember. http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/232325-lga775-core2duo-core2quad-overclocking-guide/

[audiex]

Can pentium G3258 3.2ghz run with GTX960?

[FixedDevice]

Can pentium G3258 3.2ghz run with GTX960?

 

Short: Yes

 

Long: Yes*

 

You may experience minor bottlenecks with a pentium. Just don't try to run high settings on a core-hungry game.

[Jacktastic-Mofo]

I've ran a G3258 with a GTX 960 and can report no / very little bottlenecking compared to the i3-4150 (dual core, hyper threading, 3.5Ghz). If possible try overclocking the G3258, you might squeeze an extra couple frames out of it.

[audiex]

Short: Yes

Long: Yes*

You may experience minor bottlenecks with a pentium. Just don't try to run high settings on a core-hungry game.

My resolution just 1600x900

[audiex]

I've ran a G3258 with a GTX 960 and can report no / very little bottlenecking compared to the i3-4150 (dual core, hyper threading, 3.5Ghz). If possible try overclocking the G3258, you might squeeze an extra couple frames out of it.

Overclock to 3.8ghz i guess

[Jacktastic-Mofo]

My resolution just 1600x900

Overclock to 3.8ghz i guess

You'll destroy games at 1600x900 with a GTX 960.

 

I got mine to 4.9GHz but get it as high as you can.

[Suika]

There will be bottlenecks in games that use more than two threads, especially games that can't operate on less than 4 threads.

[GalacticRuler]

You can overclock to the 4Ghz range with the stock cooler. I'd definitely overclock it.

[i_build_nanosuits]

i'd buy a core i3-4160 or i3-4170 instead!

[incarnate]

My resolution just 1600x900

At that resolution you'll run into some bottlenecking depending on the game. I'd use dsr to increase the overall usage of your gpu. The way bottlenecks work is that they are more noticeable at lower resolutions. Think of the bottleneck as an fps limit imposed by your processor. If you notice a game is bottlenecking, set it to use dsr in the nvidia control panel. This will run the game at a higher resolution and down scale it for a bit better quality. Don't set dsr too high tho.

Also, try overclocking your Pentium. Even 4.0 ghz (really easy to hit) will help a lot.