What kind of bottleneck will I have?

[Fireprufe15]

These are my current specs:

Operating System
    Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 32-bit
CPU
    Intel Core i5 650 @ 3.20GHz 45 °C
    Clarkdale 32nm Technology
RAM
    4.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 666MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard
    Intel Corporation DP55WG (LGA 1156) 34 °C
Graphics
    S23B370 (1920x1080@60Hz)
    SyncMaster (1600x900@60Hz)
    512MB GeForce GTS 250 (XFX Pine Group)  57 °C
Hard Drives
    932GB Seagate ST31000524AS ATA Device (SATA)    36 °C
Optical Drives
    DTSoftBusCd00
    HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH22NS50 ATA Device
Audio
    Realtek High Definition Audio

I'm thinking of getting a GTX 670 2GB, and I know there will be a bottleneck, but what kind of bottleneck should I expect? How much worse will the card perform than with a new CPU?

[rubberman]

1. Why are you running a 32-bit version of Win7 on this system?
2. What sort of "bottleneck" are you expecting? The GTX 670 should provide significantly improved performance for your graphics. If your PCIx bus cannot handle the full bandwidth of that card, then you may not experience the full performance of the card, but it should still be better than the GeForce GTS 250 you are using now.
3. A new CPU won't give you better performance unless you upgrade to and i7 with more cores, and at LEAST the same core speed (3.2GHz).

So, get the new video card, change to a 64-bit OS, and add RAM.

[Fireprufe15]

Okay thanks for the response.

1. I always had 64-bit, but after some guy fixed my PC he installed 32-bit for some reason. Do you need to format to upgrade it or can it just upgrade th system like I did from Vista to 7?
2. The PCIe bus isn't really the problem. The card is PCIe 3.0 while mine is 2.0, but the two are compatible and I've read that the card doesn't fully saturate the bandwidth of even 2.0, so I'm fine there. The real problem is, I've read that if you have a bad CPU, it can cause the graphics card to not reach it's full potential, thus the bottleneck. I don't know if this is really the case that's why I asked here.

I might upgrade to 64-bit when I have another drive to backup my files to, and I'll get myself some new RAM DIMMs when I buy the card. I just want to know if the GTX 670 can't reach it's full potential in my system, what other card can reach the potential that the GTX 670 will in my system?

[BigPaw]

However, it really does depend on what you are going to use your PC for, or its main role?

If you really want to see your PC's potential you would do well to set up a dual boot with Linux, perhaps Ubuntu. Give it a go. :)

[Fireprufe15]

I'm using my PC for gaming mostly. When more games support Linux (which they definitely will) I'll switch over, but for now Windows is still the best bet for gaming.

[BigPaw]

Yup indeed, there are very few good games for Linux. I was only suggesting that you at least try dual booting, feel the wind rushing through your hair. :D

[Fireprufe15]

I'm taking the plunge and formatting my PC to install 64-bit windows. This is scary.