Uprgrade confirms Q9650 bottlenecks GTX 580 SLI (3D Vision)
Hey all,
I ran my Q9650 for around 4 years without any issues (overclocked to 3.6 GHz and still going strong). My LGA775 680i SLI motherboard is an awesome board and saw many video cards come and go. When it was new it had the GTX 8800's, and as new video cards came out I upgraded (280's, 480's, and now 580's). I figured I might as well spend the money on graphics cards since they did most of the work and wait to upgrade my mobo/CPU until it was the bottleneck.

My 480's might have bottlenecked a little, but the 580's were definitely bottlenecked considerably. I am seeing at least 20% performance gains now that the 580's are in this new LGA 1155 motherboard. Games that were having FPS dips at max graphics settings now run completely smooth. These FPS dips didn't happen in 2D, but 3D Vision seems to tax the system quite a bit more.

I am not sure if the PCI express 3.0 slots or the processor made the biggest difference, but I can tell you the combination of the two did wonders for my graphical performance. The biggest difference I have seen so far was Just Cause 2's Concrete Jungle benchmark. My Q9650 setup was barely hitting 20 FPS with graphics settings @ medium-high and no AA. This new setup didn't drop below 30 FPS with maxed settings (even maxed AA!!!).

So why would I post this? Everybody knows that newer=better right? Well, I figure there might still be some people out there like me that are trying to get the most out of their older systems and might still be on the fence about upgrading their mobo/cpu/ram. I am here to tell you to get off that fence and get new stuff! The LGA 775 architecture is like an anchor on the GTX 580's. I would say the 480's are the last card I would run on the LGA 775 platform (and even that is pushing it). If you are running 3D vision or 3D vision surround, make the upgrade and don't look back! Compared to the price of the video cards, this upgrade was very cheap and completely worth it.

Happy gaming all, I hope this helps someone. And I wish someone would have made this post for me when the i5/i7's came out!
Hey all,

I ran my Q9650 for around 4 years without any issues (overclocked to 3.6 GHz and still going strong). My LGA775 680i SLI motherboard is an awesome board and saw many video cards come and go. When it was new it had the GTX 8800's, and as new video cards came out I upgraded (280's, 480's, and now 580's). I figured I might as well spend the money on graphics cards since they did most of the work and wait to upgrade my mobo/CPU until it was the bottleneck.



My 480's might have bottlenecked a little, but the 580's were definitely bottlenecked considerably. I am seeing at least 20% performance gains now that the 580's are in this new LGA 1155 motherboard. Games that were having FPS dips at max graphics settings now run completely smooth. These FPS dips didn't happen in 2D, but 3D Vision seems to tax the system quite a bit more.



I am not sure if the PCI express 3.0 slots or the processor made the biggest difference, but I can tell you the combination of the two did wonders for my graphical performance. The biggest difference I have seen so far was Just Cause 2's Concrete Jungle benchmark. My Q9650 setup was barely hitting 20 FPS with graphics settings @ medium-high and no AA. This new setup didn't drop below 30 FPS with maxed settings (even maxed AA!!!).



So why would I post this? Everybody knows that newer=better right? Well, I figure there might still be some people out there like me that are trying to get the most out of their older systems and might still be on the fence about upgrading their mobo/cpu/ram. I am here to tell you to get off that fence and get new stuff! The LGA 775 architecture is like an anchor on the GTX 580's. I would say the 480's are the last card I would run on the LGA 775 platform (and even that is pushing it). If you are running 3D vision or 3D vision surround, make the upgrade and don't look back! Compared to the price of the video cards, this upgrade was very cheap and completely worth it.



Happy gaming all, I hope this helps someone. And I wish someone would have made this post for me when the i5/i7's came out!

ASUS VG278H - i5 2500k @3.7 GHz - EVGA GeForce Titan SC Edition - 16GB Corsair Vengeance PC 1600 RAM - 500 GB WD Velociraptor - Win 7 64-bit Pro

#1
Posted 06/11/2012 10:02 PM   
Unfortunately GTX480s are within a hair of the GTX580. You can overclock a 480 to be the same as a 580, just that it'll heat up your room like crazy.

