Which graphics card for my new CPU

[Richardwblackburn]

A couple of months ago i bought a 6200 FX series processor, a Crosshair V formula, and 16GB of corsair vengeance RAM. After my GTX 550 Ti being bottlenecked by my old system which only supported PCI-E 1.0 it was a breath of fresh air.

I was really happy as I could play WoW on ultra and stuck at 60 FPS without any issues. I have been lurking on the beta and my system dips down to 20 FPS with the new graphics updates and I would like to continue playing on ultra. I know its only beta and there could be graphical bugs that make this happen but I'm also a fan of having a powerhouse PC that won't struggle with anything. So I bought a asus 7850 HD I installed it all, removed all the drivers several times and would never get over 30FPS on any game. When i turned down the graphics on any game to low, It still would only be 30FPS. People said my CPU is probably bottlenecking my CPU.

Which only confused me further, as I have not been into PC building long but the FX series is AMDs top CPU line so I thought it would have no trouble supporting a 7850 HD which people have said is really slow anyway.

Now I've been thinking about which graphics card would be best for my CPU with no bottlenecking. I've thought about running 2 GTX 550s in SLI and that might give me the performance boost that I look for and they are also pretty cheap cards as graphics cards go, I realise i would have to upgrade my PSU to do this as well as I only have a 600W one.

My question is really, Which GPU would not bottleneck my CPU. Going back to the 7850 is not an option as I have returned it. And I would much rather stick to nvidia this time around? Also, can anyone tell me an easy way to tell if it will bottleneck my GPU without messing around with overclocking as I'm not sure how to overclock or to know if my system is stable once I have done it.

Every question I've asked on this site has been answered by really helpful people, I want to thank the people who answered my other questions for their time.

[HiVizMan]

Not sure how to break this to you. AMD is so not performance by any stretch of the imagination mate. And the FX processors might be AMD's current performance CPU but the older AMD cpu's like the 1100T or the 1090T will out perform the FS-8150 in single threaded applications. That being said you should get some really good gaming out of your system with a FX cpu and pretty much any graphic card.

I am not sure what your particular issue was previously or why you only got 30fps in your game. However the clue would have been that even lowering your quality of image did nothing to improve your FPS. Did you have your system over clocked at all?

Chris or DC will be able to comment with more day to day experience, I only bench the AMD platform occasionally those two guys use the platform 24/7.

[Richardwblackburn]

no I did not overclock my system at all. I'm fairly new to the PC building side of things and overclocking isnt something i have explored

[kkn]

try and go back to a vertified driver and see if that works?
i havent gone past the 29x driver on my 560ti's.

[DaemonCantor]

Nice system, except for the Mid-Range Graphics card....You'll never get the performance you expect from this card... What you need depending on whether you want to run Triple Monitor or more is a Minimum of the New nVidia GTX 670($400+USD) or one of the ATI/AMD cards that are x9xx ie 7970/7950 or 6970/6950. Just remember that AMD changed their Model Numbers when the 6xxx Series came out and my old ATI HD 5870's equal is the AMD HD 6950 (these two cards are equal in Performance just the 6950 has better power handling) and the HD6970 is 1/2 more than my card. Now I would suggest the 7950 or 7970 because of the new Direct Compute incorporated in to them which makes nVidia's claim of PhisX Nul and Void because the 7xxx Series can now do the same Calculations on GPU. AMD has been so successful with the HD series that nVidia is still playing Catchup with new things like Stereoscopic (AMD's Eyefinity) and other things that now they are severely lacking in and have no answer to AMD/ATI.

[Richardwblackburn]

but will those cards not be bottlenecked by my GPU, Lots of people seem to think my fx6200 was bottlenecking my GPU and that was why I was at constant 30FPS. I sent it back to scan and they tested it and found no faults. so would a GTX 670 not be bottlenecked?

[kkn]

ritch: do you run fraps by enny chance? ( recording or sutch? )

[Richardwblackburn]

I was using fraps to check frame rate, however i dont believe that was the cause as with and without it there was noticable FPS drop on the screen. where as the screen would freeze in the middle of a jump on AC:Rev and i could see the triangles things were made out of on madness returns.

[DaemonCantor]

but will those cards not be bottlenecked by my GPU, Lots of people seem to think my fx6200 was bottlenecking my GPU and that was why I was at constant 30FPS. I sent it back to scan and they tested it and found no faults. so would a GTX 670 not be bottlenecked?

Sorry to put this like this but...Your worried about a Bottle Neck when the problem isn't a Bottleneck it's 1 of three possible things. 1) A bad Card. 2) Corrupted Driver. or 3) Not Setting your Graphics correctly ie TURN OFF VSync. ( that's just o0ne setting out of many). In my opinion you have a Bad Card because it won't perform better if you turn the Graphics down plus as you stated the Stuttering in game play.

Next problem is your worry of Bottleneck... If that were a problem in reality why would the Thousands of people using the Cards I suggested not have that problem on a System setup just like yours....Probably 1/4 of the People here on these forums have a similar system as you do and not have that problem. I personally have the CHV Thunderbolt System with a HD5870 and have no Bottleneck... No I'm not running an FX but instead an 1100T. At Present PCI-E 2.0 Specs are at 16GBs per Lane...I have never found a Single Graphics card capable of even pulling 1/2 of that yet ...Not even the cards set for PCI-E 3.0 (no we are not talking about the Cards Bandwidth, that's internal).

[Richardwblackburn]

I was worried about bottlenecks as that what people told me the problem was when i was having the problem thats all. I'll go ahead with a GTX 670 then and see how it goes