Core i5 Bottleneck?

[Jon Jon]

For even the highest end graphics cards right now, are core i5s still adequate, or should one opt for an i7 at the minimum?

 

I have a core i5 3570 OC'ed to 4ghz, so I am just curious if this will pose as a bottleneck in the near future for gaming.

 

Thanks!

[Julian5]

Just now, Jon Jon said:

For even the highest end graphics cards right now, are core i5s still adequate, or should one opt for an i7 at the minimum?

 

I have a core i5 3570 OC'ed to 4ghz, so I am just curious if this will pose as a bottleneck in the near future for gaming.

 

Thanks!

a 6600k will bottleneck a 1080 so yes

[Jon Jon]

Just now, Julian5 said:

a 6600k will bottleneck a 1080 so yes

What causes the bottleneck? Is this due to the ramp up of threads being used in games?

 

Even with the OC, this isn't avoided?

[Julian5]

Just now, Jon Jon said:

What causes the bottleneck? Is this due to the ramp up of threads being used in games?

 

Even with the OC, this isn't avoided?

even with with an oc its not avoided

[Misanthrope]

Just now, Julian5 said:

a 6600k will bottleneck a 1080 so yes

No, it won't for most people 90% of the time.

 

*sigh*

 

Look here is what the bottleneck is all about: GPU is done processing game information and has to wait for the CPU since the CPU side is not feeding information fast enough.

 

When does this happen? With the 1070 and the 1080 it only happens when playing at 1080p FAR ABOVE 60 FPS. Like you might get 80 or 90 FPS instead of 110 or 120 FPS.

 

So unless you have a high refresh monitor that's 120hz or 144hz (or Gsync) you're not gonna notice a damn thing differently about it.

 

Once you move up to 1440p and beyond, modern games can actually saturate the GPU enough so that this isn't a problema anymore.

 

[don_svetlio]

8 minutes ago, Jon Jon said:

For even the highest end graphics cards right now, are core i5s still adequate, or should one opt for an i7 at the minimum?

 

I have a core i5 3570 OC'ed to 4ghz, so I am just curious if this will pose as a bottleneck in the near future for gaming.

 

Thanks!

i5s bottleneck 1080s and even 1070s. You want an i7 or Xeon for those

[don_svetlio]

 

[Jon Jon]

1 minute ago, Misanthrope said:

No, it won't for most people 90% of the time.

 

*sigh*

 

Look here is what the bottleneck is all about: GPU is done processing game information and has to wait for the CPU since the CPU side is not feeding information fast enough.

 

When does this happen? With the 1070 and the 1080 it only happens when playing at 1080p FAR ABOVE 60 FPS. Like you might get 80 or 90 FPS instead of 110 or 120 FPS.

 

So unless you have a high refresh monitor that's 120hz or 144hz (or Gsync) you're not gonna notice a damn thing differently about it.

 

Once you move up to 1440p and beyond, modern games can actually saturate the GPU enough so that this isn't a problema anymore.

 

So it sounds like it is really only a bottleneck if I wanted to game on a 144hz monitor at 144fps.

 

I run 60hz monitors currently, so I shouldn't be concerned then.

[don_svetlio]

1 minute ago, Jon Jon said:

So it sounds like it is really only a bottleneck if I wanted to game on a 144hz monitor at 144fps.

 

I run 60hz monitors currently, so I shouldn't be concerned then.

At 60Hz it's not a problem NOW but it WILL be in the future

[arnavvr]

It bottlenecks at 1080p- You shouldn't be using a 1080p panel with a 1070 or 1080.

 

I would still overclock your 3570K higher.

[demonaii]

In theory it won't bottleneck it.

[Misanthrope]

1 hour ago, Jon Jon said:

So it sounds like it is really only a bottleneck if I wanted to game on a 144hz monitor at 144fps.

 

I run 60hz monitors currently, so I shouldn't be concerned then.

You shouldn't but at only 1080p you should aim for a 1060 or a 1070 if you want it to be like really overkill for a good while (years) but a 1080 it's just far too much unless you run like 3 monitors at 1080p each.

[Jon Jon]

I want my case to be dead silent, but also not contain too much heat. My 3570 at load hits 65-70C now so I like that as a max, so 4ghz is fine (plus it is a non k...bad call I made 4 years ago, but luckily my asrock motherboard was able to get around that to a point).

 

Thanks for the advice everyone! So I will eventually upgrade my whole machine, but for now it looks like a gtx 1060 or Rx 480 would be my sweet spot.

 

In about a year, I plan to do a complete upgrade which will end up being either to a 6 or 8 core i7 (as I am getting back into content creation), or if AMD Zen ends up being the new K8 architecture (I really hope so) I may go for the 8 core Zen.

 

It is good to know that I still have some time left though

 

I guess games are finally being optimized for 4 threads and beyond.

[Delicieuxz]

Depending on the i5 CPU (or i7 CPU), there could be a little bottle-necking but likely not much, if it's a decent i5. My i5 2500K @ 4.6 Ghz gets about just as good FPS in Witcher 3 as the i7 6700K @ 4.4 Ghz system in this video:

 

 

My general 63 - 84 FPS is better than the general 58 - 74 FPS shown in the above video, but the above video has Hairworks AA at 8x, and I'm running Hairworks AA at 4x on my system. I haven't tried 8x Hairworks AA yet, so maybe I'll still have equal FPS if I do.

 

Here's my GTX 1070 and 1920x1200 Witcher 3 performance, with all settings maxed apart from Hairworks AA, which is at 4x, and with vsync off:

 

 

 

As you can see, the GPU is at 99% utilization, and so isn't being bottle-necked by my CPU at all. Different games vary in their CPU / GPU dependency, but the only game I've yet found my CPU to be capping out in, while the GPU limited in its utilization, is Arma 3.

 

Getting a faster CPU will still result in performance gains, though not because it's un-bottle-capping the GPU, but because the CPU is handling more work than it was before. In some games, an i7 6700K gets 20 FPS more than an i7 4790K CPU... but a 1070 with either would be delivering its maximum performance.

[Jon Jon]

2 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

Depending on the i5 CPU (or i7 CPU), there could be a little bottle-necking but likely not much, if it's a decent i5. My i5 2500K @ 4.6 Ghz gets about just as good FPS in Witcher 3 as the i7 6700K @ 4.4 Ghz system in this video:

 

 

My general 63 - 84 FPS is better than the general 58 - 74 FPS shown in the above video, but the above video has Hairworks AA at 8x, and I'm running Hairworks AA at 4x on my system. I haven't tried 8x Hairworks AA yet, so maybe I'll still have equal FPS if I do.

 

Here's my GTX 1070 and 1920x1200 Witcher 3 performance, with all settings maxed apart from Hairworks AA, which is at 4x, and with vsync off:

 

 

 

As you can see, the GPU is at 99% utilization, and so isn't being bottle-necked by my CPU at all. Different games vary in their CPU / GPU dependency, but the only game I've yet found my CPU to be capping out in, while the GPU limited in its utilization, is Arma 3.

 

Getting a faster CPU will still result in performance gains, though not because it's un-bottle-capping the GPU, but because the CPU is handling more work than it was before. In some games, an i7 6700K gets 20 FPS more than an i7 4790K CPU... but a 1070 with either would be delivering its maximum performance.

Thanks for the awesome analysis!