So while you probably are bottlenecked in 2d mode, in 3d you should be seeing the correct gain in a fair number of games. Max Payne 3, for instance, will have gone up about 20 percent in framerate. GTX 580s are just not much faster than 480s.
Unfortunately GTX480s are within a hair of the GTX580. You can overclock a 480 to be the same as a 580, just that it'll heat up your room like crazy.



So while you probably are bottlenecked in 2d mode, in 3d you should be seeing the correct gain in a fair number of games. Max Payne 3, for instance, will have gone up about 20 percent in framerate. GTX 580s are just not much faster than 480s.

#2
Posted 06/11/2012 11:03 PM   
[quote name='f3likx' date='11 June 2012 - 05:03 PM' timestamp='1339455808' post='1420245']
Unfortunately GTX480s are within a hair of the GTX580. You can overclock a 480 to be the same as a 580, just that it'll heat up your room like crazy.

So while you probably are bottlenecked in 2d mode, in 3d you should be seeing the correct gain in a fair number of games. Max Payne 3, for instance, will have gone up about 20 percent in framerate. GTX 580s are just not much faster than 480s.
[/quote]

Ah, I must have bottlenecked those 480's as well. So I guess the 280's were probably the cards that maxed out my old LGA 775 setup. It is really hard to gauge because I saw a pretty substantial performance boost going from the 280's to the 480's and then again going from 480's to 580's. And the fact that each game uses resources differently doesn't help. I figured I would see my processor usage max out at some point as it failed to keep up with the video cards, but that never happened (even with SLI GTX 580's). So I never got the 'red flag' to purchase new mobo/ram/cpu.
[quote name='f3likx' date='11 June 2012 - 05:03 PM' timestamp='1339455808' post='1420245']

Unfortunately GTX480s are within a hair of the GTX580. You can overclock a 480 to be the same as a 580, just that it'll heat up your room like crazy.



So while you probably are bottlenecked in 2d mode, in 3d you should be seeing the correct gain in a fair number of games. Max Payne 3, for instance, will have gone up about 20 percent in framerate. GTX 580s are just not much faster than 480s.





Ah, I must have bottlenecked those 480's as well. So I guess the 280's were probably the cards that maxed out my old LGA 775 setup. It is really hard to gauge because I saw a pretty substantial performance boost going from the 280's to the 480's and then again going from 480's to 580's. And the fact that each game uses resources differently doesn't help. I figured I would see my processor usage max out at some point as it failed to keep up with the video cards, but that never happened (even with SLI GTX 580's). So I never got the 'red flag' to purchase new mobo/ram/cpu.

ASUS VG278H - i5 2500k @3.7 GHz - EVGA GeForce Titan SC Edition - 16GB Corsair Vengeance PC 1600 RAM - 500 GB WD Velociraptor - Win 7 64-bit Pro

#3
Posted 06/12/2012 01:08 AM   
[quote name='bigweamer' date='12 June 2012 - 02:08 AM' timestamp='1339463339' post='1420273']
Ah, I must have bottlenecked those 480's as well. So I guess the 280's were probably the cards that maxed out my old LGA 775 setup. It is really hard to gauge because I saw a pretty substantial performance boost going from the 280's to the 480's and then again going from 480's to 580's. And the fact that each game uses resources differently doesn't help. I figured I would see my processor usage max out at some point as it failed to keep up with the video cards, but that never happened (even with SLI GTX 580's). So I never got the 'red flag' to purchase new mobo/ram/cpu.
[/quote]

A bottleneck is the point at which increasing the power on one side results in no visisble gain at the other. I have a Q9650 which I am intending to upgrade later in the year, but I have a GTX 690 and I saw a significant framerate increase in Battlefield 3 over the GTX 295. So while the CPU does constrain benchmarks and absolute max framerates, it is not a bottleneck in the truest sense, because a graphics card upgrade is still resulting in improved gameplay.
[quote name='bigweamer' date='12 June 2012 - 02:08 AM' timestamp='1339463339' post='1420273']

