At some point, every gamer wonders about how optimised their PC hardware configuration is. About where their performance bottleneck is. You have a bundle of PC components all singing along nicely, but somewhere in every system there lies a specific point of slow down. That weak-point where more performance power is happening on one side and all that potential performance is not carried through due to encountering weaker components within the PC?
Perhaps its the graphics card or my 4 year old processor? Maybe its the power supply unit not releasing enough juice to my CPU? Or maybe its system memory or even the motherboard.
Obviously the answer can change on a case by case, depending on what you want to use your PC for. For example, your performance bottleneck could be the CPU if you are hoping to increase the speed of turns being processed during a game like Total War 3 Kingdoms. Or maybe a future concern is that there isnt enough graphics card VRAM to power all the graphical fidelity in a game like, Cyberpunk 2077.
The key hardware components that can be responsible for computer system bottlenecks are normally the CPU, GPU or RAM. But you could also find that your system is actually being held back by one of the lesser regarded components, like the motherboard, PSU, hard drive or even RAM type. But these are harder to diagnose as the performance dampening culprits and normally if one of these are your problem then your system is pretty well optimised already. But one of the experts around GD might be able to suggest ways to tweak for better performance again. But, as always it really depends on what you want your PC to be good at. Gaming, video editing, audio processing, game development, these are a couple of ways we specialise our PCs, but perhaps you are still thinking of coin mining or just hoping to find a bargain when looking to get the best PC for some good old fashioned word processing and web browsing?
As there are so many variations and possibilities for bottlenecks in todays gaming and hardware, I wanted to put this article together so we have a place where fellow Game-Debaters can come and share tech knowledge. To help one another out around what can be quite a comprehensive question and answer. Somewhere for us to be able to post up system specs, and ask our community if we think the particular modern PC hardware setup would be good for a particular task or if there is an obvious weak point that could cause the PC bottleneck.
So in the comments post up a spec and try to follow the following format and then other GD'ers can head along and share their thoughts on the set up. Here is an example of how the spec should look.
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PC Purpose: Total War: 3 Kingdoms 1440p Ultra
CPU: Intel i5 2500K
GPU: GTX 1060
RAM: 8GB
Budget: $200
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You can add as many system components as you wish, just try and keep it succinct. For example, you could put in MOBO, for motherboard, HD for Hard Drive, PSU for Power Supply Unit. You can also add much more data as well for each component to give people even more insight into your situation.
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PC Purpose: What's the bottleneck and what could I do to improve when running Total War 3 Kingdoms on Ultra @1440p, with in battle unit numbers at max plus improving the end campaign turn speed.
CPU: Intel i5 2500K
GPU: GTX 1060 3GB VRAM
RAM: 1x8GB 1666MHz DDR3 CL10
MOBO: Aorus Z370 Gaming 3 Motherboard
Budget: £300
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Heres a blank one to copy and paste in the comments below
PC Purpose:
CPU:
GPU:
RAM:
Budget:
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If this article captures our collective interest then I will elevate it further across the site. Perhaps someone is looking for a new build and they want to post up their PC upgrade suggestion and be advised where the bottleneck might be. Or maybe a hardware suggestion upgrade that would remove the bottleneck, or maybe they are looking for a powerhouse PC for video editing and are not sure which components make the most difference, or perhaps you are just looking for a single GPU upgrade suggestion for your current setup and want to avoid any system performance wastage.
Once someone has posted up their bottleneck enquiry I invite everyone to the comments section to help each other out with suggested bottlenecks, solutions, upgrades, links to stores or even somewhere that there is background reading about a particular tech issue their rig could encounter.
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My GPU currently. Because I own 1080p monitor then buy this GPU, but then I decide to buy 4K monitor. I will upgrade on the next gen maybe.
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One thing people tend to overlook is memory size and speed. Anything below 16GB causes severe stutter and anything under 2666mhz makes for choppy gameplay
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not even close.
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Yup, 8GB is enough, but just barely, and memory speed barely matters, even for Zen CPUs as long as it's 2400Mhz or above.
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hmm let's not forget the RAM frequency itself is not so important spec, it needs to be taken into account together with CAS latency (CL) - the lower means faster ;)
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CPU on this system. Its freaking me out in open world games.
