Bottlenecking GTX 970

[jeraldcandelario]

So i'm planning to get the G2358 and for the GPU a 970 GTX TURBO OC by ASUS, as you may notice that my cpu is not really an ideal combo with the card, but nonetheless I will be upgrading to i5 in 5-10 months after completing the build.

I just wanna know how bad of a bottleneck it will be. I will be oc'ing hard the G2358 by the way. Will I not be able to play or even start games like GTA V, Civ5, BF4, etc. on high settings (or Ultra if can)?

[TheRandomness]

Me and my friend tried the same pentium at 4.2GHz~ and an R9 290 (970 is a little better) and it was stuck at 40FPS in most games.

[PlayStation 2]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($125.98 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI Z170A PC MATE ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($104.99 @ Directron)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 390 8GB Nitro Video Card  ($289.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $520.96
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-17 11:44 EST-0500

 

do that, far less bottleneck and you get to run gta 5

[Arwanell]

not much, 970 works perfect with i3, so an overclocked pentium will be fine for now, until you get i5

 

by the way, why don't you get r9 390? same price, more performance, double VRAM

[SkilledRebuilds]

So i'm planning to get the G2358 and for the GPU a 970 GTX TURBO OC by ASUS, as you may notice that my cpu is not really an ideal combo with the card, but nonetheless I will be upgrading to i5 in 5-10 months after completing the build.

I just wanna know how bad of a bottleneck it will be. I will be oc'ing hard the G2358 by the way. Will I not be able to play or even start games like GTA V, Civ5, BF4, etc. on high settings (or Ultra if can)?

If your SUPER curious..

Youtube search "GTX 970 + G2358" <-without quotes and see what relative video's come up from gamers with this combo showing its performance.

[CommandMan7]

Honestly, unless you are playing single or dual thread only games, any i3 (like the 6100) will work much better. All the games you listed are modern enough to not only just utilize, but heavily depend on four or more cores. 

[Arwanell]

1:15

[DaltonM]

Don't get an i3, you want effective quad core. So i5 at least. And when getting an i5, it's the best value to get the 4690k based on the small (liek $50) price difference between that and the 4460

[i_build_nanosuits]

G3258 does not go well with modern demanding games as shown in my own testing of haswell dual-core without hyper-threading at 4.5ghz (= overclocked pentium) paired with GTX780 at 1080p gaming:

 

That CPU should not be paired with anything greater than a GTX 760/950...anything above that is worthless to have with such a weak ass CPU.

 

A core i3 perform quite a bit better even at stock clocks i've tested at 3.4ghz in BF4 in this video here you can see there are SOME variations in GPU load indicating a slight CPU limitation but far less dramatic and much smoother than the overclocked pentium ride:

 

So, for a GTX970 (which BTW is around 10% faster than the GTX780 i used for testing, so very similar GPU's)...if you want to make full use of it...and not see much CPU limitations in modern AAA titles...an i5-4460 is the bare minimum you should consider.

 

Here a quick run in crowded streets of Assassin's creed unity with a 3.4ghz quad-core configuration you can see the CPU holdin up very well with the powerful GPU in a very CPU intensive game:

 

As you can see, CPU usage on different cores is really high in some instances this game is already pushing it quite a bit how much more can it handle? answer: not much more than that...fallout4 is pushing these to 100% across the board and the fact that you can't overclock it to get some more performance out of it will SOON be a limiting factor...so, even that is not very ''future-proof'' and will likely require an upgrade pretty soon IMHO.

 

BOTTOM LINE: i think you do not have the budget to afford a GTX970 right now...i really think you should reconsider the whole deal and fit a better CPU in your build along with a cheaper GPU such as an R9 380 for example.

 

Why? because a good CPU will last you what? 4...5 years...maybe even more than that, where as GPU's on the other hand even if you buy a top-end one will require upgrades much faster and more frequently...typicaly GPU's do not age as well as a good intel CPU will...soooo....a good CPU will allow a couple GPU upgrades down the road which is a simple fix: sell the old one, order a new one pop it in and boom you're done...

[Morgan MLGman]

@i_build_nanosuits LOL THAT BOTTLENECK, GPU @57% sometimes... And the 970 should be a tad better than your previous 780, so that's even more

[jeraldcandelario]

1:15

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rutk9ErhKG4

Man that was hard to watch, it's like the Batman: Arkham Knight Batmobile lag but with horses. And is Witcher 3 more demanding than B:AK?

