Will my cpu bottleneck my gpu?

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Tarmash

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Hello. I was just wondering if there is any possibility that my i7 860 is bottlenecking my new card, which is a MSI lightning 6970. The 6970 has an overclock at 940 core and 1375 memory. I don't really know how i would detect bottlenecking so any help would be appreciated.

If you need any more of my system specs lemme know.

Thanks alot.
 
because the game is poorly optimized for the pc. its a known issue and almost everyone is experiencing it. i have the same card and i get drops into the 30s in some areas, and even switching to the lowest possible resolution doesnt affect it. so either a patch for the game or new gfx drivers will fix it... someday. btw cpu bottlenecking is when during gaming your cpu usage, or the cores the game can use, is at 100% preventing the gpu from performing to its full potential, which obviously isnt the case here
 
Well thanks for that info. Thats a relief! How long do you think it will be until my cpu can't keep up with the gaming? I think my gpu will last for a while, but i can't overclock my i7 860. So it will become obsolete first right?
 
Yes, your cpu at its stock speed will be a small bottleneck on your video card. This is true with almost every cpu available at this time. As an example,

You run a benchmark like 3DMark11 and score a 5000. You overclock your cpu by 200MHz and run 3DMark11 and now you score 5100. You overclock your cpu by 200 MHz more and now you score 5200. This basic pattern will continue until your gpu can no longer benefit from the additional cpu power, at which time your cpu is no longer the bottleneck. When the cpu bottleneck has been removed you now have a gpu bottleneck, it's a never ending cycle.
 
because the game is poorly optimized for the pc. its a known issue and almost everyone is experiencing it. i have the same card and i get drops into the 30s in some areas, and even switching to the lowest possible resolution doesnt affect it. so either a patch for the game or new gfx drivers will fix it... someday. btw cpu bottlenecking is when during gaming your cpu usage, or the cores the game can use, is at 100% preventing the gpu from performing to its full potential, which obviously isnt the case here
It actually is optimized pretty well for the PC, but it has bugs like all TES games on initial release. Disable Vsync by using this little guide for a few performance enhancements. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim tweaks improve graphics, disable Vsync, change FOV and more | PC Gamer
Disabling Vsync will pretty much take care of the drastic FPS drops going between indoors and outdoors or when you change areas. It will also allow for more FPS to make the game seem smoother. This is one of those games where it seems sluggish around the 30-40 mark.

There are also a ton of extra mods to not only make the game look 20x better than console, but also improve performance drastically even on a stock system. Check them out.
Skyrim Nexus - Skyrim Mods and community

You can also use a program called CFF Explorer to apply Large Address Aware to the game which allows it to see more than 2GB of RAM. This is only really necessary with a lot of mods though.

Yes, your cpu at its stock speed will be a small bottleneck on your video card. This is true with almost every cpu available at this time. As an example,

You run a benchmark like 3DMark11 and score a 5000. You overclock your cpu by 200MHz and run 3DMark11 and now you score 5100. You overclock your cpu by 200 MHz more and now you score 5200. This basic pattern will continue until your gpu can no longer benefit from the additional cpu power, at which time your cpu is no longer the bottleneck. When the cpu bottleneck has been removed you now have a gpu bottleneck, it's a never ending cycle.
Too **** true.
 
Thanks for all the help people! Case closed as far as im concerned. Thanks slaymate that puts things into perspective on the bottlenecking topic.
 
Disabling Vsync will pretty much take care of the drastic FPS drops going between indoors and outdoors or when you change areas. It will also allow for more FPS to make the game seem smoother. This is one of those games where it seems sluggish around the 30-40 mark.

everyone assumes that disabling vsync is the way to go. but why is vsync there in the first place? to stop screen tearing. for me disabling it is not even an option because disabled vsync = massive screen tearing.

edit: and how can you say that its well optimized for the pc when **** like random fps drops happen constantly? im sure a lot of people would agree that its bad optimization. though the amount of glitches ive personally experienced is also unacceptable imo. pre ordered my steam copy for 60(!) bucks and spent at least 5 hours tweaking things around just to get it to play close to the way it should out of the box. never happening again

also, Tarmash, why not invest in a good cooler and OC the cpu? or is there another reason why you cant overclock?
 
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