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Hello,
I have the following hardware components running together:
MSI 970A-G43-PLUS motherboard.
AMD FX 6200 CPU.
AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB GDDR5 GPU.
Are there are bottleneck issues affecting the GPU in this configuration?
-Alex Fickett.
Discussion is locked
The RAM is 2x 4GB sticks and 1x 2GB stick of Samsung and Ramaxel respectively. The RAM is not gaming RAM, just normal sticks so to speak.
Pardon me, I included and extra "are" in the initial post.
-Alex Fickett.
Mode.
I'm sure marketing loves to sell "gaming RAM" but if you mix sticks, it can fall to single channel mode and then not deliver.
Next, some games need more CPU power so while we know that an old i5 could feed 3 video cards back when.
"Our tests demonstrate fairly little difference between a $225 LGA 1155 Core i5-2500K and a $1000 LGA 2011 Core i7-3960X, even when three-way graphics card configurations are involved. It turns out that memory bandwidth and PCIe throughput don't hold back the performance of existing Sandy Bridge-based machines. "
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-4.html
OK, so how does your CPU fare?
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-2500K-vs-AMD-FX-6200
Unless there's some detail left out like other than 1080p gaming on a single display then the CPU is fine.
I'd remove the 1x stick.
Run a pass of speccy...use goggle....it will tell you what speed ram you have and if it is set up as single or dual channel.
On this machine dual channel gives me a 50/60% bump in ram data rate.
For gaming, my list, in order of importance, would be:
GPU
CPU
RAM
Hard drive.
To help clarify your options, run these two tests:
a) Run your games, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
If your FPS increases, it indicates that your cpu is strong enough to drive a better graphics configuration.
b) Limit your cpu, either by reducing the OC, or, in windows power management, limit the maximum cpu% to something like 70%.
If your FPS drops significantly, it is an indicator that your cpu is the limiting factor, and a cpu upgrade is in order.
It is possible that both tests are positive, indicating that you have a well balanced system, and both cpu and gpu need to be upgraded to get better gaming FPS.
As to ram, no game, by itself will use more than two or three gb. But, since ram is so cheap these days, I consider 8gb(2 x 4gb) as a standard.
If you multitask at all, 8gb is highly recommended. 8gb will hold more of your stuff in ram, ready for instant reuse.
If you are on anything more than a minimal budget, consider using a SSD for at least the boot drive, and a few apps.
60gb is minimum, and 120gb will hold some games. Use a hard drive for storage and overflow.
On the cpu, games will use no more than two or three cores as a rule. The performance of the cores is more important.
If your cpu budget is $200 or so, you can't do better than a 2500K. It will run any graphics configuration well.
If your cpu budget is $150 or less, then amd and intel have viable options. Do not discount the dual core 2100 for a budget build.
For graphics, the market is very competitive, and you mostly get what you pay for.
Something like a GTX560ti or 6950 is very good for 1080P resolutions. Past that, you get diminishing increases in performance for your dollar.
UNless you are looking at triple monitor gaming, I would avoid sli or crossfire. A good single card will be simpler and cheaper.
Dual low end cards show good benchmarks, but are susceptible to microstuttering.
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