Ah, I must have bottlenecked those 480's as well. So I guess the 280's were probably the cards that maxed out my old LGA 775 setup. It is really hard to gauge because I saw a pretty substantial performance boost going from the 280's to the 480's and then again going from 480's to 580's. And the fact that each game uses resources differently doesn't help. I figured I would see my processor usage max out at some point as it failed to keep up with the video cards, but that never happened (even with SLI GTX 580's). So I never got the 'red flag' to purchase new mobo/ram/cpu.





A bottleneck is the point at which increasing the power on one side results in no visisble gain at the other. I have a Q9650 which I am intending to upgrade later in the year, but I have a GTX 690 and I saw a significant framerate increase in Battlefield 3 over the GTX 295. So while the CPU does constrain benchmarks and absolute max framerates, it is not a bottleneck in the truest sense, because a graphics card upgrade is still resulting in improved gameplay.

#4
Posted 06/12/2012 03:28 PM   
[quote name='jonstatt' date='12 June 2012 - 09:28 AM' timestamp='1339514909' post='1420480']
A bottleneck is the point at which increasing the power on one side results in no visisble gain at the other. I have a Q9650 which I am intending to upgrade later in the year, but I have a GTX 690 and I saw a significant framerate increase in Battlefield 3 over the GTX 295. So while the CPU does constrain benchmarks and absolute max framerates, it is not a bottleneck in the truest sense, because a graphics card upgrade is still resulting in improved gameplay.
[/quote]

Thank you for that definition, but I am fully aware of what a bottleneck is. It could also be said that a bottleneck is the component in your system that is keeping other components in your system from performing to their maximum potential.

That being said, I would think the 690's would be bottlenecked more than the 480's and the 580's by a large margin (especially in 3D vision or surround). I can only guess because I haven't gotten to try out the big beautiful 690 yet :(. I bet that you would get at least 30 percent better performance by putting that 690 in a board that has pci express 3.0, new DDR3, and one of the new processors. And why wouldn't you when that upgrade is almost half the cost of your video card? My 580's were not just getting bottlenecked in benchmarks, it was happening in games. Just Cause 2 on my Q9650 ran really choppy at max settings and I had to dumb the settings to around medium with no AA to get good FPS, and with this new setup I can max the settings with 32x CSAA and I don't see a stutter in game. Same goes for Diablo III. When a bunch of mobs were on the screen the FPS dipped and I saw stuttering, whereas now it is so smooth I can hardly keep up with everything happening on the screen. Crysis was another game that I had to dumb down on the Q9650, but the new setup eats it for breakfast.

I know that the better card works better for games because I saw an improvement in FPS over the GTX 480's when I switched to the 580's, but that doesn't mean I was getting the most out of either of the cards. If I was this bottlenecked with a SLI GTX 580 setup, you are really holding back that 690. Granted, each game uses resources differently, so Battlefield could be the one exception. But this new build has given me considerably better performance in every game I have tested so far (GTA IV and Episodes, Diablo III, Crysis, Just Cause 2) so I am willing to bet it would for every other game as well.

Jonstatt, I bet we are pretty similar gamers because like you, I was trying to get the most out of my Q9650. As far as future-proof processors, that Q9650 was an awesome chip. It lasted more than four years in my setup and it was overclocked for most of that time. But I am here to tell you that these PCI-e 2.0 and 3.0 cards run SOOO much better with the new ram/cpu's it is more than worth the upgrade. There has got to be someone you know that would like a pretty nice gaming setup, and you could use that money to buy your new parts :).

