CPU bottlenecking GPU

[donger]

I have a PC with an r9 280 and an intel pentium g3258 anniversery addition OC to 4.2ghz and I fear it is bottlenecking my PC. Any suggestions for a good cpu that is lga1150 and wont break the bank? Thanks.

[Aytex]

i3 4170?

[ThreePhaseLoad]

Depends on definition of breaking the bank.

 

Dual Core Option:

i3-4170 (3.7GHz) - ~$125 USD

 

Quad Core Options:

i5-4460 (3.2GHz) - ~$190 USD

i5-4690K (3.5GHz) - ~$220 USD

[SeanAngelo]

8 minutes ago, donger said:

I have a PC with an r9 280 and an intel pentium g3258 anniversery addition OC to 4.2ghz and I fear it is bottlenecking my PC. Any suggestions for a good cpu that is lga1150 and wont break the bank? Thanks.

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646i54460

[SteveGrabowski0]

You really need an i5 or you're going to have a huge bottleneck. I'd go for the i5-4590, I think it's the best price to performance LGA1150 CPU.

[ThomasD]

If you are not going to overclock then the 4460 is plenty good.

 

But, why are you so sure your GPU is bottlenecked?  What games are you running, at what settings, and what sorts of frame rates are you getting? 

 

Also, what is the refresh rate of your monitor?

[SteveGrabowski0]

57 minutes ago, ThomasD said:

If you are not going to overclock then the 4460 is plenty good.

 

But, why are you so sure your GPU is bottlenecked?  What games are you running, at what settings, and what sorts of frame rates are you getting? 

 

Also, what is the refresh rate of your monitor?

With a G3258 you can't keep anything close to a steady framerate at high / ultra settings in games unless you put a 30-40 fps cap, even when heavily overclocked. I know, because I have a 4.4 GHz G3258, and even with an Nvidia GPU with lower DX11 overhead (GTX 970) the cpu cannot keep up at all even in cpu light games like Tomb Raider 2013 and Skyrim. You could rightly point out a 970 is a lot more powerful than a 280, but a 280 should still be able to pull 60 fps at high settings in most games with maybe a little tweaking when part of a balanced system, while the G3258 is going to be dropping into the 30s and 40s all the time. By all the time I really mean all the time, most games I played on my Pentium would drop to 40 fps or so, burst up to 100 fps, drop down to 40 fps, burst up to 100 fps, and so on contantly. This gives a great average framerate if you just compute a number, but playing it feels laggy.

[ThomasD]

3 hours ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

With a G3258...

<snip>

While all of that may be true, none of it tells us whether his GPU is in fact bottlenecked.

 

If his game performance is currently acceptable it may make more sense for him to wait and save up for a new CPU and MoBo, rather than sinking money into upgrading his existing platform.

[Sintezza]

That dualcore will definitely be a bottleneck in certain games.

[LokiFire]

I run a Phenom II quad, it out paces your CPU even at over 5.2ghz on LTT's Cinebench thread.

 

I will say this, if you are mostly hitting 80-99% GPU usage then you don't really have a bottleneck, if you are lower than this and you are not happy with the framerate, then get a new CPU.

 

 

I run a OC'd GTX 580 BTW, my system is at the correct balance, any higher in GPU and it's just not going to be making much of a difference.

[donger]

17 hours ago, LokiFire said:

I run a Phenom II quad, it out paces your CPU even at over 5.2ghz on LTT's Cinebench thread.

 

I will say this, if you are mostly hitting 80-99% GPU usage then you don't really have a bottleneck, if you are lower than this and you are not happy with the framerate, then get a new CPU.

 

 

I run a OC'd GTX 580 BTW, my system is at the correct balance, any higher in GPU and it's just not going to be making much of a difference.

i need a new MOBO for this processor right? bc its not intel

 

[sapphirethunder]

49 minutes ago, donger said:

i need a new MOBO for this processor right? bc its not intel

 

There would be no use getting the Phenom II anyway. It is 5 years old tech.

[LokiFire]

1 hour ago, donger said:

i need a new MOBO for this processor right? bc its not intel

 

No i was not saying get one of those it's not something i would recommend, try to go intel i3 at least.