Science behind CPU Bottlenecking?

It's really easy to tell which component is holding you back. You find this by checking usages while running whatever programs you are interested in (games). Open task manager > performance and watch the core usage graphs (not the overall usage). Run gpuz or msi afterburner to see gpu usage. When you notice an fps dip try to pay attention to which component is maxed out, either your gpu will be at 99% or you will see one or more cpu cores maxed out. Whichever component is maxed out is the bottleneck. Make sense?

As far as overclocking goes it is never safe nor guarenteed. Only the advertised speeds are guaranteed to be reached.

overclock it you have a very good cooler. honestly the only way to really tell is if you have graph up like in bf3 to monitor gpu and cpu usage. you can tell if you have a bottleneck if the cpu is lower than the gpu.

if they line up almost evenly you are good. I know my cpu isnt a huge bottleneck to my 7970 since i can see them align perfectly besides random spikes higher or lower biut not really huge spikes

For gaming your using CPU, GPU, IO(Hard drive / SSD), and usually network. Typically the hardest hit is GPU then CPU but some games that reverses. Bottlenecking is simply the game using one resource(CPU or GPU) to 100 percent while the other is not loaded very much because of waits on the other resource. It is very hard to know ahead of time because there are so many factors like the specific game, CPU and GPU combo. If you can find reviews using your CPU that would be ideal otherwise its a bit of a crap shoot. My gut feeling is for most games you will not be CPU limited.

It depends on what games will you be playing... 64 player matches of BF3-4 will cause your CPU to be a bottleneck for your system but that the extreme, for most titles the GPU will take all the load and you will not notice the difference between your CPU and a 4770k or better. Also, what's your current GPU?

I had a 4870 and a 5870 for that matter. The 4870 was a great card back in 2008-2009. Just upgrade your GPU that old card is certainly the biggest bottleneck for gaming that you have.

Also your about to see prices fall for the Nvidia GTX 780 to $499
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-gtx-780-price-drop,24886.html

Well, then, a 280x will be a HUGE performance boost, even if your CPU becomes a bottleneck in specific scenarios.

You can foresee bottlenecks for specific scenarios, you haven't told us what are you going to play in your rig.

No your rig is more then fine. First a 'bottleneck' is simply take a soda bottle, turn it upside down, that large part of Soda (Data to process) does it dump ALL out at once like if you turned your cup of coffee upside down? Or does it slowly trickle out because the 'neck' is so small, holding back the Soda / Data?

That is what happens when you get a ultra high end piece of equipment and then 'toss it ' some cheaper low end equipment like those running AMD APUs, i3 PCs and so on and trying to get 'alot of FPS' by buying a 280x and slapping it onto those low end systems because 'games only use video card' (major BS underestimation). So the Gaming Data is processing but INCLUDES 'how to move the mouse', what does a font look like to display the text in the game, etc.; these are all CPU processed, and nothing to do with the high end video card, thus get slowed down. Or for example when Online and trying to 'corrdinate' your game across the Internet, that is a processing of the different data layer (See seven layer chart) to make that data flow, again through the CPU.

The only thing you didn't list (hell nice rig FYI) was what your HDD setup is. YES this can be your bottle neck, as a rig like you got DEMANDS a SSD for the OS / Large programs, and a 'slower' (7200RPM) lage hard drives for the games / data / log files / temp directories.

The guess work is we do not know the games since you have not mentioned them and even if you do it still will be guess work for up coming tittles. Each game poses a different load on CPU and GPU resources. Some games are very CPU intense so yes in cases you could be CPU limited after you upgrade but not knowing which games it is a total guess. You are GPU limited now, that's easy to figure out from reviews. If by chance you upgrade and become CPU limited that may not be that big of an issue since you should see a very large FPS boost in any case since you will have upgraded your biggest bottleneck in current games, your GPU.

I run a WD Black caviar 500 GB. I have read that SSD drives do not improve gaming very much.
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Your disk IO generally matters little for games. However load times of new levels/maps will be much faster with an SSD but that generally isn't a big issue. Some MMO's do large loads when you cross into "zones" where you may notice a HD from a SSD.

I run a WD Black caviar 500 GB. I have read that SSD drives do not improve gaming very much.
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First answer is knowing the level of the chips. Here is a example of a testing done for Borderland2 http://www.techspot.com/review/577-borderlands-2-performance/page6.html. What do you see? Well if you told us you were trying to match a 280/290 to say a AMD Phenom II X2 what would happen? Now look for your i7Core (there isn't anything 'more' out there just newer 'generations' of the same original design), what performance do you see for EVERY i7Core?