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I have gtx 940mx on my laptop with 4 gb ram and i5 7200u. I believe cpu is the first thing causing bottleneck. because i cant play thins game even on low settongs because of huge map and 64 players
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The biggest bottleneck in my system is my bank account & the lack of money in it.
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PC Purpose: Lasting the entire 9th generation (PS5) of consoles and gaming at 1080p 60fps.
CPU: Ryzen 5 3600(X)
GPU: RTX 2070 Super
RAM: 16GB DDR4 3000MHz
Budget: Around a $1000
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Well that's not a 1000$ PC, unless you cheap out on the psu, case, motherboard, ssd and hdd.
Also you want a stronger cpu and gpu than the consoles, because they get much better optimization than PC does.
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Actually scratch that just the 2070 super, r5 3600 and the ram are 800-900$.
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just look for a b350 mobo that supports zen 2 and bios update without the cpu, you could do that budget, look for a ok aftermarket gpu and a bronze psu
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He'll still need at least 1200$
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in eu you can get a 2070 super for 550 eur, 200 for the cpu and 75 for ram. my quick maths at 825...175 for a case,psu,mobo is thight but doable.
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The CPU is 210-220 euro, 3000Mhz RAM is 80 euro, the rtx 2070 super is indeed 550 euro, according to Amazon.de(or any other european Amazon). That's 850 euro, a good 600W PSU is 35-40 euro, a good enough case is 35-40 euro, a good b450 is 100 euro(example B450 Tomahawk or B450 Aurous or B450 K1), HDD is 35 euro(1TB), SSD is 40-45 euro(256GB MLC), that's a total of 1110 euro, assuming he is even in europe and we are still missing shipping from the equation.
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you can easily get away with a b350 any cheap board will do even a a320 chipset(slight performance drop off)
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It's about quality and not performance and a320's support even for Ryzen 2000 is dodgy at best, let alone Ryzen 3000.
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reckon my cpu is still good to go for the foreseeable future ?, starting to get the itch to upgrade after 3 years but id have to upgrade ram and motherboard on top which is annoying for the new sockets but any opinions?
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good thing is you have K series cpu, when you have a budget for upgrade, my suggestion is just squeeze all the juice in your cpu until it break then upgrade
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My GPUs, believe it or not. At least for the experience I wish for.
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please do tell me about all of the four games that support sli...
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much?
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You have a better machine and a better gaming experience than 99% of the people owning a PC, let alone those who only game on console. What more could you really need?
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But he said Want(Wish), not Need. I think he wanted 5k maxed out with high FPS gaming and yes the lack of SLI support cucks him in video games, but he uses them for work too if I'm not mistaken.
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Psycho is bang on the money.
Supersampling is superior to any other form of antialiasing, so I always prefer the raw resolution bump (with FXAA or TAA/TXAA on top). So yes, that would be 5K, which looks great on my 1440p screen (4 pixels downsampled to 1 for perfection). But I also have a 165Hz display - high framerates are also preferred. A mix of both is ideal, but mostly only possible in older titles and SLI titles. SLI support is...varying... Which is a shame, considering SLI got a giant boost in scaling due to NVLink taking over at 25-50x the bandwidth - I certainly noticed a difference there.
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And yeah, I work too. CUDA compute FTW. At some point I used to have 4 GPUs for that, but 2x 2080Tis render at the speed of -5x 1080Tis, so...
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Dude can you give an example of the work you do? If it's confidential or something then don't obviously but damn that rig is crazy!
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3D Archviz work, photogrammetry, fine art, photography and photo editing/manipulation, some video work, graphic design. Basically "pretty images" is my bread and butter :)
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that said, I guess I'll wait for a gpu which will be able to handle 6880x2880 (UW-5K) then
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Gonna be a few years for sure, if you want anything more than desktop and old games running at that :D
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Hi,
If I upgrade my GPU to a GTX 1060 6GB card with my current spec, can I run most games in full HD? I'm mostly interested in The Witcher 3 and Dark Souls 3.
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The CPU will bottleneck a lot if you upgrade to that
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And still he'll be getting much better performance and play games previously unplayable at all due to his current GPU.
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That's extremely debatable. Some games, yes. Newer games though, the system will struggle a lot. They might be playable but they still might be "unplayable".
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I've played dark souls 1 at 15-20fps and I did extremely well, so I don't see how 25-40fps would be a problem.
