Nvidia drivers with old CPUs: bottleneck to the extreme

Off-Topic Games, Gaming and Hardware
1

Hardware unboxed did some testing of trying today’s and 2-3 year old gpus on old CPUs like a ryzen 1st gen or a i7 4790k, to show bottlenecking

The result of one test I’d like to point out:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/585542423866769431/825513022734204938/1616761351253.png

Pretty sad that a Rx 580 is capable of out performing a rtx 3080 all because the CPU limitations, it’s a reason why they call it “AMD Finewine”

More proof that the 4 core 8 threads was already being obsolete even 2-3 years ago.

Or that Nvidia needs to stop using hardware cpu scheduler for the GPU and do what AMD does, internal GPU scheduling

2

I think this is more an Nvidia failing that anything else.

The AMD cards’ performance is proof that the overhead isn’t really necessary.

3

When I watched the video, I also wondered if WoW (being heavily cpu dependent) would be affected by this. Has anyone tested this for WoW yet? If it does impact WoW performance, I might actually consider an AMD graphics card for the first time post-ATI.

4

Its been like this since Core i5 4th gen when it was bottlenecking GTX 1070.

This issue does not affect my recommendations though. I usually put higher CPU for higher end cards.

5

Is there a link to this article/video? The lower the resolution/settings the more you’re going to be bound to your CPU. No ones realistically going to run a game at 1080p medium settings on a 3080. I have a 4770k+1080 ti and I haven’t run into any CPU bottlenecks at 3440x1400.

Oh and the “finewine” term was something I only heard when AMD made inferior products. It’s a silly term today when AMD makes great products now.

6

  1. Lots of people do, especially in competitive games like Fortnite. And as time goes by, as your graphics card gets older, you’ll want to, and this indicates that doing so won’t necessarily improve performance due to the overhead.

  2. I’m an Nvidia user, but look at the 5700xt over time. At launch it wasn’t as good as the 2070 Super - but look at how it stands now. It’s better. Same goes for the RX 580 and 1060 6gb. It’s a little bit that it gets optimized over time and a little bit that older nvidia cards don’t.

7

Let’s ask the question: Why.

Nvidia cards have lower overhead in older DX11/OpenGL games.
AMD cards have lower overhead in newer DX12/Vulkan games.

That’s because AMD uses dedicate hardware where as Nvidia uses mostly software to handle scheduling.

For WoW it’s highly recommended to have a an AMD RNDA2 GPU these days unless you want raytracing. If you want RT for some reason in this game the 3090 is your target.

8

Ray tracing isn’t even optimal right now I’d say 2 more generations and then ray tracing would be much better for an average player

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For WoW a 3090 with and a high end CPU RT isn’t terrible. Although I don’t notice a different in game with RT on or off so I don’t see a reason anyone would want it.

In other titles, yea RT is just not there in perf.

10

I have tried RTX high on my 3080 - out questing and stuff it’s mostly fine even in ardenweld if you consider 60fps an acceptable experience. It often is way above that in the 100s, but it often drops to 60 also.

But the big issue is that unlike something like CP2077, where the RTX implementations drastically affect immersion, RTX shadows in WoW don’t.

So off it stays.

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11

Would it be feasible to provide a grid of cpu vs. graphics card at different resolutions so normal PC users can see where buying a certain graphics card would be too much and wasted for the cpu in an existing system.

Or would the safe advice be to prioritize upgrading the cpu before the graphics card.

12

Logical increments has done a breakdown for WoW, but I don’t know how updated it is.

As far as CPU → GPU bottleneck pairing, it depends on the games. AMD cards seem to do better at DX12 and Nvidia DX11.

IMO:

Intel Quad Core without SMT/1st Gen Ryzen, I would say nothing more than a 5700xt or 2060 Super.

2nd Gen Ryzen/Intel i7-4790k through i7-7700k (or i3-10100), I would get a 6700xt or 6800 max.

3rd Gen Ryzen, i5-10400 through i7-8700k, I’d say 6800xt, 3070, or 3080.

4th Gen Ryzen, i9-10900K anything is fine.

Also, the GPU market is jacked. So recommendations are basically “get the best current-gen available GPU you can get at MSRP, worry about the rest later.”

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Yeah, $1,500+ for a not-even-high end graphics card? I’ll wait until the pandemic tax is gone.

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14

Well like I said, the GPU market is jacked.

If you can score a 6800 for $579 or a 6800XT at $649, it is definitely worth getting.

Occasionally they pop up on AMD Store.

https://www.amd.com/en/direct-buy/us

Best Buy also still sells MSRP RTX graphics cards $399 3060 ti, $499 3070, and $699 3080 FEs, but they are very fast to go.

I would not pay Newegg’s “MSRP” for GPUs.

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