I also have no idea what motherboard and ram you are using so you could definitely be getting better performance if your components are better than what I had in my LGA 775 setup. I had 8GB of PC800 and my old motherboard had the PCI-e 16x 1.0 slots, so I wasn't getting near the throughput as I am with this new setup.
[quote name='jonstatt' date='12 June 2012 - 09:28 AM' timestamp='1339514909' post='1420480']

A bottleneck is the point at which increasing the power on one side results in no visisble gain at the other. I have a Q9650 which I am intending to upgrade later in the year, but I have a GTX 690 and I saw a significant framerate increase in Battlefield 3 over the GTX 295. So while the CPU does constrain benchmarks and absolute max framerates, it is not a bottleneck in the truest sense, because a graphics card upgrade is still resulting in improved gameplay.





Thank you for that definition, but I am fully aware of what a bottleneck is. It could also be said that a bottleneck is the component in your system that is keeping other components in your system from performing to their maximum potential.



That being said, I would think the 690's would be bottlenecked more than the 480's and the 580's by a large margin (especially in 3D vision or surround). I can only guess because I haven't gotten to try out the big beautiful 690 yet :(. I bet that you would get at least 30 percent better performance by putting that 690 in a board that has pci express 3.0, new DDR3, and one of the new processors. And why wouldn't you when that upgrade is almost half the cost of your video card? My 580's were not just getting bottlenecked in benchmarks, it was happening in games. Just Cause 2 on my Q9650 ran really choppy at max settings and I had to dumb the settings to around medium with no AA to get good FPS, and with this new setup I can max the settings with 32x CSAA and I don't see a stutter in game. Same goes for Diablo III. When a bunch of mobs were on the screen the FPS dipped and I saw stuttering, whereas now it is so smooth I can hardly keep up with everything happening on the screen. Crysis was another game that I had to dumb down on the Q9650, but the new setup eats it for breakfast.



I know that the better card works better for games because I saw an improvement in FPS over the GTX 480's when I switched to the 580's, but that doesn't mean I was getting the most out of either of the cards. If I was this bottlenecked with a SLI GTX 580 setup, you are really holding back that 690. Granted, each game uses resources differently, so Battlefield could be the one exception. But this new build has given me considerably better performance in every game I have tested so far (GTA IV and Episodes, Diablo III, Crysis, Just Cause 2) so I am willing to bet it would for every other game as well.



Jonstatt, I bet we are pretty similar gamers because like you, I was trying to get the most out of my Q9650. As far as future-proof processors, that Q9650 was an awesome chip. It lasted more than four years in my setup and it was overclocked for most of that time. But I am here to tell you that these PCI-e 2.0 and 3.0 cards run SOOO much better with the new ram/cpu's it is more than worth the upgrade. There has got to be someone you know that would like a pretty nice gaming setup, and you could use that money to buy your new parts :).



I also have no idea what motherboard and ram you are using so you could definitely be getting better performance if your components are better than what I had in my LGA 775 setup. I had 8GB of PC800 and my old motherboard had the PCI-e 16x 1.0 slots, so I wasn't getting near the throughput as I am with this new setup.

ASUS VG278H - i5 2500k @3.7 GHz - EVGA GeForce Titan SC Edition - 16GB Corsair Vengeance PC 1600 RAM - 500 GB WD Velociraptor - Win 7 64-bit Pro

#5
Posted 06/12/2012 04:09 PM   
[quote name='bigweamer' date='12 June 2012 - 05:09 PM' timestamp='1339517396' post='1420495']

Jonstatt, I bet we are pretty similar gamers because like you, I was trying to get the most out of my Q9650. As far as future-proof processors, that Q9650 was an awesome chip. It lasted more than four years in my setup and it was overclocked for most of that time. But I am here to tell you that these PCI-e 2.0 and 3.0 cards run SOOO much better with the new ram/cpu's it is more than worth the upgrade. There has got to be someone you know that would like a pretty nice gaming setup, and you could use that money to buy your new parts :).

[/quote]

I don't think you took it the wrong way, but I didn't mean to sound patronising when talking about the definition of a bottleneck :) My only point was that I still saw a huge leap in performance with my 690. I have everything set to Ultra in Battlefield 3 for example. You are absolutely right, that I have a lot of untapped potential though until I upgrade the CPU/MB.

