Hey guys, I currently have a Pentium D915 at 2.8 GHz, and I want to get a GeForce 9800 GT 1GB and I was wonder at what point would it bottleneck on games like Mafia II, Farming Simulator 2013, Left 4 Dead 2, and Arma II? Thanks!
Has i have said before it's more down to what you are trying to run as to whether or not the GPU or the CPU is the contributing Bottleneck. Don't get to hung up on bottlenecking. Just try the games and monitor your CPU/GPU usage with programs such as MSI Afterburner/EVGA Precision and watch what percentage of you GPU is being used.
If let's say you are playing ArmA II and you notice only 50% of your GPU being used. That signifies that your CPU is holding it back. Basically you want to be seeing somewhere in the 90%+ region of your GPU being utilized. But on the other hand Arma II is very much CPU dependent and not that well optimized in all fairness.
For instance on my old system with a Q6600@3.2GHz and a GTX 560 i would see around 50 - 60% GPU usage. Now on my i7 2600@3.5GHz and the same GTX 560 i see 99% GPU usage more or less constantly.
So yea. Don't worry to much about bottlenecks. Just try the games and if they aren't running to well then back off some settings etc.
I took 2 PSUs and wired them together, for power for my video card.
i think your next upgrade should be a new computer.
well that would work aswell
Good idea, It should run better with that in there. If you mobo supports it I'd go for a quad core.