What is Bottleneck and am I Bottlenecking my system?

dd457

Distinguished
Jul 3, 2014
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18,510
Hi I'm kinda new to CPU's and GPU's so I wanted to know what this whole 'Bottleneck' thing is.
My desktop has a Intel Core i7-3770 with a Gigabyte Geforce GTX 650 Ti 2GB Graphics card and I'm not sure if I'm Bottlenecking the system or not. Thx.
 
Solution
'bottleneck' simply means one component of the system can't keep up with the rest of it.

A low end CPU with a high end GPU....the CPU can't keep up with what the GPU wants to do.
or...1GB RAM with a killer GPU and CPU....the RAM is the 'bottleneck'

How to tell? Monitor usage. Under load, if the CPU is maxed out at 100% and the GPU is idling along at 30%, the CPU may be the limiting factor in the system.
You want balance.

Your CPU and GPU are fine.
[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9XuCz1FQEU&feature=kp"][/video]

There is always a bottleneck, and whether you have one or not depends on what you are doing with that PC. If you're gaming, the GPU is the thing creating a bottleneck in your system.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
'bottleneck' simply means one component of the system can't keep up with the rest of it.

A low end CPU with a high end GPU....the CPU can't keep up with what the GPU wants to do.
or...1GB RAM with a killer GPU and CPU....the RAM is the 'bottleneck'

How to tell? Monitor usage. Under load, if the CPU is maxed out at 100% and the GPU is idling along at 30%, the CPU may be the limiting factor in the system.
You want balance.

Your CPU and GPU are fine.
 
Solution