Bottlenecking?

hi, i recently got two games for the PC. Nascar the game 2013, and NBA 2k14. The nascar game ran as smooth as any game can get on max settings. however nba 2k14 also on high settings didnt ever get FPS over 14 during the benchmark. What i dont understand is my old graphics card was a GT 610 by evga, and now i have the gtx 660 3gb superclocked. i am using the same cpu which is old: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+. This computer was NEVER overclocked to my knowlage. I also played 2k14 with my gt 610 on low settings. I even lowered my screen resolution with my gtx 660 in the game and still got below 15 FPS. What the heck is going on here? bottlenecking? or something else?
Oh and my CPU is a dual core.

Specs:
-Raidmax Atx Case
-a7gm-s motherboard (micro-atx)
-AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
-EVGA geforce gtx 660 3GB superclocked
-4GB of DDR2 ram
-120Gb Samsung solid state drive
-1.5 WD green hard drive
-Antec BP550 power supply- maybe its BP550 plus. and its 550 watts
i have an optical drive but its not connected to the motherboard since the GPU is so big and blocks 4 spots for it.
i think those are all the specs...


I am currently majoring in computer science, so feel free to use confusing words and stuff. If i dont know what it is ill just google it. hahaha

your processor is most likely the bottle neck, you should go with a newer processor

It could be possible that (like said above) it could be your CPU. To my knowledge, is relatively old. Your graphics card is better than mine (I have an ATI Radeon HD 4770) but I think I get a better performance than you with my (quad core) AMD Athlon II X4 640 ~ 3.0 GHz. I get around 60 FPS on 1440 x 900 on max settings. I suggest picking up a new motherboard and replacing your CPU.

It could be your cpu since the game is cpu intensive more than gpu but my cpu speed is lower than yours and yet I can get 25-30 fps at medium settings with 2K13.
The hard drive reading something (scan, updates, etc.) tends to crawl the game down from my experience.

Something wrong with that. Although, the processor is quite old and that ddr2 ram is old as well.

i have a dual core processor too (pentium e5800) my vga is palit geforce 9800 1gb only and a 3gb ddr2 ram
my settings all high with 2xAA, my in game benchmark is 55 fps but accordind to fraps ive got 55-60 fps...
acctually i play 2k14 smoothly
this is the vid but sorry for the quality...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv70Z17C ... e=youtu.be

and if you say you play other game like nascar without any problem. I dont think you have a problem or bottlenecking in your pc spec...playing 2k14
you have a powerful vga compare to me...

Last edited by ruckzell17 on Wed Oct 30, 2013 1:19 am, edited 2 times in total.

Are you using any ENB?

2K is highly CPU core dependent, as you saw from the near non-change going from 610 to 660 Ti. It prefers offloading to other cores over touching the GPU.

Look at your CPU usage and GPU usage while playing. CPU will go up to 99% almost constantly, GPU will barely crack 30% load.

I, based on just observation and zero facts, think it's related to the threads to do the jersey physics calculations. They load up dual-cores with usage and create a massive bottleneck. A lot of games (like say, Batman!) will put that on the GPU, while 2K doesn't.

Definitely your CPU. IIRC your CPU is around a decade old. Think I had that same CPU from around '03-'06. If you do decide to upgrade your CPU, you'll probably need to upgrade your motherboard, and memory along it.

@benji, it's actually (usually) better for the physics to be done on the CPU instead of the GPU. Rendering as a whole is very GPU-dependent, putting the physics on the GPU is 1. slowing down rendering speed(lowering your FPS, usually by a good amount) and 2. wasting CPU potential because it'll basically just be idle(in comparison). So the 'GPU Accelerated' part of PhysX(the physics engine in the Arkham games) is pretty much just a gimmick. :\