That is how you know. There is no 'Numbers' anymore (people used to perceive of how many MegaHz meant how fast, that hasn't been a factor for years!) just how many CORES (actually CPUs) a computer had installed that increases the 'performance'. More Cores, more power, more flexibility to match to higher end equipment.

As for SSD, your COMMON MISCONCEPTION about SSDs is understandable. No they won't make 'the game faster' perse, BUT it will speed up how Windows loads the mouse driver (still need that in the game), or how fast Windows responds when your tapping A to dodge left, or how long it takes to load all those fonts in Windows so you can read the 'text' in the game each time you change levels / areas / etc. SSD is to boost Windows that it doesn't 'slow you down' while Windows thinks about, oh you want the mouse to slide left THEN right.. or Where did I put that 'Bleeding Letters Font' so I can make that scrall on the wall look cool for Joe User?

Well i could be wrong but even if you have an ssd or plain old disk drive the movements or mouse would not be slower or faster than one another. Even if it was it would be an unnoticable increase. Everything else is loaded into memory. Ssds are just nice for loading times.

Look, seriously I am not going to itemize every single possible CPU and it is pretty obvious by looking at the charts yourself, or any of the 'CPU Performance charts' (google it) that AMD always is below the iCore series, the fastest AMD chip meets at the i5Core level. Intel states on thier own website (again just type it in yourself intel.com) that the i3 Core is for low end use, i5 Core medium level, and i7 is performance. The fastest CPU Core is i7 Series period, so any marrying of ANY video card to a i7 core isn't going to bottleneck because of the CPU. The same can be said of i5 because no games yet (though BF4 Beta was pretty damn demanding) needs 8 cores to run anyway, so still wouldn't 'bottleneck' the game perse.

Based on your questions your not understanding how the computer works anyway, and your trying to quantify absolutes centering around 'if I spend the most money on my video card then.... " performance parameters, and you be wrong every time.

First the software (OS, Game, Drivers, etc.) are stored on the Hard Drive, if you have a 5400RPM 1TB drive, you just killed any performance because it will take forever to load each item (Bottleneck) as it is needed (next level, font to display a sign in the game, drivers to let the game play over the network connection, etc.). So first people usually put the OS/Large software on a SSD to eliminate that issue (BF3 asks Windows hey how do I render the Aircraft Carrier's Logo, Windows says wait a minute let me look through ALL the fonts to find the right one, for example), and a second drive as the Game/Storage/Logs/Temp files. Again THIS DOES NOT SPEED UP GAMES, just REMOVES the bottleneck caused by the OS/Drivers/Loading.

Next is CPU+Mobo+Memory; because the data runs all over those wires on the Mobo, and if the chipset/setup sucks on how it was made, it chokes (bottlenecks) performance. For the software to be processed (CPU) it need to be 'queued' a chunk at a time (RAM), to be passed to the CPU when the CPU asks for it. If memory is across the Mobo from the CPU and not direct line, this add delay / bottle neck as it goes back and forth (imaging grocery shopping and having to constantly run from one corner to the opposite corner of the store back and forth back and forth back and forth all the time).

Further if the memory type for the computer is slow / low end quality, then the time it takes to 'queue' up the data (Say how a paratrooper is supposed to look) to be processed delays everyone else on the system. At this point the CPU comes in to play to perform 'what to do' with the Data, does it need to 'process it' (aka what is the impact value of the AK47 against your Kevlar Armor as compared to your Squadmate who doesn't have any equals X amount of Damage you will / won't receive) or does it need to be assigned to the GPU (Hey Radeon/Nvidia can you draw this Jeep on the screen for me). So if the processor is only 2 or 4 Cores, and your need say 6-8 cores to process all this data, well there is your bottleneck. If your Game is only programmed for 2 cores, then having 8 cores won't matter.

NOW take ALL that (except the Hard Drive) and put all that onto a GPU Card, that is what they did now, you have all that Memory/GPUBoard/GPU Cores doing all that 'similiar' stuff but ONLY for rendering graphics to the display. So it is dedicated to that and sole task, it doesn't care how fast or slow anything else on the system is, it just worries about how 'fast' it is getting data to it to then Render to the display. SO if you had a fast SSD, Fast CPU, Fast Memory then pass it along to a Radeon X1300, it chokes because it can't handle all that data coming at it, and you get lousy performance on the screen (the original reason people got higher end video cards that are 'mini-computers' on a board now).

Does this help clarify things? Again look for yourself on the INDEPENDENT CPU COMPARISON CHARTS, and you can see the performance levels yourself.