GPU bottle necking

[ViperCDX]

Hi,I have a core i5 3450, gtx 660 and gigabyte b75 d3h mobo
If I add another gtx 660, will my processor bottleneck my sli graphics card??

 

[cliffordcooley]

You do realize they SLI larger cards and even run tri and quad configurations.

If you had an i3, you might should worry about bottlenecking. However with an i5, I think you are good to go. Even then it would depend on how CPU intensive your games are.

 

[ViperCDX]

I was thinking about battlefield 4,AC 4 etc
also what is micro stutter?

 

[cliffordcooley]

what is micro stutter?

Wikipedia answers that better than I ever could

Micro stuttering

Micro stuttering is a term used in computing to describe a quality defect that manifests as irregular delays between frames rendered by the GPU(s), causing the instantaneous frame rate of the longest delay to be significantly lower than the frame rate reported by benchmarking applications, such as 3DMark, as they usually calculate the average frame rate over a longer time interval. In lower frame rates when this effect may be apparent the moving video appears to stutter, resulting in a degraded gameplay experience in the case of a video game, even though the frame rate seems high enough to provide a smooth experience. Single-GPU configurations do not suffer from this defect in most cases and can in some cases output a subjectively smoother video compared to a multi-GPU setup using the same video card model. Micro stuttering is inherent to multi-GPU configurations using alternate frame rendering (AFR), such as nVidia SLi and AMD CrossFireX but can also exist in certain cases in single-gpu systems.

<snip>

 

[slh28]

Looking at the specs of your mobo it only supports Crossfire and not SLI so you might want to do a bit more research on that.

Microstuttering isn't that much of a problem nowadays especially on Nvidia cards.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Looking at the specs of your mobo it only supports Crossfire and not SLI so you might want to do a bit more research on that.

Forgive my ignorance on this subject, but is that not where the bridge comes in?

I was under the impression that when a motherboard supports SLI or XF, the bridge may not be necessary (depending on GPU design).

 

[St1ckM4n]

Bridge just links the cards together, so the cards can use full bandwidth on output, and not I/O between each other.

At least that's my understanding.

 

[ViperCDX]

@slh28- yeah you are right, it only supports cross fire, bad luck

 

[slh28]

Forgive my ignorance on this subject, but is that not where the bridge comes in?

I was under the impression that when a motherboard supports SLI or XF, the bridge may not be necessary (depending on GPU design).

Hmm not sure, never heard of anyone not using an SLI or CF bridge (since most cards come with one anyway).

For higher end cards and/or high resolutions and refresh rates you definitely want a bridge, I actually use two CF bridges between my two cards because a single bridge isn't enough for 2560x1440 @110Hz.