Bottleneck explain please?

[rans]

Hi,
is the bottleneck = poor performance? cause i got amd a8 6600k + gtx 960
and they say i'm getting low fps because it bottleneck. cpu is not to strong for gtx 960

is it possible to underclock the gpu to match the cpu? will it gives me better performance?

[ThatOneRussian]

Thats not how it works the only thing you could do is make you get worse peformance

[Castdeath97]

No under clocking the GPU will give you worse off performance, that's not the way bottlenecking works. You only fail to achieve the maximum potential of your card but you still gain some performance say over a 750 ti but just not as much when you have a i5.

[rans]

so 
if i have a 750 it'l give me good performance compare to 960 USING a8 6600k ?

[incarnate]

You have a major misunderstanding of what a bottleneck is. A bottleneck doesn't mean poor performance. It means one part is limiting the performance of another part. It is possible to have good performance while you have a bottleneck.

Having explained that. Yes you are being bottlenecked. Your cpu is too weak. It is limiting the framerate do your graphics card isn't being fully used. Even if you change graphics cards, you won't gain performance. To increase your performance you'll need to get a better cpu since that is the part that is limiting your performance

[Guest SkyFall]

Hi,

is the bottleneck = poor performance? cause i got amd a8 6600k + gtx 960

and they say i'm getting low fps because it bottleneck. cpu is not to strong for gtx 960

is it possible to underclock the gpu to match the cpu? will it gives me better performance?

 

"Bottleneck" means that one part limits the performance of the other.

In your case, your graphics card can't bring its full potential with your CPU.

[ybriK]

Your CPU is limiting the GPU in some heavy games, if you want to fully utilize your GPU you're going to have to overclock it given that your motherboard supports overclocking and you have a decent cooler or upgrade to a brand new/used intel platform. If you want some statistics get GPU-Z and run the games you experience poor performance, play for about 5 minutes and look at the GPU Usage in GPU-Z, you'll notice how it's not stable most of the time (99%).

 

Perhaps lowering the resolution and game settings give you some boost in performance eg. 1280x720 or 1366x768 and medium settings no anti-aliasing.

[rans]

Your CPU is limiting the GPU in some heavy games, if you want to fully utilize your GPU you're going to have to overclock it given that your motherboard supports overclocking and you have a decent cooler or upgrade to a brand new/used intel platform. If you want some statistics get GPU-Z and run the games you experience poor performance, play for about 5 minutes and look at the GPU Usage in GPU-Z, you'll notice how it's not stable most of the time (99%).

 

Perhaps lowering the resolution and game settings give you some boost in performance eg. 1280x720 or 1366x768 and medium settings no anti-aliasing.

Well i've done that before the GPU-Z i monitor it while im playing. and gpu load dont go up it remains below 30% when playing assassin's creed 2(which gives me low fps) but on Mafia 2 the gpu load goes upto 90+% (which gives me good Fps)

[ybriK]

Well i've done that before the GPU-Z i monitor it while im playing. and gpu load dont go up it remains below 30% when playing assassin's creed 2(which gives me low fps) but on Mafia 2 the gpu load goes upto 90+% (which gives me good Fps)

Assassin's Creed 2? That's a really old game, you shouldn't be having trouble running that on your hardware at max settings 1080p 60+ FPS... I've never played it so it's probably not optimized well at all. Have you tried lowering your settings?

[ybriK]

Also another note make sure you have the latest version according to pcgamingwiki version 1.01 improves performance on multi-core systems which your CPU being a multi-core processor.

http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Assassin's_Creed_II

 

http://www.gamershell.com/download_56588.shtml

[rans]

Assassin's Creed 2? That's a really old game, you shouldn't be having trouble running that on your hardware at max settings 1080p 60+ FPS... I've never played it so it's probably not optimized well at all. Have you tried lowering your settings?

Btw the setting in ac 2 is already medium. and running at 1368x768 resolution. normal fps i got in there is 40-55 i rarely get a 60fps

[Demonking]

Btw the setting in ac 2 is already medium. and running at 1368x768 resolution. normal fps i got in there is 40-55 i rarely get a 60fps

at that low resolution expect low GPU usage.

[rans]

at that low resolution expect low GPU usage.

Ahh. so i need to increase my resolution to increase gpu usage? and itl increase fps? is that right?

[ybriK]

at that low resolution expect low GPU usage.

Wat...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

[agent_x007]

I am in camp that say "bottleneck" therm is used wrongly.
BUT I can understand that it's easier to say than for example "non-optimised CPU (GPU) setup" for the job at hand 

GPU Bottleneck in pictures :
1) True bottleneck :
Games : LINK,
Benchmark : LINK/LINK (notice GPU Temperature change between scores)

2) A "CPU place" (in game) : LINK 
Check lower than max. GPU clock and 100% CPU utilisation in Task Manager.
Earlier (what can be seen in "GPU Clock" chart), GPU was boosting to max speed (ie. 1020MHz in my case), so it wasn't bound by anything.
Interesting, don't U think ?