I was really torned between r9 390 and 970, but after a few research and posts, they say that NVidia's Driver support ar better than amd (which is a fact) and that the r9 390 sounds like a jet engine underload.. 3rd choice was r9 290x which is 60-70$ cheaper than 970 and the 390 is cheaper for about 120$

[i_build_nanosuits]

@i_build_nanosuits LOL THAT BOTTLENECK, GPU @57% sometimes... And the 970 should be a tad better than your previous 780, so that's even more

yes indeed it's terrible...some games in my library where running fine don,t get me wrong i cherry picked the games...i selected those that had massive stutters and GPU load all over the place...but it's like that now...at the time the witcher 3 or fallout 4 where not even out yet...just try to run these now with only 2 threads...you'll get the same results and even worse...this is a very low end CPU and it should be considered as such...it's meant to run SOME lighter games at low/medium settings paired with say a GTX 750ti...end of the story

[Morgan MLGman]

yes indeed it's terrible...some games in my library where running fine don,t get me wrong i cherry picked the games...i selected those that had massive stutters and GPU load all over the place...but it's like that now...at the time the witcher 3 or fallout 4 where not even out yet...just try to run these now with only 2 threads...you'll get the same results and even worse...this is a very low end CPU and it should be considered as such...it's meant to run SOME lighter games at low/medium settings paired with say a GTX 750ti...end of the story

Wondering if an Athlon X4 860k would do better. I mean it is more powerful overall and all of those demanding games use 4 threads...

[i_build_nanosuits]

Wondering if an Athlon X4 860k would do better. I mean it is more powerful overall and all of those demanding games use 4 threads...

in such games yes it will do slightly better...again this athlon chip is based on the steamroller architecture which share A LOT of the same design and features found on piledriver for example the ''cores'' are still sharing the floating point unit and instruction decoder like they did on the AMD FX but it does not have any L3 cache with impact it,s gaming performance pretty hard in some instances...it has 4 integer units, but only 2 FPU so therefore it's not a full quad-core chip but more of an hybrid design...but yes the multi-threaded performance is greater than that of the pentium and it CAN handle 4 instruction sets at once so long as they are not 4x 256bit floating point unit based instructions (which happen sometimes in games and would be a limitation)

 

IMHO, if you want a ''true'' AMD quad-core CPU you'd have to look at the AMD FX-83XX line of CPU's.

This one has 4 floating point unit (can handle 4x 256bit FP instructions at once) and 4 instruction decoders: one per module...it has 8 integer units...it's a fancy quad-core with kind of an hybrid approach but it's at least a full quad-core with some tweaks to improve multi-threaded performance when proper instruction sets enter it's pipeline.

[Morgan MLGman]

in such games yes it will do slightly better...again this athlon chip is based on the steamroller architecture which share A LOT of the same design and features found on piledriver for example the ''cores'' are still sharing the floating point unit and instruction decoder like they did on the AMD FX as well as the L3 cache is shared...it has 4 integer units, but only 2 FPU so therefore it's not a full quad-core chip but more of an hybrid design...but yes the multi-threaded performance is greater than that of the pentium and it CAN handle 4 instruction sets at once so long as they are not 4 256bit floating point unit based instructions (which happen sometimes in games and would be a limitation)

 

IMHO, if you want a ''true'' AMD quad-core CPU you'd have to look at the AMD FX-83XX line of CPU's.

Does it have L3 cache at all? I mean my old Athlon X4 750k didn't have one, and it had the exact same FX modules

[jeraldcandelario]

G3258 does not go well with modern demanding games as shown in my own testing of haswell dual-core without hyper-threading at 4.5ghz (= overclocked pentium) paired with GTX780 at 1080p gaming:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub3lzTplYxM

 

That CPU should not be paired with anything greater than a GTX 760/950...anything above that is worthless to have with such a weak ass CPU.

 

A core i3 perform quite a bit better even at stock clocks i've tested at 3.4ghz in BF4 in this video here you can see there are SOME variations in GPU load indicating a slight CPU limitation but far less dramatic and much smoother than the overclocked pentium ride:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrOe0xO33no

 

So, for a GTX970 (which BTW is around 10% faster than the GTX780 i used for testing, so very similar GPU's)...if you want to make full use of it...and not see much CPU limitations in modern AAA titles...an i5-4460 is the bare minimum you should consider.

 

Here a quick run in crowded streets of Assassin's creed unity with a 3.4ghz quad-core configuration you can see the CPU holdin up very well with the powerful GPU in a very CPU intensive game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFaHyiLmEiw

 

As you can see, CPU usage on different cores is really high in some instances this game is already pushing it quite a bit how much more can it handle? answer: not much more than that...fallout4 is pushing these to 100% across the board and the fact that you can't overclock it to get some more performance out of it will SOON be a limiting factor...so, even that is not very ''future-proof'' and will likely require an upgrade pretty soon IMHO.

 

BOTTOM LINE: i think you do not have the budget to afford a GTX970 right now...i really think you should reconsider the whole deal and fit a better CPU in your build along with a cheaper GPU such as an R9 380 for example.

 

Why? because a good CPU will last you what? 4...5 years...maybe even more than that, where as GPU's on the other hand even if you buy a top-end one will require upgrades much faster and more frequently...typicaly GPU's do not age as well as a good intel CPU will...soooo....a good CPU will allow a couple GPU upgrades down the road which is a simple fix: sell the old one, order a new one pop it in and boom you're done...

