Performance loss approximation for my GPU

[ryanneeki]

Hello, my name is Rayan from Morocco. I'm a first time poster.
So for a little history and context, I bought my first ever PC in 2021 with money I spent long to save. The PC is an old HP EliteDesk 800 G2 TWR. I bought it in secondhand market because that's the only available option in my area.
It has an Intel Core i5-6500 CPU and initially came with 8GB of DDR4 SDRAM that I later upgraded to 16GB. The motherboard is an HP 8053, it supports PCIe v3.0. Fast forward to 2023, I bought my first ever GPU: An AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT. This GPU has 8GB of GDDR6 memory and supports PCIe v4.0. I've managed to fit it in my cramped case and got it to work through an external power supply. However, since as you've read before my motherboard has a PCIe interface two versions behind and my CPU is quite old (2015), I'm always wondering:
How much is the performance of my GPU held back by the rest of the system?
The GPU is working excellent as I can play most games with excellent framerates and visuals.
Thanks for reading this rather lengthy post, I await your response with great anticipation.

 

[QuietBob]

Hi there, and welcome to TPU forums!

The 6650XT is a great budget choice for 1080p gaming. It will also play many older and less demanding titles in 1440p. It's a PCIe 4.0 x8 card, so the PCI 3.0 x16 slot in your PC won't limit its performance (both have the same exact bandwidth).

However, it's going to be bottlenecked by the i5-6500, You can reduce the CPU dependency by choosing higher quality settings in game and/or capping the frame rate.

Have you tested your PC in a standard benchmark, like 3DMark? I have an oc'd 6600XT (same perf as a stock 6650XT) in my secondary rig, and tested it w/o a CPU bottleneck. We can compare such "ideal" results with yours.

 

[Marcus L]

The GPU is working excellent as I can play most games with excellent framerates and visuals.

Enough said, don't be had by constant reviews and new hardware, if your GPU provides enough performance for you at the resolution you play at and you don't insist on "ultra" settings then you are all good, until that GPU won't work for you, you have a balanced system that plays games perfectly well as you like to play them with good performance, save up for a couple of years for a system upgrade, instead of worrying about your GPU

 

[ryanneeki]

Enough said, don't be had by constant reviews and new hardware, if your GPU provides enough performance for you at the resolution you play at and you don't insist on "ultra" settings then you are all good, until that GPU won't work for you, you have a balanced system that plays games perfectly well as you like to play them with good performance, save up for a couple of years for a system upgrade, instead of worrying about your GPU

Yes, I am very happy with my current system. I was just curious, that's all.

 

[ryanneeki]

Hi there, and welcome to TPU forums!

The 6650XT is a great budget choice for 1080p gaming. It will also play many older and less demanding titles in 1440p. It's a PCIe 4.0 x8 card, so the PCI 3.0 x16 slot in your PC won't limit its performance (both have the same exact bandwidth).

However, it's going to be bottlenecked by the i5-6500, You can reduce the CPU dependency by choosing higher quality settings in game and/or capping the frame rate.

Have you tested your PC in a standard benchmark, like 3DMark? I have an oc'd 6600XT (same perf as a stock 6650XT) in my secondary rig, and tested it w/o a CPU bottleneck. We can compare such "ideal" results with yours.

I cannot do a benchmark right now because I'm not home. But I looked up 3DMark online and I saw it costs around $35.

 

[GerKNG]

It‘s in most cases no difference at all and in others a low single digit percentage (1-3%)
Even a 5090 at 3.0 is fine.

 

[droopyRO]

How much is the performance of my GPU held back by the rest of the system?

It depends on the game. I have a 6650 XT with a 2700X in another system. To make a guess it should be around 20-30% performance in CPU limited scenarios. Look at how it performs in Darktide, the GPU is around 80-85% utilized.
When that happens, just bump up the graphical settings, your game will not run faster but it will look better

 

[bug]

Yes, I am very happy with my current system. I was just curious, that's all.

TPU routinely does PCIe scaling tests. A PCIe 5 card sees no slowdown on PCIe 4 and only a minor dip in performance on PCIe 3. And that's usually for high-end cards.
Don't worry about PCIe version, it's not holding you back. And enjoy your rig, the rigs I enjoyed the most were those that I built when it was hard for me to scrape the cash

 

[ryanneeki]

Glad to hear this, so the

TPU routinely does PCIe scaling tests. A PCIe 5 card sees no slowdown on PCIe 4 and only a minor dip in performance on PCIe 3. And that's usually for high-end cards.
Don't worry about PCIe version, it's not holding you back. And enjoy your rig, the rigs I enjoyed the most were those that I built when it was hard for me to scrape the cash

Glad to hear this, so the only bottleneck is the CPU

 

[bug]

Here:

Scaling for a high-end card: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-5090-pci-express-scaling/29.html
Scaling for a mid-range card: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-5060-ti-pci-express-x8-scaling/28.html

 

[QuietBob]

I looked up 3DMark online and I saw it costs around $35

3DMark is often on sale for $5. You can download a free demo on Steam, which includes five tests.

Another free benchmark is Superposition. It's an older test, but it'll give you something to compare.

 

[AleXXX666]

Hello, my name is Rayan from Morocco. I'm a first time poster.
So for a little history and context, I bought my first ever PC in 2021 with money I spent long to save. The PC is an old HP EliteDesk 800 G2 TWR. I bought it in secondhand market because that's the only available option in my area.
It has an Intel Core i5-6500 CPU and initially came with 8GB of DDR4 SDRAM that I later upgraded to 16GB. The motherboard is an HP 8053, it supports PCIe v3.0. Fast forward to 2023, I bought my first ever GPU: An AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT. This GPU has 8GB of GDDR6 memory and supports PCIe v4.0. I've managed to fit it in my cramped case and got it to work through an external power supply. However, since as you've read before my motherboard has a PCIe interface two versions behind and my CPU is quite old (2015), I'm always wondering:
How much is the performance of my GPU held back by the rest of the system?
The GPU is working excellent as I can play most games with excellent framerates and visuals.
Thanks for reading this rather lengthy post, I await your response with great anticipation.