So :
If U have a modern CPU (like... i5 760 or Pentium G3258), and U R only seeing the second case (ie. CPU intensive places), that is NOT a bottleneck.
It just means that GPU isn't utilised at 100% because this specific area needs more CPU power than GPU power.
Around the corner, situation may be reversed and GPU is working at 100% when CPU is chilling at 70% (for example).
Does that mean CPU is bottleneck'ed and GPU is bottlenecked as well ?

Simple answer when U have a problem with CPU/GPU utilisation :
Next time when U buying/matching CPU/GPU, think about games U play and less about "what I would like to buy".
To be clear : No one can get it 100% right (ie. a CPU/GPU combo that isn't bound in all games that are now, and will be played in the future), because a lot of this is on programers side of things (when they screw up, no amount of hardware can "fix" it).

[incarnate]

Ahh. so i need to increase my resolution to increase gpu usage? and itl increase fps? is that right?

The only thing that will increase your fps is a new cpu. The cpu you have can only handle 55 fps in that game. Increasing the resolution and graphics settings will increase the cpu usage and make the game look better, but it won't increase framerate. It won't decrease the fps either, until you max out the gpu.

The reason you are bottlenecked is because your cpu can't send instructions to the gpu faster. Every time the gpu is done working a set of instructions, a draw call is issued to the cpu to send more. These draw calls are run on a single core. Your cpu core that is being used to handle the draw calls can't issue them any faster, so your gpu has to wait.

your fps will never go higher in ac2 than it already is unless you get a faster cpu. If you turn up the graphics, the performance won't go down until your graphics card can't keep up.

[Akamii]

Bottleneck means there's a hardware part limiting another part from reaching its maximum aka 100%, and it most commonly between the CPU and the GPU.
For example if your CPU dual-core or any old poor cpu, while ur GPU is gtx 970 or something like that, the CPU will prevent the GPU from reaching its maximum aka 100%, because simply the CPU cant handle the amount of fps that the GPU is throwing, so it will limit the fps to a specific amount, which will make the GPU usage remains at a specific percentage "30% for example", while the CPU usage would be 100% which called "bottlenecking".

actually there will be a bottleneck in ur system anyway, but the good bottlenecking is a bottleneck to ur CPU not to ur GPU, which means the GPU would be bottlenecking "aka prevent" the CPU from reaching 100%, and that should be cool and fine and you can call it normal.

So you should get a CPU that doesnt prevent the GPU from reaching 100%, which means ur GPU should be 100% while ur CPU should be under 100% anyhow.

In ur case, i would recommend you to get A10-series cpu, since ur socket is FM+ 
also i wonder how ur A8-6600k is bottlenecking gtx 960 .. kinda weird for me.. so check if ur APU graphic card is disabled or no..

 

but if you still insist on getting new cpu, then buy this one "AMD A10-7700K" it should work fine with that gtx 960.

 

[BrightCandle]

Its worth noting that there is always a bottleneck, everyone has a system that is bottlenecked in some regard. You can have the fastest CPU and GPU in the world today and it will still limit the frame rate somewhere because one of the components can't keep up. Its extremely rare infact that all components are at 100%, its also extremely rare to see the CPU and GPU running near capacity. Every game, and indeed every different scene within a game are different. Sometimes its the CPU limiting the frame rate, sometimes its the GPU. Crysis 3 is a classic example of a game that is mostly GPU limited but there is a scene in tall grass where the movement of the grass is CPU calculated and it performs awful on 4 core, better on 4c8t and much better on 6c12t CPUs, for that one scene everyone had a CPU bottleneck.

 

When you have an unbalanced machine you will find that some games perform really well and then the next game will perform awful, that is because developers make games targeting combinations of hardware that are roughly the same age and price parity points. So when you pair a very old CPU with a modern GPU you will sometimes get great performance and sometimes quite poor performance depending on which mix of usage the game uses. Most game reviews don't tell you which a game is because they too focus on a particular contemporary mix of hardware.

 

The best way to see what extent the problem exists is just the sensors tab of GPU-Z or Afterburner with the GPU usage. If its below 90% then your frame rate is being held back by the CPU and not the GPU. You may find that some graphics settings however are CPU heavy so turning them down will help with the frame rate, graphics settings are not 100% GPU.

[Centurius]

Wat...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

At lower resolutions the CPU has a relatively higher load than the GPU. Higher resolutions are a strain on the latter and not really the former.

[Nena Trinity]

Get a 760K or a 860K!