CPU bottle-necks

[Brains]

Anyone have any good tests for determining how much a CPU is bottle-necking GPUs? I have two GTX260s in SLi but I'm not getting the results I feel I should be getting. I have a q9550 OC'd to 3.0GHz when I game but that still doesn't feel like it's up to the task.

[mullet]

I don't see your CPU being a bottle neck at all.

[themuddaload]

um, dude... what games do you play that this could possibly be an issue for...

if you get less than 60fps on anything, you are most definitely doing something wrong.

[Brains]

well it's not so much when I play games that I feel the hit, it's when I do any kind of video encoding, animation rendering, or CUDA programs (like folding@home). by what I read on nvidia sites and around the web, just feels like I should be getting a lot more power from my GPU than I am. I've run 3dmark and pcmark and my CPU score is just SOOOO low compared to my GPU score (like 1/4 of it almost) so I feel that when something requires my GPU to go nuts and work hard, my CPU can't tell it enough things to do OR my GPU just sends back too much info for my CPU to handle in a given moment.

just looking to see if there is some tool out there that helps determine if your CPU can handle the GPU :D

some ss's of FPS in games: (*all games with settings max'd on 1920x1200)
CoD:WaW (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v230/romariokid11/CODwaw.jpg)
Crysis (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v230/romariokid11/crysis.jpg) <----damnnn that's low - that tank level is the most FPS crushing part of that game. normally the FPS is around 60
CS:S (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v230/romariokid11/de_dust20000.jpg)
Far Cry 2 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v230/romariokid11/specs.jpg) <---old ss, back when I had vista, I've been on Win 7 since April '09
still need one of TF2 (300fps in spawns and no action areas & 60-80fps in intense spam chokepoints)

[Sung]

You should try downlocking your cpu and overclocking your cpu and test it.

DC 2.4 test
DC 2.6 test
DC 2.8 test
3.0 test
OC 3.2 test
OC 3.4 test

measure and see your gpu score changes dramatically or not.

p.s. if you are talking about TF2, don't even worry about it.. this game don't even utilize 2 cores fully.

[StarYoshi]

Sung has it right. As you overclock your CPU see how much your benchmark/framerate scores increase. If they increase proportionally to the clock increase it's a bottleneck. If not, it's not. OC'd to 3.0Ghz your Q9550 is not a bottleneck for SLI GTX 260s. At least not one with which you should concern yourself. Also yeah TF2 primarily uses 1 thread and dumps a bit off on others. If anything you should overclock your GTX 260s. They are GREAT at it. Assuming they are quality units they should get a 10-15% clock increase at least. (I've had cards that exceed 25% :P)

It's much harder and much nicer to be CPU bottlenecked than GPU when it comes to framerate :P