How good are my cpus?

[stoggs1]

ok guys, I have general question about my dual quad core xeons I'm running in my system wich are both xeon x5450 cpu's. my question is would they be adaquete to run a modern video card such as a gtx 970? they handle well my 570 so far and every game I play on my pc runs good so far. I do have to turn settings down on some of the newer games such as far cry 4 and gta 5 for example.

One thing I do want to mention though I have seen my cpu utilization go past 55% on a game as of yet and they usually hover between 40 and 50 % depending on the game.

and if posted this in the wrong section please move it mods. thank you.

thanks in advance.

 

[newtekie1]

my question is would they be adaquete to run a modern video card such as a gtx 970?

I'd have to say no. You have 8 cores, but most games don't use more than 4(which is why you only see ~50% CPU usage). And really most games don't even use 4 cores effectively.

Your cores are clocked low, only 3.0GHz, and they are a pretty old technology. Your CPUs are essentially two Core 2 Quad Q9650 CPUs. But since games only really use 4 cores, you're getting the performance of a single Q9650. That isn't good enough to keep up with a GTX970.

 

[Caring1]

I'd have to say no.

An explanation would help.
I can't see why dual 5450's can't cope with that card, it all comes down to the PSU being adequate.

 

[vega22]

i know a couple of people running 780s on 45nm 775 quads and they have no major issues other than in a couple of games.

i doubt you will have much of an issue with it. sata 2 might be the biggest bottleneck you will notice.

 

[Caring1]

i know a couple of people running 780s on 45nm 775 quads and they have no major issues other than in a couple of games.

i doubt you will have much of an issue with it. sata 2 might be the biggest bottleneck you will notice.

You mean PCI-e2? Even a GTX 970 won't saturate that.

 

[vega22]

i would of said pcie if i ment that dude

i mean sata 2 chipset and its ability to only move about 150mb/s vs the 3gb/s sata 3 can, in theory, move. this will be the cause of some major dips in fps when the gpu is waiting for the cpu to feed it data. it is not the cpu, but the sata bottle necking the gpu.

 

[Zakin]

I've never been bottlenecked, and all of my mechanicals are on my motherboards Sata II's, moving long loading screen games onto my SSDs usually gives small to no benefit. BF3/BF4 were probably the biggest, and even then in game there was no difference in FPS. It's the CPU if anything, and I doubt that's the most horrible bottleneck, but it is the bottleneck.

 

[vega22]

mechanical drives can't saturate sata2 so that would not be the issue, get an ssd that can do 500mb/s and you will see what i mean

but if your games are on spinners then they will be the biggest bottleneck in your system. most games preload everything so it is only at the start of the round/level you will notice, some games do everything on the fly so these you really notice it. titles which are stand out for it imo are ones like arma, dayz, metro, planetside, h1z1 and a few others.

 

[Zakin]

I'm, quite aware?.. But thanks, I have two SSDs in my system, one I swap games in and out of from time to time. But still no real benefit, Arma I would say I agree I saw some mild (MILD) improvement in game loading/stuttering. But, that engine is just a bit of a hot mess with optimization. DayZ/Metro/Planetside I noticed no difference though. Most games are optimized from loading from mechanicals, let alone a lot are optimized from disc gameplay so, take it how you will. I don't see it affecting his FPS in 95% of games.

 

[Jetster]

Bench mark on Core2Quads with a GTX 970 are at a minimum 10% below a current socket 4 core Intel CPU. This varies with games of course

 

[natr0n]

If you have a will to game, You will be gaming on whatever you've got.

 

[stoggs1]

So jester your saying I would get at most a 10% bottleneck from my system on 970 or equal gpu? That's not bad that's like 2 to 5 fps correct?

I would overclock my CPUs but I can't since my motherboard is oem. And I used to run my 570 with 2 duel core xeons and it was bottle necking in certain games like crysis 3. After I upgraded to the 2 quads I got about 8 more fps in crysis 3.

That's the main game I was bottle necking in.

 

[vega22]

I'm, quite aware?.. But thanks, I have two SSDs in my system, one I swap games in and out of from time to time. But still no real benefit, Arma I would say I agree I saw some mild (MILD) improvement in game loading/stuttering. But, that engine is just a bit of a hot mess with optimization. DayZ/Metro/Planetside I noticed no difference though. Most games are optimized from loading from mechanicals, let alone a lot are optimized from disc gameplay so, take it how you will. I don't see it affecting his FPS in 95% of games.

are you asking or saying dude?

i would say give metro another bash and time how long it takes before you can hit skip to start the next level. watch the indoor to outdoor transitions too.

arma it is very noticeable once you know what it is. try flying over a large city at speed for the 1st time and see how many buildings are all white till the data reaches the gpu. it still happens with a ssd too but it is almost a white flash. dayz mod with people's big bases can be even worse :s

no doubt some games are built for disks, i mean most "pc" games are just shoddy, rushed console ports. it is why some even have you sat around for minutes at the start and end of the rounds to give the 360 time to cool down xD

i have seen plenty of people blame cpu for things and even the fastest cpu you can fit in the platform can not remove the bottleneck that is the platform's pch/sb.

 

[Jetster]

So jester your saying I would get at most a 10% bottleneck from my system on 970 or equal gpu? That's not bad that's like 2 to 5 fps correct?

I would overclock my CPUs but I can't since my motherboard is oem. And I used to run my 570 with 2 duel core xeons and it was bottle necking in certain games like crysis 3. After I upgraded to the 2 quads I got about 8 more fps in crysis 3.

That's the main game I was bottle necking in.