I had two choices for finance reasons. Upgrade the PC now, and then the graphics card later...or do the graphics card now and the PC later. The reason I went for the graphics card, was because I was feeling lazy. It takes me 5 minutes to put in the card....a lot longer to start swapping out the motherboard and CPU etc!

I have the Rampage Extreme (x48) with my Q9650 and I have 8GB of RAM. The Q9650 was a dream CPU at the time, and the fact it has done so well meant I didn't do my usual 18 month upgrade.

I do a lot of photo editing and video editing as well. So I was looking at the 6-core CPUs, but right now they are 3.2Ghz (3.8 turbo). I am hoping a 3.6Ghz version may come out before the end of the year (at a reasonable cost of course).
[quote name='bigweamer' date='12 June 2012 - 05:09 PM' timestamp='1339517396' post='1420495']



Jonstatt, I bet we are pretty similar gamers because like you, I was trying to get the most out of my Q9650. As far as future-proof processors, that Q9650 was an awesome chip. It lasted more than four years in my setup and it was overclocked for most of that time. But I am here to tell you that these PCI-e 2.0 and 3.0 cards run SOOO much better with the new ram/cpu's it is more than worth the upgrade. There has got to be someone you know that would like a pretty nice gaming setup, and you could use that money to buy your new parts :).







I don't think you took it the wrong way, but I didn't mean to sound patronising when talking about the definition of a bottleneck :) My only point was that I still saw a huge leap in performance with my 690. I have everything set to Ultra in Battlefield 3 for example. You are absolutely right, that I have a lot of untapped potential though until I upgrade the CPU/MB.



I had two choices for finance reasons. Upgrade the PC now, and then the graphics card later...or do the graphics card now and the PC later. The reason I went for the graphics card, was because I was feeling lazy. It takes me 5 minutes to put in the card....a lot longer to start swapping out the motherboard and CPU etc!



I have the Rampage Extreme (x48) with my Q9650 and I have 8GB of RAM. The Q9650 was a dream CPU at the time, and the fact it has done so well meant I didn't do my usual 18 month upgrade.



I do a lot of photo editing and video editing as well. So I was looking at the 6-core CPUs, but right now they are 3.2Ghz (3.8 turbo). I am hoping a 3.6Ghz version may come out before the end of the year (at a reasonable cost of course).

#6
Posted 06/12/2012 08:47 PM   
[quote name='jonstatt' date='12 June 2012 - 02:47 PM' timestamp='1339534072' post='1420575']
I don't think you took it the wrong way, but I didn't mean to sound patronising when talking about the definition of a bottleneck :) My only point was that I still saw a huge leap in performance with my 690. I have everything set to Ultra in Battlefield 3 for example. You are absolutely right, that I have a lot of untapped potential though until I upgrade the CPU/MB.

I had two choices for finance reasons. Upgrade the PC now, and then the graphics card later...or do the graphics card now and the PC later. The reason I went for the graphics card, was because I was feeling lazy. It takes me 5 minutes to put in the card....a lot longer to start swapping out the motherboard and CPU etc!

I have the Rampage Extreme (x48) with my Q9650 and I have 8GB of RAM. The Q9650 was a dream CPU at the time, and the fact it has done so well meant I didn't do my usual 18 month upgrade.

I do a lot of photo editing and video editing as well. So I was looking at the 6-core CPUs, but right now they are 3.2Ghz (3.8 turbo). I am hoping a 3.6Ghz version may come out before the end of the year (at a reasonable cost of course).
[/quote]

I didn't take it as patronising at all, and I am happy that you had some input on the subject! I noticed your Rampage board has the PCI express 2.0 slots, so you are probably getting better performance than I was getting out of my old EVGA 680i SLI board with PCI-e 1.0 slots (2.0 has double the throughput). That very well could explain why I was seeing so much stuttering at high load.

