will fx4100 bottleneck gtx 960

Yes, sadly. I used to have an FX-6350 teamed with a GTX 760 4GB, and there were times when the CPU bottlenecked that card. Also, the GTX 960 isn't quite as good a card as people make out. For the extra price you pay for a GTX 970 you get far more performance per £/$.

Either way you may want to look at upgrading to something like an i5 for maximum performance from those GPUs.

I don't get the 'so?' here. I answered your question and provided you with a solution - get at least an Intel i5. AMD CPUs have been out of the game for a long time. Their price is a honeytrap to new system builders, one that I fell into as well. The CPU is the heart of the PC, you can't just make do with a crappy CPU and whack high end GPUs in to cover for it. An FX 4100 is never going to fully utilise a GTX960, there is a whole lot of overhead performance that will never even be seen.

Either upgrade the CPU and go with a GTX960 (I would advise spending a bit more on a GTX970) or leave the CPU and buy something like a GT750 Ti. People often say that the GPU is the most important component for gaming, and it is - but you can't feed a decent GPU with a low-end CPU with all the will in the world.



I appreciate this is the answer you want to hear, but it's filled with inconsistencies.

"Unless you like to play in really low resolutions your not really going to notice a difference" - Low res = lower demand on the hardware, which means you're less likely to be able to see a difference? The point of expensive GPUs is to be able to run at higher resolutions so this a completely incorrect and invalid point.

"Maybe if your using a 120hz monitor other wise your not gonna notice the difference between 60fps and 90fps" - Again, a null point. You want to be able to hit a stable 60fps, not as high as it will go. That's why monitors generally come in 60hx and 144hz. For anything other than competitive gaming you want to be able to get stable rates above 60fps, and then turn Vsync on to keep the picture clear. You're just going to get screen tearing otherwise. I'd also like to point out that you won't hit 60fps with your setup which is why this is null.

"Just make sure you can max graphics settings as far as they'd to get FPS around 60" - What is this even supposed to mean? If you're looking to make the most of a GTX960 you want to be playing with graphics settings on high, minimum. Beyond that is where you will see a tradeoff between graphics quality and frame rate. This seems to suggest to just stick the card in the PC an get what you can from it.


I obviously wasn't clear enough in my first answer: Yes. The FX4100 will bottleneck the GTX960 - badly. An awful lot of what you spend on your choice of GTX960 card you might as well throw out the window as the CPU will never get close to utilising it.
If you don't want bottlenecking you have a choice:
1. Upgrade your CPU. Go to Intel, AMD CPUs are really not worth considering, with the possible exception of the FX8350, because they're geared towards multi-threaded performance which games just don't utilise enough. An i5 is great for gaming, an i7 for gaming AND video editing etc. thanks to it's hyper threading.
2. Go for a lesser card than the GTX960. Either wait for something like the GTX940/950, or pick up a GTX650/650Ti/750/750Ti

I know it's painful to hear, I've been through it, and did a whole load of research to try and disprove it, but an FX4100 is just going to hold back anything you put into your system. I just hope I've managed to tell you before you bought a GTX960.