How do I know which PC component is causing my poor game performance?

Marksman42

Reputable
Dec 22, 2014
1
0
4,510
Hello all, I built my own PC about a year ago and I thought I was going in the right direction in terms of performance. I found that I can't run ARMA III without horrible frame rates. Similar problems in other titles when I try to go to higher graphics settings, like BF4 or Planetside 2. Specs:

GPU: AMD Radeon HD7950 3 Gb (384bit GDDR)
CPU: AMD FX-6100 (6 x 3.30 GHz)
RAM: 4 x 4 Gb
HDD: Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s Internal HDD
Board: MSI 970A-G46 AMD 9 Series Motherboard

Might it be the HDD 7200 RPM, or maybe the motherboard? Sorry guys, I really don't know where to start to upgrade this one..
 
Solution
Download a monitoring program and see what your GPU and CPU usage are. If your GPU is only 50% used max and your CPU is 100%, then your CPU is the bottleneck.

theycallmeIRISH

Honorable
Nov 6, 2013
11
0
10,510


What are good programs for this? I've always heard of CPUZ and GPUZ. Any other recoomendations?