The Q9650 is probably the best future-proof chip I have ever put in a machine. So much so that it was really hard to tell if it was bottlenecking these new cards. What makes it even more difficult is the fact that each game uses the resources differently. I have been looking at those 690's and I probably would have gotten one of those instead of upgrading the rest of my machine if Newegg wasn't sold out of them for the past few months.

Hmmm, so maybe it was my board that was the biggest bottleneck of all...
[quote name='jonstatt' date='12 June 2012 - 02:47 PM' timestamp='1339534072' post='1420575']

I don't think you took it the wrong way, but I didn't mean to sound patronising when talking about the definition of a bottleneck :) My only point was that I still saw a huge leap in performance with my 690. I have everything set to Ultra in Battlefield 3 for example. You are absolutely right, that I have a lot of untapped potential though until I upgrade the CPU/MB.



I had two choices for finance reasons. Upgrade the PC now, and then the graphics card later...or do the graphics card now and the PC later. The reason I went for the graphics card, was because I was feeling lazy. It takes me 5 minutes to put in the card....a lot longer to start swapping out the motherboard and CPU etc!



I have the Rampage Extreme (x48) with my Q9650 and I have 8GB of RAM. The Q9650 was a dream CPU at the time, and the fact it has done so well meant I didn't do my usual 18 month upgrade.



I do a lot of photo editing and video editing as well. So I was looking at the 6-core CPUs, but right now they are 3.2Ghz (3.8 turbo). I am hoping a 3.6Ghz version may come out before the end of the year (at a reasonable cost of course).





I didn't take it as patronising at all, and I am happy that you had some input on the subject! I noticed your Rampage board has the PCI express 2.0 slots, so you are probably getting better performance than I was getting out of my old EVGA 680i SLI board with PCI-e 1.0 slots (2.0 has double the throughput). That very well could explain why I was seeing so much stuttering at high load.



The Q9650 is probably the best future-proof chip I have ever put in a machine. So much so that it was really hard to tell if it was bottlenecking these new cards. What makes it even more difficult is the fact that each game uses the resources differently. I have been looking at those 690's and I probably would have gotten one of those instead of upgrading the rest of my machine if Newegg wasn't sold out of them for the past few months.



Hmmm, so maybe it was my board that was the biggest bottleneck of all...

ASUS VG278H - i5 2500k @3.7 GHz - EVGA GeForce Titan SC Edition - 16GB Corsair Vengeance PC 1600 RAM - 500 GB WD Velociraptor - Win 7 64-bit Pro

#7
Posted 06/12/2012 09:18 PM   
I upgraded from a decent spec 775 platform and perceived a huge difference across the board even with lowly gtx470's. I try to research and plan every upgrade very carefully, but in my experience benchmarks are like statistics and I don't mean that in a patronising way either! It's no secret that the majority of games are gpu limited but I would advise anyone holding back to upgrade their motherboard and CPU sooner rather than later as you might be surprised by the difference.
I upgraded from a decent spec 775 platform and perceived a huge difference across the board even with lowly gtx470's. I try to research and plan every upgrade very carefully, but in my experience benchmarks are like statistics and I don't mean that in a patronising way either! It's no secret that the majority of games are gpu limited but I would advise anyone holding back to upgrade their motherboard and CPU sooner rather than later as you might be surprised by the difference.

GTX 1070 SLI, I7-6700k ~ 4.4Ghz, 3x BenQ XL2420T, BenQ TK800, LG 55EG960V (3D OLED), Samsung 850 EVO SSD, Crucial M4 SSD, 3D vision kit, Xpand x104 glasses, Corsair HX1000i, Win 10 pro 64/Win 7 64https://www.3dmark.com/fs/9529310