That was a very VERY good explanation and information about my question. You win, i would not get the pentium dual core. BTW my first ever plan was to get an i5-4460 and 380, exactly what you recommended, and after long searches about this specs i ended up imbalancing my build, gimping on the cpu and adding horsepower to the gpu, which i thought was not that bad since almost every reviews about g2358 are positive, never realized i bottlenecked it so hard. Thank you very much, sir.

[i_build_nanosuits]

Does it have L3 cache at all? I mean my old Athlon X4 750k didn't have one, and it had the exact same FX modules

nope sorry i edited the post after the fact you can re-read it sorry man!

[i_build_nanosuits]

That was a very VERY good explanation and information about my question. You win, i would not get the pentium dual core. BTW my first ever plan was to get an i5-4460 and 380, exactly what you recommended, and after long searches about this specs i ended up imbalancing my build, gimping on the cpu and adding horsepower to the gpu, which i thought was not that bad since almost every reviews about g2358 are positive, never realized i bottlenecked it so hard. Thank you very much, sir.

you'll be much better off with something like an i5-4460 and an R9 380 GPU indeed.

you're welcome!

[Morgan MLGman]

nope sorry i edited the post after the fact you can re-read it sorry man!

I was genuinely asking, I didn't check that about 860k, maybe it could have one ^^

[i_build_nanosuits]

I was genuinely asking, I didn't check that about 860k, maybe it could have one ^^

no it does not and some games love to have some more cache available, and when they don't they will stutter more easily if you run out of CPU ressources.

The 860K ain't bad...but it has nothing to upgrade to. You can get an i3-4170 and a cheap B85 motherboard for example and this you can upgrade to an i5-4460 or maybe even a xeon 1231V3 without having to buy a new motherboard which is a big plus...the i3 also perform better than the athlon in games, they have similar multi-threaded performance but the i3 has much greater IPC which makes it a far better processor for gaming...but as i said even that isnt really enough for the newest greatest games...some will be fine as they do not require extensive CPU calculations, but most of them games that are coming out right now will rock 3 or 4 heavy threads along with a few lighter ones on the side so yeah the dual-cores no matter how good they are they are pretty much done when it comes to modern AAA gaming...strong intel quad-core (i5-4460, i5-3570K OC 2500K or better)...highly overclocked AMD 4 modules...i consider these a minimum for a gaming rig.

[Morgan MLGman]

no it does not and some games love to have some more cache available, and when they don't they will stutter more easily if you run out of CPU ressources.

The 860K ain't bad...but it has nothing to upgrade to. You can get an i3-4170 and a cheap B85 motherboard for example and this you can upgrade to an i5-4460 or maybe even a xeon 1231V3 without having to buy a new motherboard which is a big plus...the i3 also perform better than the athlon in games, they have similar multi-threaded performance but the i3 has much greater IPC which makes it a far better processor for gaming...but as i said even that isnt really enough for the newest greatest games...some will be fine as they do not require extensive CPU calculations, but most of them games that are coming out right now will rock 3 or 4 heavy threads along with a few lighter ones on the side so yeah the dual-cores no matter how good they are they are pretty much done when it comes to modern AAA gaming...strong intel quad-core (i5-4460, i5-3570K OC 2500K or better)...highly overclocked AMD 4 modules...i consider these a minimum for a gaming rig.

Well yeah, the problem is an i3 costs almost twice as much ;-;

[i_build_nanosuits]

Well yeah, the problem is an i3 costs almost twice as much ;-;

yes but if you factor in that you need a more expensive A88X motherboard and something like an hyper 212 to overclock the athlon and reach similar performance levels, they tend to cancel out the 4170 can be found for 109$ and B85 motherboards for 60$....i don't know i don't really recommend either of them anyways, just save 50$ more for an i5-4460 i would say.

[Morgan MLGman]

yes but if you factor in that you need a more expensive A88X motherboard and something like an hyper 212 to overclock the athlon and reach similar performance levels, they tend to cancel out the 4170 can be found for 109$ and B85 motherboards for 60$....i don't know i don't really recommend either of them anyways, just save 50$ more for an i5-4460 i would say.

A88X isn't expensive actually, those boards start from 40$, I've had one, micro-atx, was pretty good ^^

[i_build_nanosuits]

A88X isn't expensive actually, those boards start from 40$, I've had one, micro-atx, was pretty good ^^

fair enough

i won't argue with you...that was not the point of this topic.

None of these solutions are a good match for a gpu as powerful as a GTX 970 anyways...i think we can safely agree on that.

[Morgan MLGman]

fair enough

i won't argue with you...that was not the point of this topic.

None of these solutions are a good match for a gpu as powerful as a GTX 970 anyways...i think we can safely agree on that.

Yep, we do ^^ I'm not sure what would I choose if I was to pick G3258 or the 860k, the 860k is a better choice all-around but lacks upgrade path as you mentioned it, a tough decision for some people ^^