Is my GTX 970 bottlenecking my i7-990x?

[KentuckyJones]

Hey Everyone,

 

So I've been using this system for a while and just wanna know if people think my GPU isn't beefy enough for my CPU. I have a GTX 970 Superclocked and an i7-990x in my system and I feel like I should be getting better performance when running different games or workloads. I'm currently using a 1440p monitor and I tend to crank most settings in game, minus AA, but for some reason I can only hit a max of about 50 FPS. Also, I  have noticed a few times while streaming that I have some hitching in the video, but I just equate that to my 100Mbps internet not being able to keep up. Don't get me wrong some other games I get above 60 FPS on Ultra settings, but I wanted to get your opinions to see if you think my CPU is being bottlenecked by my GPU. I know it's a 6 year old CPU but it's still an Extreme Series Processor so I would imagine the CPU isn't the issue here.

 

 

Let me know what you think. 

 

BTW I mainly use this system for photo/video editing, streaming, and gaming. Oh yeah and cat videos

[seon123]

To see what's bottlenecking what, open MSI afterburner, and see the GPU utilisation, and CPU utilisation. If the GPU is at let's say 80% load, and the CPU is at 100% load, it's a CPU bottleneck, and vice versa. 

[Damascus]

At higher resolutions CPU matters less, the GTX 970 isn't a 1440p GPU.  Get a 980 ti1070/1080/1080 ti for the best experience

[AlexTheGreatish]

It probably heavily depends on the game, although if you're looking at 1440P on high with a 970 and streaming at the same time both the CPU and GPU are probably not having a good time.

[TheBean]

it wont bottleneck.. its the other way around... the cpu is bottlenecking the gpu

[Sanctorum]

1 hour ago, Damascus said:

At higher resolutions CPU matters less, the GTX 970 isn't a 1440p GPU.  Get a 980 ti1070/1080/1080 ti for the best experience

A GTX 970 is perfectly capable of running 1440p.

43 minutes ago, saksham said:

it wont bottleneck.. its the other way around... the cpu is bottlenecking the gpu

Not true. You obviously don't understand how bottlenecking works.

 

OP - Yes, and no. Depends on the situation, what programs/games you're running. There's always going to be a bottleneck in your system. That said, you don't need to upgrade GPU to make sense with that CPU since it's a pretty old CPU. A GPU upgrade would improve performance in most games at 1440p. However, it's getting to that time where it's probably worth upgrading your CPU IMO.

[Damascus]

14 minutes ago, Sanctorum said:

A GTX 970 is perfectly capable of running 1440p.

Definitely capable but not designed for it.  Take the 1070 for example, it has more than double the Vram for that higher res gaming.  The chip is capable but it will run out of memory headroom.

[Sanctorum]

1 minute ago, Damascus said:

Definitely capable but not designed for it.  Take the 1070 for example, it has more than double the Vram for that higher res gaming.  The chip is capable but it will run out of memory headroom.

No GPU is "designed for" 1440p. The GTX 1070 does not have "more than double the Vram", regardless, it's irrelevant. The GTX 970 is a perfectly capable card for 1440p.With a 4790k, it will easily run pretty much anything comfortably at high settings at 1440p.

[Damascus]

1 minute ago, Sanctorum said:

No GPU is "designed for" 1440p. The GTX 1070 does not have "more than double the Vram", regardless, it's irrelevant. The GTX 970 is a perfectly capable card for 1440p.With a 4790k, it will easily run pretty much anything comfortably at high settings at 1440p.

I should rephrase that.  Higher than 1080p resolution gaming was just coming to the mainstream when the maxwell cards dropped.  There was no need for 8gb of ram so no gpu had it.  My 1070 easily burns 7gb of vram on 4480 × 1080 so it's indicative of a need for more vram on higher resolution  (also its just math)

 

A 970 can play 1440p quite nicely but will run into issues with vram, especially on newer titles.

 

Also, 3.5gb fast and .5 slow means that the more than double on the 1070 statement work, though I should have said useful me not total.

[Sanctorum]

10 minutes ago, Damascus said:

I should rephrase that.  Higher than 1080p resolution gaming was just coming to the mainstream when the maxwell cards dropped. 

That's not true either though. People were buying 780Ti's and R9 290(x)'s for their 1440p monitors. 1440p monitors aren't even much cheaper now than they were when Maxwell released, so 1440p definitely isn't more common or obtainable now than it was when the GTX 970 was new. Plenty of people bought a GTX 970 for 1440p, or even 4k. 

 

12 minutes ago, Damascus said:

A 970 can play 1440p quite nicely but will run into issues with vram, especially on newer titles.

No, it won't. Maybe in one or 2 games, but it won't significantly hold the card back. Most times, the GPU itself is the limiting factor anyway, not the amount of VRAM.

[Damascus]

1 minute ago, Sanctorum said:

That's not true either though. People were buying 780Ti's and R9 290(x)'s for their 1440p monitors. 1440p monitors aren't even much cheaper now than they were when Maxwell released, so 1440p definitely isn't more common or obtainable now than it was when the GTX 970 was new. Plenty of people bought a GTX 970 for 1440p, or even 4k. 

How much did a 1440p monitor cost then? Because you can buy one for 160 bucks now and I really doubt they've been that cheap for long.  Very consistently the vast, vast majority of gamers have used standard 16:9 1080p displays meaning the RAM requirements didn't change for generations.  Maxwell doubled it and pascal doubled again.  

1 minute ago, Sanctorum said:

No, it won't. Maybe in one or 2 games, but it won't significantly hold the card back. Most times, the GPU itself is the limiting factor anyway, not the amount of VRAM.

1060 3gb was the go to choice for 1080p gaming... in 2016.  It now consistently hits a vram wall that it's 6gb counterpart ignores, the Vram usage will be insane for many newer titles.  Not all but it's going to be an issue.

[Sanctorum]

1 minute ago, Damascus said:

How much did a 1440p monitor cost then? Because you can buy one for 160 bucks now and I really doubt they've been that cheap for long. 

Show me a new 1440p monitor for $160. Back when I was looking at monitors a lot, when I purchased my GTX 970s, you could get a decent 1440p monitor for $250, or a nice one for $300. Dell U2515H was about $300, or £250 in the UK, it's more than that now in US and UK. You can get a decent 1440p monitor for £200 now, they were around £240-250 at least when GTX 970 was new. 

4 minutes ago, Damascus said:

Very consistently the vast, vast majority of gamers have used standard 16:9 1080p displays meaning the RAM requirements didn't change for generations.  Maxwell doubled it and pascal doubled again.  

So, somehow the same capacity of VRAM was always fine for 1080p, but then 1440p suddenly came along with Maxwell and now we need to double VRAM every generation or it's not enough? Bullshit. Maxwell didn't double VRAM(unless you mean from Kepler to Maxwell equivalent? In which case, so?), and VRAM has been gradually increasing every generation.

5 minutes ago, Damascus said:

1060 3gb was the go to choice for 1080p gaming

No it wasn't.

6 minutes ago, Damascus said:

It now consistently hits a vram wall that it's 6gb counterpart ignores

No, it doesn't.

6 minutes ago, Damascus said:

Not all but it's going to be an issue.

No, it's not. Hence why older GPUs with 2GB or 3GB VRAM, or even newer GPUs with 2GB VRAM perform perfectly fine at 1080p.

 

Show me any benchmark that shows the 3GB GTX 1060 or GTX 970 are being "consistently" limited in games by the amount of VRAM.