Educate me on this.

[UnklenownUser]

I got an RTX 3060 VENTUS 2X 12G OC, and i need to know how limited (or bottlenecked) it is. My question is which of all these is the biggest limiting factor of the video card.

 

Here's my PCs specifications:

Motherboard: Aorus Elite B450

CPU: Ryzen 5 3600 (Mid-range CPU of 2019 if im not mistaken)

PSU: (See image below)

 

Here's the list of factors i think are a limiting to the GPU:

- Motherboard has a PCIe Gen 3.0 x16 graphics slot compared the GPU that uses Gen 4.0, so it will run as fast as a Gen 3.0 will allow for. Heard there's no considerable difference between these, like maybe a 5% difference.

- PSU is connected to the GPU by a male 6-pin PCI-e cable despite the 8-pin female slot the GPU has. So i think that plays a factor into its limit by the power it receives, not sure on this.

- At least according to a couple of bottleneck web sites i seen, the GPU got a bottleneck between 10-20% from the CPU. But im not sure about this.

 

Does SSD count into this? It's a Kingston A400 SATA SSD of 240 GBs. Part of me thinks its reading and writing speeds could be a contributing factor. That's why i need to be educated on this.

 

Excuse my ignorance or if im doing something terrible on my build. But that's why i came here to ask. Thanks in advance.

[Middcore]

20 minutes ago, UnklenownUser said:

I got an RTX 3060 VENTUS 2X 12G OC, and i need to know how limited (or bottlenecked) it is. My question is which of all these is the biggest limiting factor of the video card.

 

Here's my PCs specifications:

Motherboard: Aorus Elite B450

CPU: Ryzen 5 3600 (Mid-range CPU of 2019 if im not mistaken)

PSU: (See image below)

 

Here's the list of factors i think are a limiting to the GPU:

- Motherboard has a PCIe Gen 3.0 x16 graphics slot compared the GPU that uses Gen 4.0, so it will run as fast as a Gen 3.0 will allow for. Heard there's no considerable difference between these, like maybe a 5% difference.

3060 can't come remotely close to saturating the bandwidth of PCIe 3.0 x16, this is making no difference.

 

 

20 minutes ago, UnklenownUser said:

- PSU is connected to the GPU by a male 6-pin PCI-e cable despite the 8-pin female slot the GPU has. So i think that plays a factor into its limit by the power it receives, not sure on this.

You're lucky the GPU runs at all. Replace your PSU immediately. 

 

20 minutes ago, UnklenownUser said:

- At least according to a couple of bottleneck web sites i seen, the GPU got a bottleneck between 10-20% from the CPU. But im not sure about this.

Bottleneck calculator websites are universally nonsense. 

 

[freeagent]

If it helps I am running my 4070Ti at 4.0 x8, which is like 3.0 x16 and haven't really noticed anything real world that would bother me much.

[starsmine]

All computers are 100% bottlenecked 100% of the time

for any given workload you are limited by something, this does not harm anything, but its a mathematical reality otherwise you would do a task in 0 time and your framerate would be infinity.

Sometimes the CPU is waiting on data from your disk drive so it stalls out.
Sometimes the GPU is waiting for draw calls from the CPU
sometimes the CPU is sending so many draw calls to the GPU it has to yeet a bunch out and just not draw a frame and move on to the one after that.

you do not need to feel any requirement to be in the last situation for all workloads. you can ALWAYS change a game workload to be GPU limited with tools like DSR, as in you can make it render the game at like 6k and then downscale it to your montitors resolution.
you can even use DLSS DSR so you do DLSS to that target resolution and then render down, this is a form of SSAA but easier to run. 

PCIe speed does not significantly effect the performance of most GPU workloads unless you overflow the VRAM and now your game render data is sitting in System Ram, your bandwidth every time you need that data to render becomes the PCIe Bus rather then the memory bus on the card.

