GFX card bottleneck?

[Venn]

Hey guys so i just recently got my gtx 950 and i was wondering if it's getting bottlenecked by my cpu. I'm running a phenom x4 955, 8 gigs of ram. A lot of the newer games drop frames by a lot and sometimes the game freezes for about 1-2 seconds. This happens often enough to get super annoying. I went to my friends house, he has a gtx 760 with a i7 4790k and his games were buttery smooth, no frame drops or freezes whatsoever. I was surprised since the 760 is almost equal to the 950, yet he gets a ton more performance than me. Should i upgrade my CPU? Should i just get a new mobo and overclock my current cpu? (since this mobo can't overclock anything) Or is the CPU not the problem? I ran some tests like cinebench and i saw that the x4 955 ranks pretty poorly.

[LokiFire]

No it is not.

 

I have a 960mhz GTX 580 which is in the ball park of a GTX 960/R9 285.

 

If you have not you should OC it though.

[alexhelvetica]

You should be fine.

[runit3]

Hey guys so i just recently got my gtx 950 and i was wondering if it's getting bottlenecked by my cpu. I'm running a phenom x4 955, 8 gigs of ram. A lot of the newer games drop frames by a lot and sometimes the game freezes for about 1-2 seconds. This happens often enough to get super annoying. I went to my friends house, he has a gtx 760 with a i7 4790k and his games were buttery smooth, no frame drops or freezes whatsoever. I was surprised since the 760 is almost equal to the 950, yet he gets a ton more performance than me. Should i upgrade my CPU? Should i just get a new mobo and overclock my current cpu? (since this mobo can't overclock anything) Or is the CPU not the problem? I ran some tests like cinebench and i saw that the x4 955 ranks pretty poorly.

What game, what resolution, what refresh rate?

 

Only way to know if it's bottlenecking is to use monitoring software with usage readouts (Afterburner and RivaTuner overlay, or similar).

[Venn]

No it is not.

 

I have a 960mhz GTX 580 which is in the ball park of a GTX 960/R9 285.

 

If you have not you should OC it though.

can't overclock with my current motherboard.

 

What game, what resolution, what refresh rate?

 

Only way to know if it's bottlenecking is to use monitoring software with usage readouts (Afterburner and RivaTuner overlay, or similar).

almost every new game really. they are all running at 1080p, 60 hz.

[LokiFire]

can't overclock with my current motherboard.

 

almost every new game really. they are all running at 1080p, 60 hz.

3.2ghz is the 955's speed, if you can it would be worth investing in a board capable of pushing your chip to the max.

 

Phenom's benefit massively from a good OC.

[Venn]

3.2ghz is the 955's speed, if you can it would be worth investing in a board capable of pushing your chip to the max.

 

Phenom's benefit massively from a good OC.

 

alright, i might get a new motherboard soon.

 

btw, why are intel cpus so much more expensive than AMD's, cost so much more when they have lower/same ghz, and yet everyone recommends them over AMD ones?

[LokiFire]

alright, i might get a new motherboard soon.

btw, why are intel cpus so much more expensive than AMD's, cost so much more when they have lower/same ghz, and yet everyone recommends them over AMD ones?

Faster chips mate and newer, ghz are not comparable arch to arch.

[runit3]

can't overclock with my current motherboard.

 

almost every new game really. they are all running at 1080p, 60 hz.

It shouldn't be necking, but without monitoring there is no way to tell for sure.

 

I'd try a clean install of the Nvidia drivers before anything else (have to select custom install and check the clean install box). Nvidia's WHQL's can vary quite a bit depending on which GPU you have, although in my experience the 900 series has been considerably better than 4/5/700's. If you're already on the most recent drivers just reinstall with clean install selected.

 

If that doesn't give you any noticeable improvement -prove or disprove the bottleneck, then go from there. If you don't want to use an overlay you can do it the good ol' fashioned way with GPU-Z (GPU load) and task manager (CPU load). It's just a bitch to have to tab out and look at the graphs as they're still reading.

[Purgent]

alright, i might get a new motherboard soon.

btw, why are intel cpus so much more expensive than AMD's, cost so much more when they have lower/same ghz, and yet everyone recommends them over AMD ones?

Intel gets more work done per cycle. Ghz is not a measure of work.

[LokiFire]

Gigabyte 990x UD3 is a solid choice, I have the FX version of it and my Phenom runs real nice on it at 4.15ghz

[Venn]

Gigabyte 990x UD3 is a solid choice, I have the FX version of it and my Phenom runs real nice on it at 4.15ghz

 

I'm looking to get a GA-870A-D3P. seems cheap and supports AM3 socket.

 

[LokiFire]

I'm looking to get a GA-870A-D3P. seems cheap and supports AM3 socket.

That will work great.

[Venn]

It shouldn't be necking, but without monitoring there is no way to tell for sure.

 

I'd try a clean install of the Nvidia drivers before anything else (have to select custom install and check the clean install box). Nvidia's WHQL's can vary quite a bit depending on which GPU you have, although in my experience the 900 series has been considerably better than 4/5/700's. If you're already on the most recent drivers just reinstall with clean install selected.

 

If that doesn't give you any noticeable improvement -prove or disprove the bottleneck, then go from there. If you don't want to use an overlay you can do it the good ol' fashioned way with GPU-Z (GPU load) and task manager (CPU load). It's just a bitch to have to tab out and look at the graphs as they're still reading.

 

alright thanks, ill try it out.