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Alright. Cool. Anyone on PC ran DS1 like trash, it was an absurdly horrendous port. That's besides the point though. Why would he spend possibly 300$ on a GPU he won't be able to use half of?
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I never ran it like trash on my PC, it was on my laptop, where most games just refuse to use my dedicated GPU... so intel HD it is...
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You'll run Dark souls 3 and Witcher 3 at 25-40fps and in less CPU intensive scenarios even higher, but for the main gameplay 25-40fps
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Only 25-40 fps? So it's not really worth to upgrade my GPU if I don't upgrade my CPU as well, just for those two games?
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Yeah the core2quad is gonna bottleneck can you overclock them? That should help 2.4Ghz is pretty low nowadays but i remember OC the core2duo's and in some situations you could gain massive performance i'm not sure how core2quads hold up nowadays though without an OC. Looking at yt at 720p you would get 25-50Fps
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I will check if I can OC, but how much can that help?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJW-KlYQ_pI&ab_channel=lmcgregoruk this tells that your CPU is bottleneck. GPU usage 50% maximum. FPS 30-40 gta v
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Overclocking that chip won't benefit you much. The best case would be to buy a new system. You will be able to play those games though, but a huge portion of your GPU will be unusable in any CPU bound scenarios, and that CPU will hit a lot of them in latest titles.
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Probably what the emperor said is true i don't think core2quads benefitted much from OC it will still bottleneck a lot for example the video i looked at Ryzen 7 2700x was getting 120+FPS while the quadcore was 25 fps avg. So a Ryzen 3600 system with 3200mhz cl16,cheap b450 motherboard would be a huge upgrade for you
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Buying a new GPU now and the rest of the system later could be a good starting point. You will definitely reap some benefits from it at least. But for the best experience you shouldn't wait to much on upgrading the rest of the system too.
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Ok, I'll try this GPU upgrade for now, and see if I like. Thank you all, you helped a lot!
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Also 450W psu will be enough?
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Which one if we are talking about a high quality one like seasonic then yes or a cheap corsair one then no. Do you know the name of the brand and the name of the PSU model? I would recommend you seasonic s12II evo 450W (non modular 45$) or seasonic focus plus 450w (modular 65$) both high quality well reviewed PSU's.
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I'd personal feel the safest with a 550W PSU rated 80+. PSU is definitely not something you should cheap out on, so definitely check some reviews when deciding which one to buy.
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That's true the 550W+ units usually have better components since 450W are really "budget" PSU's depending on who makes the PSU's usually either Seasonic or Super flower (EVGA OEM) or CTW (cheap corsair units) you might get a bad one. I would only pick between seasonic or super flower units personally they're the best.
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Alright, I will check thanks, but if I have to buy a new psu as well, then I think I'll pass this upgrade and wait to buy a new computer.
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Check which one you already have although unless you can squeeze in the seasonic 450 unit i mentioned at 45$ (if the price is similar to where you are at and if it's avalaible) i wouldn't buy a different one as their all more expensive and unreliable. But if you can't than rather wait and get a more W one later.
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I hope you guys realize that you want this guy to buy a 1060 on a 775 Socket Intel motherboard(who knows how old) and a 450w unknown retailer PSU in order for him to play games better instead of buying a full second hand upgrade of the system which he can really upgrade in the future.
Throwing a GPU from 2016 in a 2007 pc will not do good for you. You may want to buy a fire estinguisher and put it near just in case.
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lol
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I feel like I was fairly clear when I said that the best thing to do would be a completely new system, and I think majority of people recommended that too.
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Same as me i never told him buying the GPU was a good idea and since he never specified what 450W he has it's probably a 450W CTW unit which are crap. It's a bad idea with a PSU change it's fine but he will still be bottlenecked a used q9000 series is already much better than a q6000 chips. But a new system is still
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i have this psu: Thermaltake TR2 QFan 450W
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I GUESS YALL ACTUALLY DEBATED ABOUT THAT
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The CPU will bottleneck in some instances. I've ran a Q6600 before with a hd 7750 and the CPU was bottlenecking it even when overclokced. I highly recommend you run the FSB at 400Mhz and drop the multiplier to 8x so it runs at 3GHz
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Higher clockspeed will depend on your cooler. Also look for some option on the bios about "Transaction Booster" or similar, ill will decrease RAM latency. Also, if your mobo supports it, i recommend looking for a Q9000 series CPU for cheap
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It gave me a great performance boost (from 40fps on the Q6600 at 3GHz to 60fps on the Q9550 at 3.2GHz in BF1)
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Actually that PSU from thermaltake looks fine atleast on paper. It can handle a 1060 easily but i dont know who makes it and info on it is hard to find apperently thermaltake makes some good higher "quality" PSU (more expensive W ones) but for their low end it's a bit of a hit and miss but its a modern one so it has
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protection built it i wouldnt worry about it too much the PSU looks fine no need to buy the seasonic one. if you can get a 2nd hand q9000 would be good or just wait for a full system upgrade but i dont think youll have issues with the 1060 with 450w that cards pulls very little.
