question Is my CPU bottlenecking my GPU?

[Omnirid]

I built my pc a few years ago. I showed one of my friends my build and he says that my cpu is bottlenecking my gpu. I didn't know this and asked him how since I'm not that familiar with the topic All he said is that it's because I'm using an I5 but I didn't know what that meant. He just kept saying it was because it was an I5.
 

Can someone explain this to me? I don't really understand how and why. And how can I avoid to make the same mistake for future builds?

 

My part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Ominirid/saved/FczqsY

Thanks

 

[Eigenvektor]

Bottleneck in this case means your GPU can't run at 100% performance because the CPU can't send data to it fast enough. But it's not as a simple as "you have an i5, therefore you have a bottleneck".

 

I have an i5-3570K paired with an RX 480, which is more or less equivalent to a GTX 1060. Except my CPU is even slower than yours. I have a slight bottleneck in some games, but most work just fine.

 

How do you tell there's a bottleneck? Use something MSI Afterburner to see your GPU and CPU performance. If you see e.g. the CPU (cores) running at 100% and the GPU is running at 50%, that would be a bottleneck. The GPU is underperforming because the CPU is too slow. If the GPU is running at or close to 100%, no bottleneck.

 

Bottomline: It depends on the software/game and unless your measure it, you can't say for sure there's a bottleneck.

 

~edit: To avoid a bottleneck, do some research before you buy (read benchmarks etc.). The more powerful your GPU is, the more powerful the CPU needs to be, in general.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

21 minutes ago, Omnirid said:

I built my pc a few years ago. I showed one of my friends my build and he says that my cpu is bottlenecking my gpu. I didn't know this and asked him how since I'm not that familiar with the topic All he said is that it's because I'm using an I5 but I didn't know what that meant. He just kept saying it was because it was an I5.
 

Can someone explain this to me? I don't really understand how and why. And how can I avoid to make the same mistake for future builds?

 

My part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Ominirid/saved/FczqsY

Thanks

 

There is no for sure way to prevent bottlenecks. All you can really do is pair hardware that's within the same class. But at the end of the day, all that really matters is whether or not you're happy with the performance you're getting. Who cares what others think. 

[Omnirid]

39 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Bottleneck in this case means your GPU can't run at 100% performance because the CPU can't send data to it fast enough. But it's not as a simple as "you have an i5, therefore you have a bottleneck".

 

I have an i5-3570K paired with an RX 480, which is more or less equivalent to a GTX 1060. Except my CPU is even slower than yours. I have a slight bottleneck in some games, but most work just fine.

 

How do you tell there's a bottleneck? Use something MSI Afterburner to see your GPU and CPU performance. If you see e.g. the CPU (cores) running at 100% and the GPU is running at 50%, that would be a bottleneck. The GPU is underperforming because the CPU is too slow. If the GPU is running at or close to 100%, no bottleneck.

 

Bottomline: It depends on the software/game and unless your measure it, you can't say for sure there's a bottleneck.

 

~edit: To avoid a bottleneck, do some research before you buy (read benchmarks etc.). The more powerful your GPU is, the more powerful the CPU needs to be, in general.

Thanks I ran MSI Kombustor in a stress test I got this in the test. My gpu is running at 99% so this means that it's not bottlenecked then right?
Again thanks for the advise.

[Omnirid]

36 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

There is no for sure way to prevent bottlenecks. All you can really do is pair hardware that's within the same class. But at the end of the day, all that really matters is whether or not you're happy with the performance you're getting. Who cares what others think. 

So can my gpu get bottlenecked in one application and on another one it can run at 100%?
I'm pretty happy with my first build. It's been running fine for 3 years or more thanks

[Eigenvektor]

2 minutes ago, Omnirid said:

Thanks I ran MSI Kombustor in a stress test I got this in the test. My gpu is running at 99% so this means that it's not bottlenecked then right?
Again thanks for the advise.

Yes, exactly.

 

But as I said, it depends on the particular software/game. If the game itself requires a lot of CPU, then you might still be bottlenecked because there's not as much performance to spare to keep the GPU fed.

 

For example if I run the benchmark in Shadow of the Tomb Raider I can see that for most of the benchmark, the frame rate is limited by the performance of my GPU. But in some scenes the CPU is too slow to keep up and my performance drops because the CPU is now suddenly the limiting factor.

1 minute ago, Omnirid said:

So can my gpu get bottlenecked in one application and on another one it can run at 100%?
I'm pretty happy with my first build. It's been running fine for 3 years or more thanks

Absolutely. The CPU has to both run the game's code and supply the GPU with data. If the game is more demanding CPU wise, it may not be fast enough to handle both, while games that require very little CPU on their own can do just fine.

[Omnirid]

Thank you. Gonna tell my friend hes stupid lol