At least 10% but mainly on games that are new. Its probably not much more. You can run benchmarks then compare to thread on this forum. There are spread sheets of scores for 3DMark 2013 as well as Unigine Heaven

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/3dmark-2013.179767/

 

[vega22]

there is a thread full of % comparing a 4ghz q9550 to a 4.2ghz sandy somewhere (speeds might be different, but the sandy was faster which scews the test imo but it is ideal for this i think).

some games it was quite a few % while others it made 0 difference. not all games are cpu heavy and all the cpu does is feed the gpu.

 

[newtekie1]

i would of said pcie if i ment that dude

i mean sata 2 chipset and its ability to only move about 150mb/s vs the 3gb/s sata 3 can, in theory, move. this will be the cause of some major dips in fps when the gpu is waiting for the cpu to feed it data. it is not the cpu, but the sata bottle necking the gpu.

Not going to be any bottleneck for anyone running their games off a mechanical drive, and not going to affect framerates one bit for anyone running their games off an SSD. And even with an SSD, the difference is loading times will still be way better than any mechanical drive. One of the primary benefits of SSDs is the latency. People focus too much on the sequential read/write of the SSD, but the latency(or lack of) is what makes them feel fast and what helps with loading textures and things for games. Most game data is loading a bunch of smaller files, even an SSD isn't going to saturate SATA II when doing this, but it will do it way quicker than a mechanical drive. That is why, IMO, the random 4k test is more important to show a drives performance than sequential read/write.

Bench mark on Core2Quads with a GTX 970 are at a minimum 10% below a current socket 4 core Intel CPU. This varies with games of course

The only ones I've seen show that are one with the Core2Quads overclocked, he can't overclock his CPUs. So the gap will be bigger.

there is a thread full of % comparing a 4ghz q9550 to a 4.2ghz sandy somewhere (speeds might be different, but the sandy was faster which scews the test imo but it is ideal for this i think).

some games it was quite a few % while others it made 0 difference. not all games are cpu heavy and all the cpu does is feed the gpu.

The problem is he can't overclock his CPUs, they are stuck at 3.0GHz. If he could overclock his CPU I'd say the bottleneck wouldn't be noticeable, but being stuck at 3.0GHz means the dips caused by the CPU will be noticeable when playing a lot of games.

 

[Jetster]

Good point

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Bare in mind that 8 cores will be better than 4 cores in DirectX 12 games...but none of those exist yet.


I wouldn't be overly concerned about 3.0 GHz. Running games on a 1.6 GHz quad core though...that won't go over well. What I'm saying is your CPUs wouldn't stop me from buying a new graphics card (including GTX 970). The card can always be moved to another system in the future with little effort.

 

[spdaimon]

Just to clear up confusion - SATA 1 is 1.5Gb/s, SATA 2 is 3Gb/s and SATA 3 is 6Gb/s.

Can't comment too much on how a X54xx system performs since I tinkered with one for a few months for laughs. I ran a X5470 775 modded chip on a GA-EP45T-UDR with 8GB DDR3 and a SSD with a GTX 560 TI and didn't notice really any problems. Wasn't my main rig, but I believe I tried Wolfenstien: TNO and Torchlight II. The SSD did make a big difference in smoothness of the system. I tried it with a regular HDD first.
My 2 cents for what's it worth.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

1.5 Gb/s for SATA rev. 1

 

[spdaimon]

Oops! yes, thanks. I fixed it.

 

[newtekie1]

I wouldn't be overly concerned about 3.0 GHz. Running games on a 1.6 GHz quad core though...that won't go over well. What I'm saying is your CPUs wouldn't stop me from buying a new graphics card (including GTX 970). The card can always be moved to another system in the future with little effort.

I'd say if the OP is planning to upgrade the CPU/Platform in the near future get the 970. If the OP wants to stick with what he has now, go with something like a 960 instead.

 

[stoggs1]

ok guys thanks for the advice. in the future when i have the cash il pick up a 970 or something on that level to see how it runs with the rest of my hardware. I do want move to a different hardware platform sometime though. money is kind of tight for me otherwise I would build me a nice I5 or I7 build. But I am happy with my pc for as old as it is, I'm surprised it can run modern games with good image quality and perfomance, but i would like to run max settings 60 fps 1080p and higher resolutions but i would need a new rig for that.

 

[Frick]

ok guys thanks for the advice. in the future when i have the cash il pick up a 970 or something on that level to see how it runs with the rest of my hardware. I do want move to a different hardware platform sometime though. money is kind of tight for me otherwise I would build me a nice I5 or I7 build. But I am happy with my pc for as old as it is, I'm surprised it can run modern games with good image quality and perfomance, but i would like to run max settings 60 fps 1080p and higher resolutions but i would need a new rig for that.

Aye I'm pretty surprised at my system too. If I'm willing to lower details (and I am) it runs things happily at 1680xx1050 at 40+FPS, at least the games I've tried with it. Sit tight and save those moneys and enjoy the joy that is dual socket. It just feels better to have two physical CPU's.

 

[stoggs1]

Aye I'm pretty surprised at my system too. If I'm willing to lower details (and I am) it runs things happily at 1680xx1050 at 40+FPS, at least the games I've tried with it. Sit tight and save those moneys and enjoy the joy that is dual socket. It just feels better to have two physical CPU's.

How does your rig handle far cry 4 and gta v? I can run both of those games with console quaility(ps4, xbone) graphics and framerates @1080p quite well as well pretty much any other multi plat game. But those 2 are the most demanding games ive played on my pc so far.