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It tends to flip flop because I'm always upgrading one piece at a time.
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lol
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If you two swap either gpus or cpus, one of you will end up with a great pc xd
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HA
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Depends the game. At the moment i play a lot AC odessey and i am 50/50 most times gpu but i see a lot of 100% cpu usage a lot. So both cpu n gpu
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The GPU is my bottleneck.
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I haven't noticed any bottleneck with my rig:
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for the games im playing neither my cpu or gpu nor rap. The only thing pushing me back is my HDD for the long loading times haha
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It's the GPU for me personally.
My A8-7100 can push more than enough data but the R7 M265 just isn't up to the task sadly.
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From what I see from your specs right now, your i5-6500 is causing a small but noticeable bottleneck.
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That's my friends rig, I don't own it or use it.
I only build it.
Also he sort of lost interest in games so I doubt he'd notice the difference.
And from what I recall his monitor is only 60Hz so an upgrade is not worth it.
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You say m265? Those mobility Radeon dGPUs are nothing except just openCL accelerators. Most of them are bottlenecked by the meagre bandwidth of ddr3 vram buffer.
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i had a Phenom965 with a GTX1080 division at 1080p low everything then i got a Ryzen1700 and went to EVERYTHING MAXED OUT holy **** that was a major game changer for me went on a replay every old game spree then buy alot of games spree
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A PHENOM IS EQUILVALENT TO A MODERN DAY CELERON, BUT WAS A BEAST IN ITS DAY AGAINST QUADS & FIRST GEN I CPUS
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Aye but man did it last along time. heck i was forced to retire the damn old fighter. hope the Ryzen gives me the same milage but i think Gen3 is going to completely outclass me and rumors of gen4?? 4 thread per core hot damn!!
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I just solved the bottlenck 2 days ago by buying this CPU. My old i5-4460 was struggling in Battlefield V paired with the 1060.
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That's perfect pair
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PC Purpose: 1440p gaming
CPU: Intel i5-4690K 4.2Ghz
GPU: EVGA 1080ti 11GB
RAM: 24GB DDR3-1666Mhz
Budget: $3500
Six year old z97 motherboard may be showing its age. Upgraded to a nice Dell 1440p 144mhz G-Sync monitor in June to go along with the 1080ti when my 770ti died on me. Luckily my toy fund builds up pretty well over six years of saving. Doing research for December upgrade.
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Just letting you know as a heads up i managed to see a 20%-30% uplift in games with my current processor over my 4690k at 4.4ghz then again it's 1080p but still
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3600 is fking awesome processor
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Planning on an upgrade to the 3600 as well. My biggest issue is my HDD load times though (Warhammer 2) so I'm grabbing an 860 EVO 1TB to go with it.
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if you want a platform upgrade go ryzen if not go 4rd gen i7(k) and oc
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3th
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PC Purpose: 1440 gaming
CPU: Ryzen 5 3600
GPU: RTX 2080
RAM: 2x8 DDR4 (it was 3000MHz with Ryzen 1600X, but now it's stable only at 2666)
Budget: £200
I know that i need higher resolution monitor, i have 1920x1080 now but i'm out of ideas which one to buy. Cheap but good and not smaller than 27".
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go 100£ higher and buy a 1440p 144hz monitor
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My Ryzen 3 is causing bottlenecks on open world games and my low native resolution is also responsible.
Maybe a Ryzen 5 2600 could be the best option right now ( 100€ cheaper than 3600 in my country )
Also a 1440p could be really great
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you could future proof with a 1440p 27' 144hz freesync monitor -330€