Bottlenecking Vs Upgrade Potential

April 2, 2014

So Ive been thinking...

A lot of people go on and on and on about how you shoulden't put bottlenecks in a system, now I'd actually like to challenge that idea as I think they can have their benefit.

So firstly I would like to say in a brand new PC you intend to build and leave to run for years, do not put in bottlenecks, keep a tight budget and make sure theres no money wasted on hardware that can't be used. HOWEVER what about PC upgrades?

I keep seeing people all over the internet and that real life place advise against certain upgrades as another componant is to weak, instead they suggest a lesser componant that wont bottleneck, but overall is not as good, so whats wrong with that? Well heres an example

Intel Pentium 3.2Ghz Dual Core (Ivybridge)

4GB RAM DDR3

Nvidia GT620

Just say a user wants to start playing games, wants to upgrade the PC to do so but does not have enough money to do it in one go, a non-bottleneck GPU upgrade could be... I dunno maybe a GT750, but why stop there? Why not go for a better GPU that will be bottlenecked by that processor, the CPU is weak anyway and will need upgrading, a better GPU in the first place does cause a initial bottleneck but also means when you upgrade the CPU you can get a much better system overall.

Its like purposely causing a bottleneck but one that will later avoid a more perminent bottleneck or general performance limitation when the upgrades are finished.

Do you see where I'm coming from here? Is it sensible to go over the top avoiding bottlenecks on old upgradable machines? Or is it better to just go for it, and get a bit of headroom for later upgrades at the risk of a slight bottleneck for the time being.

Bloodyvalley · April 2, 2014

Would you purchase a Ferrari and put bicycle wheels on it?

venturizhou · April 2, 2014

I think your thoughts about bottlenecks don't really account for the reselling of products. It's perfectly reasonable for that person to purchase a lower end card for that satisfies their needs and when they have more money they can upgrade the system later. Then sell old parts to help subsidize some of the costs. It doesn't make sense to run a higher end GPU now that you fully utilize because maybe by the time you upgrade the CPU there might be a price drop due to competition. new generation, or other market forces.

TechFan@ic · April 2, 2014

The main reason people do that is because technology gets cheaper by the month.
So a bottleneck resulting from upgrading a graphics card for example is wasted money because you're going to get the exact same performance had you bought a cheaper card & by saving money on the cheaper card you can put that towards your next upgrade to get a better CPU or an SSD for example.

In the example you gave, the highest end card that I'd recommend for a dual core Ivy Bridge Pentium is an R9 270 or a GTX 660.
Anything over that and your CPU is going to hold back the potential performance of your graphics card which in turn makes it a bad investment.|

And if you do chance upon some money in the future that allows you to upgrade your system again you can simply upgrade your CPU & sell your graphics card to replace it with a more powerful one.

Cubit481 · April 2, 2014

First of all its GTX 750...it bothered me there... ...and second that by putting a bottleneck u r not getting the performance which u paid for....so thats a loss for us...people now do OCing to get more out of what they paid for and intentionally bottlenecking will only be giving u increased latencies and overheating of some components...so building a pc with a upgrade potential is a more bonus point then that using a bottlenecked pc...