bottleneck performance?

[Itseotle]

Sounds like you may have a bit of a fill-rate problem.

Yea but even slight performance differences from hardware shouldn't account for such significant load caps. For instance, 150 MHz on your clock shouldn't suddenly make your max load go from 65% to 95%+. Your talking a 5% in clock speed vs 30% in throughput. Granted there may be other factors at play like you said, but I'm having a hard time believing the ardware I have is being bottle necked at the CPU or GPU level.

While I can't speak for Einzele, my EVGA GTX970 specs are as follows:

Interface: PCI-E 3.0x16
Pixil Fillrate: 38.1 GPixel/s
Texture Fillrate: 164.2 GTexel/s
Memory Type: GDDR5
Bus Width: 256 Bit
Memory Size: 4096 GB
Bandwidth: 224.4 GB/s

As for the rest of the system on the CPU side:

Intel Core i5 3570K
Bus Speed: 99.98 MHz
Multiplier: 16-45

Heres the info dump from CPU-Z

Processors Information
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Processor 1 ID = 0
Number of cores 4 (max 8)
Number of threads 4 (max 16)
Name Intel Core i5 3570K
Codename Ivy Bridge
Specification Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz
Package (platform ID) Socket 1155 LGA (0x1)
CPUID 6.A.9
Extended CPUID 6.3A
Core Stepping E1/L1
Technology 22 nm
TDP Limit 77.0 Watts
Tjmax 105.0 °C
Core Speed 4499.0 MHz
Multiplier x Bus Speed 45.0 x 100.0 MHz
Stock frequency 3400 MHz
Instructions sets MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, EM64T, VT-x, AES, AVX
L1 Data cache 4 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L1 Instruction cache 4 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L2 cache 4 x 256 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L3 cache 6 MBytes, 12-way set associative, 64-byte line size
FID/VID Control yes


Turbo Mode supported, enabled
Max non-turbo ratio 34x
Max turbo ratio 45x
Max efficiency ratio 16x
Min Power 60 Watts
O/C bins unlimited
Ratio 1 core 45x
Ratio 2 cores 45x
Ratio 3 cores 45x
Ratio 4 cores 45x
TSC 3400.0 MHz
APERF 4500.2 MHz
MPERF 3400.0 MHz

Chipset
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Northbridge Intel Ivy Bridge rev. 09
Southbridge Intel Z77 rev. 04
Graphic Interface PCI-Express
PCI-E Link Width x16
PCI-E Max Link Width x16
Memory Type DDR3
Memory Size 16 GBytes
Channels Dual
Memory Frequency 799.9 MHz (1:6)
CAS# latency (CL) 10.0
RAS# to CAS# delay (tRCD) 10
RAS# Precharge (tRP) 10
Cycle Time (tRAS) 27
Command Rate (CR) 2T
MCHBAR I/O Base address 0x0FED10000
MCHBAR I/O Size 19456
MCHBAR registers

Memory SPD
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

DIMM # 1
SMBus address 0x51
Memory type DDR3
Module format UDIMM
Manufacturer (ID) Corsair (7F7F9E00000000000000)
Size 8192 MBytes
Max bandwidth PC3-12800J (800 MHz)
Part number CMZ8GX3M1A1600C10
Number of banks 8
Nominal Voltage 1.50 Volts
EPP no
XMP yes
XMP revision 1.3
AMP no
JEDEC timings table CL-tRCD-tRP-tRAS-tRC @ frequency
JEDEC #1 6.0-7-7-17-24 @ 480 MHz
JEDEC #2 7.0-7-7-19-27 @ 560 MHz
JEDEC #3 9.0-9-9-25-35 @ 720 MHz
JEDEC #4 10.0-10-10-27-39 @ 800 MHz
XMP profile XMP-1600
Specification PC3-12800J
Voltage level 1.500 Volts
Min Cycle time 1.250 ns (800 MHz)
Max CL 10.0
Min tRP 12.50 ns
Min tRCD 12.50 ns
Min tWR 15.00 ns
Min tRAS 33.75 ns
Min tRC 50.63 ns
Min tRFC 260.00 ns
Min tRTP 7.50 ns
Min tRRD 7.50 ns
Command Rate 2T
XMP timings table CL-tRCD-tRP-tRAS-tRC-CR @ frequency (voltage)
XMP #1 6.0-7-7-17-25-2T @ 480 MHz (1.500 Volts)
XMP #2 10.0-10-10-27-41-2T @ 800 MHz (1.500 Volts)

DIMM # 2
SMBus address 0x53
Memory type DDR3
Module format UDIMM
Manufacturer (ID) Corsair (7F7F9E00000000000000)
Size 8192 MBytes
Max bandwidth PC3-12800J (800 MHz)
Part number CMZ8GX3M1A1600C10
Number of banks 8
Nominal Voltage 1.50 Volts
EPP no
XMP yes
XMP revision 1.3
AMP no
JEDEC timings table CL-tRCD-tRP-tRAS-tRC @ frequency
JEDEC #1 6.0-7-7-17-24 @ 480 MHz
JEDEC #2 7.0-7-7-19-27 @ 560 MHz
JEDEC #3 9.0-9-9-25-35 @ 720 MHz
JEDEC #4 10.0-10-10-27-39 @ 800 MHz
XMP profile XMP-1600
Specification PC3-12800J
Voltage level 1.500 Volts
Min Cycle time 1.250 ns (800 MHz)
Max CL 10.0
Min tRP 12.50 ns
Min tRCD 12.50 ns
Min tWR 15.00 ns
Min tRAS 33.75 ns
Min tRC 50.63 ns
Min tRFC 260.00 ns
Min tRTP 7.50 ns
Min tRRD 7.50 ns
Command Rate 2T
XMP timings table CL-tRCD-tRP-tRAS-tRC-CR @ frequency (voltage)
XMP #1 6.0-7-7-17-25-2T @ 480 MHz (1.500 Volts)
XMP #2 10.0-10-10-27-41-2T @ 800 MHz (1.500 Volts)

Would the 256 bit bandwidth cause the bottle necking? AFAIK PCI 3.0 would be impossible to saturate on a single GPU so that can't be the culprit, and when talking the CAS latency I'm assuming your talking about the VRAM? Usually you have to dig deep for those specs. But all this talk made me realize we forgot to ask the OP what there main board is. Since he stated having an i5 like myself, he would need at least an LGA 1150 which would support PCIE 3.0 as well, but I wonder if hes running in full 3.0? But I've always heard that even in x8 mode your still not going to choke to much, correct me if I'm wrong.