CPUs( and GPUs)
compute like this

they go is the data in the register? no, check l1 data cache, stall for picoseconds, is the data in the l1 data cache? no, STALL for nanoseconds is it in l2? no STALL HARDER (80-200 ns) is it in ram? no? STALL FOR microseconds, grab it from the Solid disk drive? oh shit is it not there? stall for milliseconds as it checks the HDD or a network location. (this last step is why in some cases a SSD can help frame rates, but a game should ideally not need to do this outside of loading a new zone, you can take adavantage of the SSD latency by doing load zones differently though like on the PS5 and directStorage)

GPUs get their draw calls over the PCIe bus, and CPUs need information in the frame buffer for calculations. its almost impossible to saturate even a pcie2 x 16 bus outside of edge cases doing this, but the big issue is if it needs texture or a model not in vram, it has to go to and grab a gigabyte of information and now you have to stall, which will cause a stutter or the game engine will just not draw the texture. 

[ulookuglynoob]

1 hour ago, UnklenownUser said:

I got an RTX 3060 VENTUS 2X 12G OC, and i need to know how limited (or bottlenecked) it is. My question is which of all these is the biggest limiting factor of the video card.

 

Here's my PCs specifications:

Motherboard: Aorus Elite B450

CPU: Ryzen 5 3600 (Mid-range CPU of 2019 if im not mistaken)

PSU: (See image below)

 

Here's the list of factors i think are a limiting to the GPU:

- Motherboard has a PCIe Gen 3.0 x16 graphics slot compared the GPU that uses Gen 4.0, so it will run as fast as a Gen 3.0 will allow for. Heard there's no considerable difference between these, like maybe a 5% difference.

- PSU is connected to the GPU by a male 6-pin PCI-e cable despite the 8-pin female slot the GPU has. So i think that plays a factor into its limit by the power it receives, not sure on this.

- At least according to a couple of bottleneck web sites i seen, the GPU got a bottleneck between 10-20% from the CPU. But im not sure about this.

 

Does SSD count into this? It's a Kingston A400 SATA SSD of 240 GBs. Part of me thinks its reading and writing speeds could be a contributing factor. That's why i need to be educated on this.

 

Excuse my ignorance or if im doing something terrible on my build. But that's why i came here to ask. Thanks in advance.

Just get a new psu and you will be fine. the r5 3600 isn't even that bad. The SSD doesn't really bottleneck the GPU, maybe just slower loading times.

[thekingofmonks]

2 hours ago, UnklenownUser said:

- At least according to a couple of bottleneck web sites i seen, the GPU got a bottleneck between 10-20% from the CPU. But im not sure about this.

Avoid those calculators, they are based on limited sets of real measurements that are often outdated.

 

What games do you play?

 

Bottlenecks depend heavily on the game and the resolution you play at.

You can watch benchmarks on YouTube and judge whether there's a bottleneck from CPU and GPU usage. Make sure their setups are not BS (no rebar, decoupled fclk or whatever) 

IIRC the 3060 should be limited by the 3600 quite significantly at 1080p, although it should be fine for 144Hz gaming.

If you need a decent upgrade, the 5700X3D is the way to go on a tight budget.

 

2 hours ago, UnklenownUser said:

- PSU is connected to the GPU by a male 6-pin PCI-e cable despite the 8-pin female slot the GPU has. So i think that plays a factor into its limit by the power it receives, not sure on this.

Nah, it does not. The 2 extra pins are only for sense and ground. I'm surprised it boots at all and doesn't crash, though. Normally, a GPU would complain about it.

That PSU looks sus, though. It doesn't even have a fake efficiency rating. Unless that PSU has good reviews from legit testers, you probably want to replace it. And not with a branded one but with a provably reliable one.

[UnklenownUser]

13 hours ago, thekingofmonks said:

Avoid those calculators, they are based on limited sets of real measurements that are often outdated.

 

What games do you play?

 

Bottlenecks depend heavily on the game and the resolution you play at.

You can watch benchmarks on YouTube and judge whether there's a bottleneck from CPU and GPU usage. Make sure their setups are not BS (no rebar, decoupled fclk or whatever) 

IIRC the 3060 should be limited by the 3600 quite significantly at 1080p, although it should be fine for 144Hz gaming.

