bottleneck question

bobkn said:

The Asus memory qualified vendors list for the board: https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/m...X_DRAM_QVL.pdf

The list doesn't state what frequencies are overclocked, but you're correct about Intel only listing DDR3 1066 and 1333 as supported.

The OP doesn't state what the RAM is clocked at, but I doubt that it's a bottleneck regardless. The RAM frequency usually affects benchmarks rather than applications.

trust me old slow frequency rams do hiccups in game play combined with new hardware , there had been youtubes about it , mind you another thing , the cpu plays a hand in ram frequency usable too , i have a case where chipset supported DDR3 up to 2333 Mhz so i bought a couple of these HyperX rams from Kingston running at such frequency to make use of that , yet however the cpu was an i7 that maxes out at 1600 Mhz so what happened was the rams down clocked to operate at 1600 Mhz , so without reading the pdf , even if the board can handle higher frequencies the cpu will cap the bus still .

nIGHTmAYOR said:

trust me old slow frequency rams do hiccups in game play combined with new hardware , there had been youtubes about it , mind you another thing , the cpu plays a hand in ram frequency usable too , i have a case where chipset supported DDR3 up to 2333 Mhz so i bought a couple of these HyperX rams from Kingston running at such frequency to make use of that , yet however the cpu was an i7 that maxes out at 1600 Mhz so what happened was the rams down clocked to operate at 1600 Mhz , so without reading the pdf , even if the board can handle higher frequencies the cpu will cap the bus still .

The I5-2500 officially supports DDR3 1066 and 1333, but it has been run with higher clocked RAM. The 1333 number isn't a hard cap. Higher frequencies aren't guaranteed to run, but they can be set. (It doesn't take a lot of Web searching to find I5-2500s run with DDR3 1600 or 1866, at their rated frequencies.)

On some of my PCs, I had to select an XMP or manual settings in the BIOS to get the RAM to run at its rated frequency, even if that frequency was within the specified range of the CPU. Some motherboard makers (Asus, Asrock) seem to try to make the default settings for safety, rather than for performance.

The discussion is mostly pointless; I presume that the OP isn't going to replace the RAM in that oldish PC (motherboard from 2012, last BIOS update 2014). I usually don't recommend spending much money upgrading old PCs, but at least a graphics card can be moved to a new PC later. I hope that the PC's BIOS likes a 1660ti or 2060 super.

Faith said:

(snip)

Pairing a RTX 2060 with a i5 2500 seems, to me anyway, like a bad idea. Especially considering that you're paying privilage for ray tracing cores on any RTX card, something that definitely will affect the cpu in some way when it's enabled. BF3 and 4 doesn't use it either. Bumping the resolution to 4K might work in favor for the 2060, but my suggestion would be to upgrade cheaper and wait/save for a more feature complete build later on. Just my opinion of course.

You're probably right. It appears that the OP has a case of upgrade fever, but isn't prepared to replace the whole PC.

nIGHTmAYOR said:

on a side notice i just found that the i5 2500 cpu supports only 1066 bus rams and that is even rams running on dual channel , with single channeling its half that ! (i know it does support 1333 but they are rare) that might cause hiccups in frame rates in high end games specially running on high resolutions such as 4k , so while you are not suffering from this right now , introducing a high end graphics card that may process more beefy textures all the time , having a gpu with more rams say 8 GBs may sort of render the gpu less reliant on system rams and hence less hiccups but still has to be tested .

so it seems yea , there may be a bottle neck , but its rams bus .

ram speed is 1333

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Faith said:

What are you talking about. Of course there's such thing as a bottleneck. It's called "bound". High resolutions yield GPU bound situations, while high framerates yield CPU bound situations, depending on the game. You want a system that plays each other in balance. Developers usually don't include bounds or bottlenecks in their system requirements because they are targeted at a specific framerate and detail level. OP is running a 60Hz display so he'll be bottlenecked by the monitor if the framerate goes over 60 for example. 98% gpu usage and 70% cpu usage means there's headroom for an upgrade. In OP's shoes I would monitor the usages of both the cpu and gpu in Afterburner while playing to determin if there's a bottleneck somewhere. The i5 2500 is getting quite old now. Fortunately games still likes high single core frequencies, but the shift for multi cores has increased drastically the last few years.