Hello there, love you country! (mostly because I love the scenery from it in my currently fav game - Hitman)

Well, here are the answers.
1. PCI-E version 5.0 is absolutely NO NEED for current GPUs, even "the most high end". Your card has PCI-E 4.0 x8, and mobo 3.0 x16. The problem comes here not from the PCI-E version, but from LANES supported by GPU - this means, your gpu works in PCI-E 3.0 x8 mode, and that's a whole different story for "current average" GPU, @bug @QuietBob @GerKNG
2. your cpu is holding back your overall system performance - but, for games, it depends from resolution you play. The 6650 XT is best at 1080p, however, we don't know your games - you might play some "older" games, for which this GPU could be good enough even for 1440p - and on this point your CPU is perfectly good.

 

[bug]

Hello there, love you country! (mostly because I love the scenery from it in my currently fav game - Hitman)

Well, here are the answers.
1. PCI-E version 5.0 is absolutely NO NEED for current GPUs, even "the most high end". Your card has PCI-E 4.0 x8, and mobo 3.0 x16. The problem comes here not from the PCI-E version, but from LANES supported by GPU - this means, your gpu works in PCI-E 3.0 x8 mode, and that's a whole different story for "current average" GPU, @bug @QuietBob @GerKNG
2. your cpu is holding back your overall system performance - but, for games, it depends from resolution you play. The 6650 XT is best at 1080p, however, we don't know your games - you might play some "older" games, for which this GPU could be good enough even for 1440p - and on this point your CPU is perfectly good.

The 5060Ti is also limited at PCIe x8. No problems with that either.
If PCIe 3.0 x8 does not hold back a 5060Ti, it will not hold back a 6650XT.

 

[Outback Bronze]

3DMark is often on sale for $5.

3DMark11 can still put a decent amount of stress on cards, especially if you up the res and AA and it's free: https://benchmarks.ul.com/legacy-benchmarks

 

[ryanneeki]

Here:

Scaling for a high-end card: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-5090-pci-express-scaling/29.html
Scaling for a mid-range card: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-5060-ti-pci-express-x8-scaling/28.html

I see, so the PCIe interface does not add much performance as the card can load and unload data in it just fine. Newer version might offer a tiny single digit of performance but it mostly depends in the CPU

Hello there, love you country! (mostly because I love the scenery from it in my currently fav game - Hitman)

Well, here are the answers.
1. PCI-E version 5.0 is absolutely NO NEED for current GPUs, even "the most high end". Your card has PCI-E 4.0 x8, and mobo 3.0 x16. The problem comes here not from the PCI-E version, but from LANES supported by GPU - this means, your gpu works in PCI-E 3.0 x8 mode, and that's a whole different story for "current average" GPU, @bug @QuietBob @GerKNG
2. your cpu is holding back your overall system performance - but, for games, it depends from resolution you play. The 6650 XT is best at 1080p, however, we don't know your games - you might play some "older" games, for which this GPU could be good enough even for 1440p - and on this point your CPU is perfectly good.

I see, thanks for your comment! Marrakesh is indeed a good place for vacation and high profile assassination operations. As for my games, I am a modest gamer, I'm not following the hottest new releases consistently. I might do that if it's something really interesting to check out like the Silent Hill 2 remake. Other than that I'm playing older titles like Persona 5 Royal, Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, and some emulated Wii/PS2 games like Xenoblade Chronicles and the original Silent Hill 2.

 

[Kwadratowicz]

I will add two things, I've bought 9070 XT, and it was paired with ryzen 2700, with this setup card was drawing max 150W in games, and was not boosting properly, if your card is boosting properly in games, and You see in gpuz load and power draw like it should be, then even with weak cpu it's ok.
After changing to ryzen 5700x card started to work properly, and in 3dmark I've got scores that are like other with much more recent hardware(with pcie 4.0 and 5.0), I've got this card in pcie 3.0 slot, and it is not hindering it's performance.
So as long Your card is taking power and boosts properly cpu is ok .
And don't trust benchmarks, (they are good to see if the card is ok, and to play numbers with others) but real world fps is what is interesting
steel nomad was doing great with 2700, but in games it was different story -.-

 

[AleXXX666]

The 5060Ti is also limited at PCIe x8. No problems with that either.
If PCIe 3.0 x8 does not hold back a 5060Ti, it will not hold back a 6650XT.

the story is, I've had RX 5500XT which is also PCIe 4.0 x8, and I was using it in PCI-E 3.0 system back then. The card was OK, tho, the performance was such a cr... and it's positioned like ~1650 Super, now I have PLAIN 1650 in other system I could tell you it works WAY BETTER than that RX 5500XT restricted by PCI-E 3.0 x8.

 

[bug]

I see, so the PCIe interface does not add much performance as the card can load and unload data in it just fine. Newer version might offer a tiny single digit of performance but it mostly depends in the CPU

It's not that PCIe does not add much performance, it's that it offers so much bandwidth, GPU can rarely exhaust it.

Looking at the bigger picture (pun), when games draw something on the screen, there's a long chain at work: GPU, CPU, SSD, PCIe, various caches. That chain will have a weak link, that's inevitable. You just don't want the weakest link to be, say, 50% slower than the next weakest link.

What I usually recommend, is forgetting about all this and just enjoying your rig. If your game of choice feels sluggish, then, and only then, start playing with game settings or maybe start looking for bottlenecks. Cheers