If you need a decent upgrade, the 5700X3D is the way to go on a tight budget.

 

Nah, it does not. The 2 extra pins are only for sense and ground. I'm surprised it boots at all and doesn't crash, though. Normally, a GPU would complain about it.

That PSU looks sus, though. It doesn't even have a fake efficiency rating. Unless that PSU has good reviews from legit testers, you probably want to replace it. And not with a branded one but with a provably reliable one.

Sure thing, np avoiding those calculators.

As for games, for the moment i play Warhammer Vermintide 2 and Warhammer 50k Darktide. 1080p resolution.

 

Do you think the EVGA SuperNOVA 750 GA, 80 Plus Gold 750W would do it?

[UnklenownUser]

14 hours ago, ulookuglynoob said:

Just get a new psu and you will be fine. the r5 3600 isn't even that bad. The SSD doesn't really bottleneck the GPU, maybe just slower loading times.

You think the EVGA SuperNOVA 750 GA, 80 Plus Gold 750W would do it?

[UnklenownUser]

15 hours ago, Middcore said:

3060 can't come remotely close to saturating the bandwidth of PCIe 3.0 x16, this is making no difference.

 

 

You're lucky the GPU runs at all. Replace your PSU immediately. 

 

Bottleneck calculator websites are universally nonsense. 

 

Do you think the EVGA SuperNOVA 750 GA, 80 Plus Gold 750W would be enough? What's your opinion on it?

[ulookuglynoob]

31 minutes ago, UnklenownUser said:

You think the EVGA SuperNOVA 750 GA, 80 Plus Gold 750W would do it?

It's alright. Look at this: https://cultists.network/140/psu-tier-list/

[UnklenownUser]

6 hours ago, ulookuglynoob said:

It's alright. Look at this: https://cultists.network/140/psu-tier-list/

I see its marked with a [1], indicating the following:

[1] Units experiencing tripping issues with high transient power draw GPUs like AMD Vega, 6900 XT and NVidia RTX3080 / 3080 Ti / 3090. Generally fixed in newer batches

 

Can you explain what this means? What difference does it make in performance? Like maybe a fps drop spike that lasts half a second or what?

Would that include the 3060 too?

[starsmine]

5 minutes ago, UnklenownUser said:

I see its marked with a [1], indicating the following:

[1] Units experiencing tripping issues with high transient power draw GPUs like AMD Vega, 6900 XT and NVidia RTX3080 / 3080 Ti / 3090. Generally fixed in newer batches

 

Can you explain what this means? What difference does it make in performance? Like maybe a fps drop spike that lasts half a second or what?

Would that include the 3060 too?

It doesnt have any effect in computing performance. 

it has to do with when when the load spikes on those high power cards, for microseconds they would pull multiple 100s of Watts more then they would at steady state due to a combination of capacitence and inductive coupling., and if those PSUs were not configured to expect it, would assume a short and do a (OCP) Over Current Protection shut down.

No you do not need to worry about the 3060, the transient is in ratio to the the size/power/capacitive factor of the the die. the 3060 and all chips do have transient power draws, but some chips like the 3080 have disporportionatly high to what most people expected. 

[UnklenownUser]

11 minutes ago, starsmine said:

It doesnt have any effect in computing performance. 

it has to do with when when the load spikes on those high power cards, for microseconds they would pull multiple 100s of Watts more then they would at steady state due to a combination of capacitence and inductive coupling., and if those PSUs were not configured to expect it, would assume a short and do a (OCP) Over Current Protection shut down.

No you do not need to worry about the 3060, the transient is in ratio to the the size/power/capacitive factor of the the die. the 3060 and all chips do have transient power draws, but some chips like the 3080 have disporportionatly high to what most people expected. 

Awesome reply, thank you.

 

Do the 40 series GPUs also have transient power draws like the aforementioned 3080 onwards cards? Because i'm also looking for a future-proof PSU with my guess being of at least 850W for the 40 series.

[Hinjima]

Just now, UnklenownUser said:

Awesome reply, thank you.