Battlefield uses Frostbite Engine, an engine that favors processors in high-numbered matches. I haven't played BF3 or 4 since they came out so I don't know exactly where the bottleneck starts and on what cpus/gpus. Pairing a RTX 2060 with a i5 2500 seems, to me anyway, like a bad idea. Especially considering that you're paying privilage for ray tracing cores on any RTX card, something that definitely will affect the cpu in some way when it's enabled. BF3 and 4 doesn't use it either. Bumping the resolution to 4K might work in favor for the 2060, but my suggestion would be to upgrade cheaper and wait/save for a more feature complete build later on. Just my opinion of course.

gtx 1060 is out of stock india I searched a lot which one should I get

Faith said:

What are you talking about. Of course there's such thing as a bottleneck. It's called "bound". High resolutions yield GPU bound situations, while high framerates yield CPU bound situations, depending on the game. You want a system that plays each other in balance. Developers usually don't include bounds or bottlenecks in their system requirements because they are targeted at a specific framerate and detail level. OP is running a 60Hz display so he'll be bottlenecked by the monitor if the framerate goes over 60 for example. 98% gpu usage and 70% cpu usage means there's headroom for an upgrade. In OP's shoes I would monitor the usages of both the cpu and gpu in Afterburner while playing to determin if there's a bottleneck somewhere. The i5 2500 is getting quite old now. Fortunately games still likes high single core frequencies, but the shift for multi cores has increased drastically the last few years.

Battlefield uses Frostbite Engine, an engine that favors processors in high-numbered matches. I haven't played BF3 or 4 since they came out so I don't know exactly where the bottleneck starts and on what cpus/gpus. Pairing a RTX 2060 with a i5 2500 seems, to me anyway, like a bad idea. Especially considering that you're paying privilage for ray tracing cores on any RTX card, something that definitely will affect the cpu in some way when it's enabled. BF3 and 4 doesn't use it either. Bumping the resolution to 4K might work in favor for the 2060, but my suggestion would be to upgrade cheaper and wait/save for a more feature complete build later on. Just my opinion of course.

well we first need to define what is a bottleneck , see the definition you are trying to impose almost like make everybody in a bottle neck , we just boost settings to high or ultra on most recent games and then the majority of rigs would come to their knees this is a given . if however bottleneck is utilized how the op is seeing it , where if having an old cpu would cap the performance of new gpu to same performance as current graphics performance he has , then no , most probably he will notice a gain , just not the most optimal gain .

the problem i discussed later is a problem related to ram bus where it was often reported that combining new gpus with older tech rams may result in systematic hickups i.e freezes in rendering from time to time due to slow decompression and transfer of high quality textures during gameplay , i however have no accurate figures of what frequencies are known to be the more hideous so i just raised it as a concern .

as for monitors being a bottleneck , now this is controversial as v-sync , g-sync and f-sync were all solutions that came out to address this problem in particular , so is not a bottleneck from even your perspective any more .

tushar4544 said:

ram speed is 1333

so like i pointed to faith in my previous post there lay a possibility that on recent games that use high detailed textures and high resolutions such as 4k hiccups may (or may not as there are little data provided along the reports) show during game play .

of course this can be solved by tuning down resolution or graphics settings in game , but however i wanted to hint it as a concern so you do not end up freaked out by it if it happens , in any case the new hardware would work , just not at its best until you do a full upgrade later .

tushar4544 said:

ram speed is 1333

(snip)



gtx 1060 is out of stock india I searched a lot which one should I get

Which card did you mean? Looking at amazon.in, I see 1660ti, 1660, 1060, RTX 2060, and RTX 2060 Super as all available (maybe in limited numbers).

bobkn said:

Which card did you mean? Looking at amazon.in, I see 1660ti, 1660, 1060, RTX 2060, and RTX 2060 Super as all available (maybe in limited numbers).

sir I don't buy online on amazon as sellers are not upto mark don't know if they are authorised or not and when I went to retail shop 1060 not available anywhere that's why I am going with 1660 ti I have no option

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nIGHTmAYOR said:

so like i pointed to faith in my previous post there lay a possibility that on recent games that use high detailed textures and high resolutions such as 4k hiccups may (or may not as there are little data provided along the reports) show during game play .

of course this can be solved by tuning down resolution or graphics settings in game , but however i wanted to hint it as a concern so you do not end up freaked out by it if it happens , in any case the new hardware would work , just not at its best until you do a full upgrade later .

I just need to play 2 games only battlefield 3 and 4 for now only and only no other games

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bobkn said:

The I5-2500 officially supports DDR3 1066 and 1333, but it has been run with higher clocked RAM. The 1333 number isn't a hard cap. Higher frequencies aren't guaranteed to run, but they can be set. (It doesn't take a lot of Web searching to find I5-2500s run with DDR3 1600 or 1866, at their rated frequencies.)

On some of my PCs, I had to select an XMP or manual settings in the BIOS to get the RAM to run at its rated frequency, even if that frequency was within the specified range of the CPU. Some motherboard makers (Asus, Asrock) seem to try to make the default settings for safety, rather than for performance.

The discussion is mostly pointless; I presume that the OP isn't going to replace the RAM in that oldish PC (motherboard from 2012, last BIOS update 2014). I usually don't recommend spending much money upgrading old PCs, but at least a graphics card can be moved to a new PC later. I hope that the PC's BIOS likes a 1660ti or 2060 super.

I hope that the PC's BIOS likes a 1660ti or 2060 super? will it not support my motherboard?