Is a i7 950 going to bottleneck 1080 GTX?

[BruceFlea]

My cpu is old, I have a 780ti, wanted to upgrade to a 1080 but wondering if my CPU is going to bottleneck it?

[Beardface31]

Probably, but it depends on the game and resolution you're playing at.

[rotNdude]

If you are having issues with the 780ti, in need of a new video card, and have the money, buy it. I have never really cared about the term bottleneck.

[BruceFlea]

I wanted to game at 4k, will get a new monitor at the same time as the GPU.

My CPU is overclocked to 4 gigs but it's old now so i don't want to bottleneck my GPU with the CPU by much.

[just.kamk /idle]

Even if you wouldn't be CPU bottlenecked, a 1080 alone isn't good enough for 4k.
(so in the end you gonna lack performance in both regards)

[BruceFlea]

1080 isnt good enough for some demanding games at 4k but I play xcom and coh2 mainly so thats not an issue. My laptop runs coh 2 at 3k fine with a 980m gpu.

[Andrius227]

Just get the 1080 and see for yourself. I don't think it should bottleneck, but if it does, then you can start thinking about a cpu upgrade. But some bottlenecking would not hurt anyway.

[banzaigtv]

4K resolutions should not put too much load on the CPU compared to 1080p. For 4K, your CPU should be fine, though the GTX 1080 will be slightly held back by PCI-E 2.0. For 1080p or probably even 1440p, a CPU upgrade may become necessary. If you can upgrade, now is a good time to get Kaby Lake or AMD Zen. You will also need DDR4 memory. SATA III will also speed up SSDs quite a bit, too.

Two years ago, I upgraded from an i7-950 to an i7-4790k and never looked back.

This message was posted 9/2/2016 @ 3:30 PM CDT

[Tha_Watcher]

Thanks for this topic! I was actually wondering the same thing.

Unfortunately, I bought a GTX 970 in January before the 1080s came out. I wanted something to tie me over before going through the expenditure of another PC build. However, after playing GTA V with Mods and frequently running out of GPU RAM (I just can't make myself sacrifice graphics quality), it's got me antsy for a GTX 1080!

[SundownKid]

Depends whether you are OCing it.

[Zireth]

i would in my preference i would wait and get a skylake any compatible board and DDR4 ram
the gpu will be a 1060 or 1070 depending if your budget allows it

my preference for componets:
cpu: I7 6700k if you want to keep using I7 cpus I5 6600k if you want something that is gaming only its 100$ less

motherboard: any Z170 atx board utltize that overclock if you decide on a non K cpu get a B150 or any other popular not Z170 board

cpu cooler: stick with the one you got if you have no plans on overclocking or if you have plans for overclocking tell me. the cooler should fit any socket

ram: 16 GB of any brand

[_I_]

if you can get it to close to 4ghz it will run it with a smaller bottleneck

[Zireth]

Originally posted by BruceFlea:

I wanted to game at 4k, will get a new monitor at the same time as the GPU.

My CPU is overclocked to 4 gigs but it's old now so i don't want to bottleneck my GPU with the CPU by much.

with a single GTX 1080? you can do 1440p 144hz gysync or that one monitor thats 1440p 165hz gsync

[Hare+Guu!]

Intel stagnation didn't start until sandy bridge (2500, 2600k, etc). So your cpu is most likely be too old for a 1080.

[BruceFlea]

I got a xeon 3680 for £80 the other day. I OC it to 4.00 GHz, not the best but it's one of the best that would fit my socket. Seen a big improvement in CPU heavy games like coh2 but nothing in GPU heavy games as I expected.