 

Do the 40 series GPUs also have transient power draws like the aforementioned 3080 onwards cards? Because i'm also looking for a future-proof PSU with my guess being of at least 850W for the 40 series.

Not at all.  RTX 4000 series is incredibly stable and efficient. The engineers really did a good job on this one.

I ran a overclocked RTX 4080 with a 750w PSU for 2 years without issue.

Paired with a 7700x I saw a round 420-480w full system power draw during gaming.

[starsmine]

12 minutes ago, UnklenownUser said:

Awesome reply, thank you.

 

Do the 40 series GPUs also have transient power draws like the aforementioned 3080 onwards cards? Because i'm also looking for a future-proof PSU with my guess being of at least 850W for the 40 series.

the 40 series does, but its not as significant. After the problems with the 30 series there was additional effort in minimizing the transient load so that it should not be an issue like with previous generations. All chips have a transient load, but you are going very into the weeds of electrical engineering with circuit analysis and control loops. 

https://www.richtek.com/Design Support/Technical Document/AN038

Generally we like to pretend impulses, like a light switch is just On off, are just that, and it happens in infinitesimal time. Real world a step function is not real. Step functions just make the math so much easier. 

[UnklenownUser]

13 hours ago, starsmine said:

the 40 series does, but its not as significant. After the problems with the 30 series there was additional effort in minimizing the transient load so that it should not be an issue like with previous generations. All chips have a transient load, but you are going very into the weeds of electrical engineering with circuit analysis and control loops. 

https://www.richtek.com/Design Support/Technical Document/AN038

Generally we like to pretend impulses, like a light switch is just On off, are just that, and it happens in infinitesimal time. Real world a step function is not real. Step functions just make the math so much easier. 

Found this one: https://thermaltakeusa.com/products/toughpower-gf1-850w-tt-premium-edition-ps-tpd-0850fnfagu-1

But can't seem to spot it on the tier list. Is that list viable?

 

This is the closest i found on that list to the one i shared you: Thermaltake | Toughpower GF1 OEM [AH3VSG-V]

 

If right, then the one i linked here is high-tier without any remarks?

[starsmine]

1 hour ago, UnklenownUser said:

Found this one: https://thermaltakeusa.com/products/toughpower-gf1-850w-tt-premium-edition-ps-tpd-0850fnfagu-1

But can't seem to spot it on the tier list. Is that list viable?

 

This is the closest i found on that list to the one i shared you: Thermaltake | Toughpower GF1 OEM [AH3VSG-V]

 

If right, then the one i linked here is high-tier without any remarks?

Its in A tier, But also, I really wouldnt think to much about the differences between the tiers



tier C PSUs are godlike to the PSUs we had on the market just 6 years ago. I think one of the biggest flaws from their website is that a lot of people think some PSUs are worse then they actually are based off of that chart. Actually A lot of people think that, its not communicated well. Tier A isnt just above average, its pretty much full on gilding the lily. 

like the seasonic S12II Bronze was considered one of the best PSUs you could buy back in 2010, now all its varients are on the E list (and rightly so,  its wierd UVP protection not fully functioning is why mine died in 2021, after a long 10 year life). Not saying we shouldnt expect better over time, just to know where we came from. 

[Ha-Satan]

IIRC, the Tier List has not been updated in a year or more so it might not reflect the latest models.

 

If you want to find an actual professional review of a PSU you intend to buy, try to find a review from a guy named Aris Mpitziopoulos (aka cmaris on some websites). He writes PSU reviews for a bunch of different websites and also runs the Cybenetics lab, which rates PSUs on a bunch of different factors such as noise and efficiency.

 

If Aris says a PSU is trustworthy, it's trustworthy.

 

With regards to bottlenecks: As others have said, the bottleneck in your PC will shift depending on the task in question. My suspicion is that with the 3600 and 3060, you'll be CPU-limited some of the time and GPU-limited some of the time at 1080p. This isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, it just is.

 

That said, you don't have to take my word for it. You can figure out whether you are CPU- or GPU-limited in any particular game by following the steps outlined in this video: