Will my GPU bottleneck me too much?

[Enders]

I've bought a few new upgrades in anticipation of some new games coming out, but I replaced my GPU not terribly long ago and really can't afford a new one. I'm just worried that my new components will not make a significant difference, since I'm not terribly knowledgeable about how components interact with each other. My specs:

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5770 1gb
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T 3.3GHz, 3.7GHz Turbo 6 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB SDRAM DDR3 1600
ASUS M5A88-V EVO AM3+ AMD 880G HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

[RAGINGBRODADDY]

what's your operating system

[Wries]

Wait.

Don't say you bought a Phenom II system in anticapation of coming games. Please say this is your old system or something!

[Deleted]

It'll struggle in graphically intensive games at 1920x1080 resolution, as its really more of an entry-level gaming card; but should not have particularly big issues with WoW.

[Deleted]

I'm not the best person at this, but as far as I can see, and with my knowledge of AMD, I'd say it's most definately bottlenecking.
I don't know about the "Significant difference" part, if you're only running WoW, you'll be fine, a 5770 is well enough for that, but if you want to run something a bit more graphics complex, it's gonna hold 'ya back.

[Skelly]

WoW is a very cpu intensive game, so your gpu probably won't bottleneck you there. If you're playing other graphics intensive games like Crysis 2 or whatever, your gpu will probably be your bottleneck

[Enders]

what's your operating system

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

---------- Post added 2011-06-12 at 06:06 PM ----------

Wait.

Don't say you bought a Phenom II system in anticapation of coming games. Please say this is your old system or something!

It's not easy to keep up to date while paying for schooling and only being able to work 24 hours per week on minimum wage. So yeah, no need to be a complete and utter dick when someone's just asking for advice.

[RAGINGBRODADDY]

The 1100T is an extremely powerful processor. Wries is just convinced that hyper-threading does anything.

OT: Yea your 5770 is going to hold you back, but it won't be anything to cry over as long as you have DX11.

edit: you have DX11. congrats

[Enders]

The 1100T is an extremely powerful processor. Wries is just convinced that hyper-threading does anything.

OT: Yea your 5770 is going to hold you back, but it won't be anything to cry over as long as you have DX11.

edit: you have DX11. congrats

Thanks, I think I'll see if I can find anything I can pawn off and upgrade it. Any recommendations? Preferably in the ~$250 price range but I could probably go up to around $300 if necessary. If you're curious, it's Battlefield 3 that I'm upgrading for. I know I'll be able to run it no problem, but I would love to get the most out of that beautiful engine they've built for it.

[Wries]

The 1100T is an extremely powerful processor. Wries is just convinced that hyper-threading does anything.

OT: Yea your 5770 is going to hold you back, but it won't be anything to cry over as long as you have DX11.

edit: you have DX11. congrats

I'm convinced HT does absolutely nothing interesting in gaming. Funny you're going out on a limb claiming you know what I'm thinking.

The Phenom x6 is not a horrible CPU, but performance per core is not that great either. It's NOT a good upgrade for gaming.

It's not easy to keep up to date while paying for schooling and only being able to work 24 hours per week on minimum wage. So yeah, no need to be a complete and utter dick when someone's just asking for advice.

I think it's very weird you go out for buying new tech and ask questions later. You don't earn much, fine. Even more of a reason to do your research. Don't anticipate me as a dick, thank you. Calling someone a dick is the dickiest thing you can do anyway.

[Cilraaz]

The Phenom x6 is not a horrible CPU, but performance per core is not that great either. It's NOT a good upgrade for gaming.

Especially when it's pretty much right at the it 2500k price point.

[Deleted]

It is a fairly cheap upgrade though, although 2500k is probably better for GAMING. Yes, 6 cores aren't generally supported, some struggle with 4 cores, but for a low-budget CPU they suffice.

Can't say anything about BF3 till end specs appear. Don't expect to run it on high though.

[Cilraaz]

It is a fairly cheap upgrade though, although 2500k is probably better for GAMING. Yes, 6 cores aren't generally supported, some struggle with 4 cores, but for a low-budget CPU they suffice.

It's not a matter of core count (for gaming), but rather speed per cycle. With both clocked at 4GHz, the i5 2500k will outperform an 1100T. That's not even counting the fact that the i5 2500k will clock higher.

This isn't saying that having an 1100T is bad. I'm just saying why someone might question it for a gaming system.

[WingsofLiberty]

it's a good graphics card.it will run almost everything on max(with antialiasing on 1600x1200)at 1900x1080/1200 at around 30-40 fps which is very playable.
still don't expect crysis or metro to follow the same rules.

[Cyanotical]

just to bring up a different point, the term "bottlenecking" is used way too often on these forums, it's not a professional term and it doesn't mean your computer is slow, or bad

for example my GPU is my "bottleneck", yet my computer isn't really held back by it, sure i could swap out to quad gtx-580s, but then i wouldn't get rid of the bottleneck, i would simply move it elsewhere, probably to my RAM

my point is that all computers have a bottleneck, it's simply the lowest performing part in your case, that doesn't mean you need to replace it

[Enders]

Well thanks to the comments in this thread I decided to cancel my order (thankfully it wasn't too late) and got a Sandy Bridge i5 2500k and changed up the rest of my order to be compatible. It was slightly more expensive but I suppose it will be worth it.

[skylla05]

Wait.

Don't say you bought a Phenom II system in anticapation of coming games. Please say this is your old system or something!

Not everyone are spoiled kids, or drop every cent they have into a computer that will be obsolete in 3 months so they can put their "leet rig" in their sig.

[Deleted]

Having that same card, I'd expect it to run BF3 on med-high-ish, possibly requiring you to drop the resolution slightly as well. In any case as far as I know this isn't a good time to upgrade from a budget card to another, as I've heard the budget-range 6XXX AMD card isn't much better than the 5770 (and nVidia cards are still lesser price/performance, yes?).

Feel free to correct me if someone knows better, I have no intention of upgrading in the next 6+ months so haven't exactly done any research.

[Sephiracle]

Well thanks to the comments in this thread I decided to cancel my order (thankfully it wasn't too late) and got a Sandy Bridge i5 2500k and changed up the rest of my order to be compatible. It was slightly more expensive but I suppose it will be worth it.

Won't regret it.

[BicycleMafioso]

Not everyone are spoiled kids, or drop every cent they have into a computer that will be obsolete in 3 months so they can put their "leet rig" in their sig.

The irony here, being that the Phenom II x6 will be obsolete in 3months, as it starts to phase out immediately in Q3 '11, and will be completely phased out when Q4 '11 goes Q1 '12, wheras the i5-2500K (or rather, LGA1155) will be around for a few more years.

Not to mention that a PII-x6 rig costs almost as much as an i5-2500K-rig, but is like having an old man compete with Usain Bolt in the 100metres.

And this coming from someone who would like AMD if they just bothered to be up-to-date.