#8
Posted 06/12/2012 10:22 PM   
[quote name='rustyk' date='12 June 2012 - 04:22 PM' timestamp='1339539734' post='1420602']
I upgraded from a decent spec 775 platform and perceived a huge difference across the board even with lowly gtx470's. I try to research and plan every upgrade very carefully, but in my experience benchmarks are like statistics and I don't mean that in a patronising way either! It's no secret that the majority of games are gpu limited but I would advise anyone holding back to upgrade their motherboard and CPU sooner rather than later as you might be surprised by the difference.
[/quote]

Thanks for the input rustyk! What LGA775 board where you using with what ram? I am wondering if the PCI-e 16x 1.0 slots are what was causing the most issues with my old system.
[quote name='rustyk' date='12 June 2012 - 04:22 PM' timestamp='1339539734' post='1420602']

I upgraded from a decent spec 775 platform and perceived a huge difference across the board even with lowly gtx470's. I try to research and plan every upgrade very carefully, but in my experience benchmarks are like statistics and I don't mean that in a patronising way either! It's no secret that the majority of games are gpu limited but I would advise anyone holding back to upgrade their motherboard and CPU sooner rather than later as you might be surprised by the difference.





Thanks for the input rustyk! What LGA775 board where you using with what ram? I am wondering if the PCI-e 16x 1.0 slots are what was causing the most issues with my old system.

ASUS VG278H - i5 2500k @3.7 GHz - EVGA GeForce Titan SC Edition - 16GB Corsair Vengeance PC 1600 RAM - 500 GB WD Velociraptor - Win 7 64-bit Pro

#9
Posted 06/12/2012 11:04 PM   
[quote name='bigweamer' date='13 June 2012 - 12:04 AM' timestamp='1339542246' post='1420616']
Thanks for the input rustyk! What LGA775 board where you using with what ram? I am wondering if the PCI-e 16x 1.0 slots are what was causing the most issues with my old system.
[/quote]

Actually I looked it up and I had a msi p6n diamond. It was x8 speed in sli which is the same as my new board, except like yours, it was pcie 1 rather than 2.
I've never found ram speed to make any real difference outside of synthetic benchmarks, especially with gaming.
Maybe my experience was down to upgrading from 1.0 slots to 2.0 slots as well, but I can't help but think that CPU power helps with the driver overhead, particularly with sli and 3d vision.
[quote name='bigweamer' date='13 June 2012 - 12:04 AM' timestamp='1339542246' post='1420616']

Thanks for the input rustyk! What LGA775 board where you using with what ram? I am wondering if the PCI-e 16x 1.0 slots are what was causing the most issues with my old system.





Actually I looked it up and I had a msi p6n diamond. It was x8 speed in sli which is the same as my new board, except like yours, it was pcie 1 rather than 2.

I've never found ram speed to make any real difference outside of synthetic benchmarks, especially with gaming.

Maybe my experience was down to upgrading from 1.0 slots to 2.0 slots as well, but I can't help but think that CPU power helps with the driver overhead, particularly with sli and 3d vision.

GTX 1070 SLI, I7-6700k ~ 4.4Ghz, 3x BenQ XL2420T, BenQ TK800, LG 55EG960V (3D OLED), Samsung 850 EVO SSD, Crucial M4 SSD, 3D vision kit, Xpand x104 glasses, Corsair HX1000i, Win 10 pro 64/Win 7 64https://www.3dmark.com/fs/9529310

#10
Posted 06/13/2012 04:14 PM   
[quote name='rustyk' date='13 June 2012 - 10:14 AM' timestamp='1339604074' post='1420884']
Actually I looked it up and I had a msi p6n diamond. It was x8 speed in sli which is the same as my new board, except like yours, it was pcie 1 rather than 2.
I've never found ram speed to make any real difference outside of synthetic benchmarks, especially with gaming.
Maybe my experience was down to upgrading from 1.0 slots to 2.0 slots as well, but I can't help but think that CPU power helps with the driver overhead, particularly with sli and 3d vision.
[/quote]

Hmmm, interesting. It sounds to me like it is a bit of both (CPU and PCI-e version). Doubling the throughput on the graphics cards has to help, although in pretty much every forum post I have read regarding the pci-e version people were saying video cards don't need the extra throughput yet. Granted these are random people and not nVidia techs, and might not know what they are talking about.

