lehpron

zqa20
Thanks. does anybody else want to reassure  me there won't be a bottleneck here?

1. Can't ever get rid of bottlenecks, overclocking only reduces the impact; but at some point as the CPU clock goes higher, something else in the system will hold performance back, you can shift the problem to another component.  You just got to draw a line somewhere.
2. Let's put it this way, what could you upgrade to?  Haswell and Haswell-E, in terms of instructions per clock and per core, is barely 10% faster than Ivy Bridge and Ivy Bridge-E.  Meaning, even if you upgrade to a i5-4690K and somehow get it to the same overclock frequency you have now, you only really gain 10% in your games' performance.  Therefore, even if you were bottlenecked, getting a brand new platform isn't going to help (unless you're the type that thinks even 1% better is worth dropping several hundred).

 
You could get a higher-resolution display, which would force your games into being more GPU-bound and less dependent on the CPU.
 
The last ditch option is to stop playing CPU-bound titles so the impact on your processor is minimal, which kicks anything multiplayer out because those games make the CPU interact with the Ethernet controller as well as handle all the characters on screen.  The CPU is already running the game and telling the graphics card what to draw.  If you can't overclock your processor any higher, then the key to reducing its bottleneck is to give it less to do.

NemesisChild

zqa20

lehpron

zqa20
Thanks. does anybody else want to reassure  me there won't be a bottleneck here?

1. Can't ever get rid of bottlenecks, overclocking only reduces the impact; but at some point as the CPU clock goes higher, something else in the system will hold performance back, you can shift the problem to another component.  You just got to draw a line somewhere.
2. Let's put it this way, what could you upgrade to?  Haswell and Haswell-E, in terms of instructions per clock and per core, is barely 10% faster than Ivy Bridge and Ivy Bridge-E.  Meaning, even if you upgrade to a i5-4690K and somehow get it to the same overclock frequency you have now, you only really gain 10% in your games' performance.  Therefore, even if you were bottlenecked, getting a brand new platform isn't going to help (unless you're the type that thinks even 1% better is worth dropping several hundred).

 
You could get a higher-resolution display, which would force your games into being more GPU-bound and less dependent on the CPU.
 
The last ditch option is to stop playing CPU-bound titles so the impact on your processor is minimal, which kicks anything multiplayer out because those games make the CPU interact with the Ethernet controller as well as handle all the characters on screen.  The CPU is already running the game and telling the graphics card what to draw.  If you can't overclock your processor any higher, then the key to reducing its bottleneck is to give it less to do.

Oh, so my CPU at it's current speed is faster than all of haswell CPU's (for gaming) @stock speeds? wow thought there would be a bigger gap between generations. guess my CPu will do fine for another year at least then

 
That's not what he's saying, read #2 more closely.

Nereus
 
Not borderline crazy, but unless you have money to burn, I think they are saying the impact of upgrading the CPU is relatively small, if not completely without impact for most current games. You should be fine as you are, but if you're really concerned, you may be better to get a large high res monitor to use more of the GPU resources (no idea what you are using at present of course, I'm just assuming maybe 23" 1920*1080). The new ASUS PG278Q gaming monitor is out if you really want to go high-performance... but that's also expensive.
 

hiz father
If I have pcie 2.0 slots, how much will i be bottlenecked i with a 980?