GPU- related bottlenecking

running the cpu at max speed @stock timings wont cause any additional wear and tear so wont shorten its life the same way over clocking with high voltages does.
as got the gpu it really depends if its massivley overpowered or reasonably powered but displaying on an undersized screen it will cause some games to choke up the cpu you could for instance run starcraft 2 with a core i3 dualcore with a gtx780, max out the game and get 200 fps no problem, but try and run BF4 on the same setup the cpu would choke and throttle the gpu to under 50% resulting in fps bouncing from 5 to 50 fps.

building a balanced system is essential if your a gamer. and a simple rule of thumb for a budget build is pay x2 for the gpu you payed for the cpu max. but the more you spend on the cpu the higher you can go on the gpu.

This wont hurt anything, parts are made to spend large chunks of their life at 100% usage it will be fine, just make sure temps are in good shape. If the bottleneck is the GPU it would be more liklely to hurt the GPU than the cpu btw... (neither will be harmed if temps are fine)

what are your pc specs?

its not a written in stone rule mate just a rule of thumb for budget builds
i have a few of em... this is gonna get a bit rantish but here we go anyway...

a lot of guys here wouldnt like what i say next because they go against the general consensus.

things like sli 780ti's is just braggin rites. you loose image quality to get max fps, if you do want image quality you have to turn vsync on to get rid of the tearing and microstutter. this will limit the gpu to 60 fps on a 60hz screen which pretty much negates the second 780ti... like i said some wont like this... but its a choice fps or image quality...

120hz i hear you cry... well crysis 3 and some other ultra demanding titles wont give 60 fps minimum which means when you stick in the second card you wont get 120fps which means micro stutter. turn vsync on to get rid of it and you bounce between 60 and 120 fps (yes adaptive vsync is on the way but you need a specific kind of monitor to use it but again its currently only working on 1080p 60hz)

another fact is most people dont overclock maybe only 1-2% of pc owners do. even so the gains are minimal for the most part when they do oc. crysis 3 will give maybe 3-5 fps extra on a cpu running at 700mhz over stock. thats a 20% increase in cpu speed for a 2-3% gain in fps. so the reality is overclocking is a waste of time and electricity for gaming... great if your doing stuff like 3ds max where you get a substantial gain but in games its minimal. the results are even more dramatic when you start overclocking the gpu... especially for power consumption to gains ratios.

as i see it, if you have a cpu that runs at 2.6ghz and is an intel quad core or 3.2ghz for an amd quad module (8core) you dont need to oc anything.
yes i can hear a lot of OH's and AH!'s but hey all they gotta do is test it themselves and they will see im not lying.

the reason some manufacturers shout OC OC OC. is to shorten the life of the cpus/gpu's so we buy more. the faster you run them the higher the average temps, the quicker they develop electron leakage which in turn means you have to keep increasing the volts over the life of the cpu/gpu to keep it stable till 1 day it goes off. preferably sooner than later in the manufacturers eyes.

like i said i know this is controversial but its the state of play as i see it.

you guys feel free to give a rebuttal. just keep it clean and where possible give your proof.