And I have had similar experience with ram. Seems like the better ram helps the game load quicker but has no real effect on gaming performance. I was running in 3D surround for a while and I had to dumb a lot of settings to get games to work smoothly. It definitely takes some power to run 3D @6010x1080. I got rid of my surround monitors before this upgrade and went to one Asus 27 inch, and I am really happy with the extra brightness and size of this monitor. I can't help but wonder how much better surround would work with this setup though.

Thanks for the info rustyk, it definitely gives me some food for thought!
[quote name='rustyk' date='13 June 2012 - 10:14 AM' timestamp='1339604074' post='1420884']

Actually I looked it up and I had a msi p6n diamond. It was x8 speed in sli which is the same as my new board, except like yours, it was pcie 1 rather than 2.

I've never found ram speed to make any real difference outside of synthetic benchmarks, especially with gaming.

Maybe my experience was down to upgrading from 1.0 slots to 2.0 slots as well, but I can't help but think that CPU power helps with the driver overhead, particularly with sli and 3d vision.





Hmmm, interesting. It sounds to me like it is a bit of both (CPU and PCI-e version). Doubling the throughput on the graphics cards has to help, although in pretty much every forum post I have read regarding the pci-e version people were saying video cards don't need the extra throughput yet. Granted these are random people and not nVidia techs, and might not know what they are talking about.



And I have had similar experience with ram. Seems like the better ram helps the game load quicker but has no real effect on gaming performance. I was running in 3D surround for a while and I had to dumb a lot of settings to get games to work smoothly. It definitely takes some power to run 3D @6010x1080. I got rid of my surround monitors before this upgrade and went to one Asus 27 inch, and I am really happy with the extra brightness and size of this monitor. I can't help but wonder how much better surround would work with this setup though.



Thanks for the info rustyk, it definitely gives me some food for thought!

ASUS VG278H - i5 2500k @3.7 GHz - EVGA GeForce Titan SC Edition - 16GB Corsair Vengeance PC 1600 RAM - 500 GB WD Velociraptor - Win 7 64-bit Pro

#11
Posted 06/13/2012 07:19 PM   
Loaded up Skyrim last night and HOLY SHEEP SHIZZLE!!! I played through the game a couple times when it came out and decided to take a break and play some other games, and they have made some changes that really make this game awesome! First off, the hi-def textures are a must. Looks like they changed the menu system a bit and there are new fonts for pretty much everything. The new kill cams are awesome! I did a downward stab on a kneeling opponent with the camera looking side view and blood shot out of the screen at me! They added attacking from the horse which is awesome. The Helix mod fixed all other issues for me including water/stars/shadows. Also used the nVidia tweak guide to get the most out of Antistropic filtering, Texture filtering, Shadows, view distance, ect...

This game is stunning now! Can't wait to see what else this new build can do.
Loaded up Skyrim last night and HOLY SHEEP SHIZZLE!!! I played through the game a couple times when it came out and decided to take a break and play some other games, and they have made some changes that really make this game awesome! First off, the hi-def textures are a must. Looks like they changed the menu system a bit and there are new fonts for pretty much everything. The new kill cams are awesome! I did a downward stab on a kneeling opponent with the camera looking side view and blood shot out of the screen at me! They added attacking from the horse which is awesome. The Helix mod fixed all other issues for me including water/stars/shadows. Also used the nVidia tweak guide to get the most out of Antistropic filtering, Texture filtering, Shadows, view distance, ect...



This game is stunning now! Can't wait to see what else this new build can do.

ASUS VG278H - i5 2500k @3.7 GHz - EVGA GeForce Titan SC Edition - 16GB Corsair Vengeance PC 1600 RAM - 500 GB WD Velociraptor - Win 7 64-bit Pro

#12
Posted 06/14/2012 05:27 PM   
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