Is it a bottleneck?

[Kurt Mur]

Hello

I want to buy ryzen 5 7500f or 8400f and amd rx5700xt and I want to know if there will be a noticeable(medium to large) bottleneck or little to non?

[GuiltySpark_]

31 minutes ago, Kurt Mur said:

Hello

I want to buy ryzen 5 7500f or 8400f and amd rx5700xt and I want to know if there will be a noticeable(medium to large) bottleneck or little to non?

 

Welcome to the forum! 

 

Ahh yes, every beginners worst fear, the dreaded "bottleneck". 

 

Yes, its all likelyhood your GPU will be a huge bottleneck in many modern titles given its age.

 

If you can't tell, i'm poking fun just a little because this question comes up a lot and unfortunately its usually out of a misunderstanding of the nuance behind that word. (see the little blurb under my username) A bottleneck in general terms when it comes to a gaming pc is simply the single limiting factor of performance. It could be the CPU, it could be the GPU, it could be the engine of the game.. heck it could be self imposed with a framerate limiter. One thing is always true:

 

Every single system has a bottleneck somewhere, otherwise you'd have unlimited performance. Now let that sink in and it should click.

 

Back to where I mentioned your GPU, in many modern AAA games will be be your bottleneck. Thats a good thing. In most cases you want the GPU working as hard as it can with nothing else in your system holding it back from doing so. What you don't want is the the CPU or memory preventing the GPU from getting all the information it needs to work as fast as possible. The systems job (CPU, memory) is to feed the GPU so it never has to "wait". When the GPU has to wait on the rest of the system for its information, that results in unexpected dips in performance and other unwanted behaviors. Thats the problem people who go on about the "big evil bottleneck" are worried about.

 

Given you're looking at a 7500f, a relatively current Zen4 CPU (and accompanying DDR5 RAM), that chip can support and "feed" most GPU's available today. In terms of relative GPU horsepower in 2025/26, 5700xt isn't all that fast and even at only 1080p, will almost certainly be the limiting factor in most AAA titles today. 

 

 

Then, there is that nuance mentioned earlier. It would take far too much time and effort to try and explain all the ins and outs of "bottlenecks" and how they can shift and move around from game to game, settings and resolutions but this is the kind of thing you figure out on your own the longer you stay in this hobby and take interest in learning more about how your hardware works. 

 

To recap, you'll be fine. You have the CPU power with a 7500f to support a GPU upgrade in the future as well. 

 

(Don't buy Ryzen 8000 at all, its heavily compromised)

[Kurt Mur]

Hello,

You have been extremely helpful and that helped me understand everything beyond my question 

Thanks!

343 you are a genius

 

[thrasher_565]

you can spend endless amounts of money to trying to get the most out of it but really it should be the whats the best performance for the money. 

 

if say you want a boost bin and spending $2 to get it ok worth it but you can also spend $100+ to get that same boost bin. some people its there hobby and love doing it not about the money the drag racing of pc parts. 

 

but ya lots of different bottle necks. some times spending an amount now and have less performance now then upgrade later on a get that  performance then balancing it just depends. you can spend alot of extra money for not much performance if you looking for looks. 

 

a bad bottle neck would be like using an older cpu or system and upgrading it vs just buying something faster and less power but just depends. or one were you have lag or problems. 

[Eigenvektor]

No matter what you do with your computer, some component will always be the limiting factor or "bottleneck". Otherwise, you'd have unlimited performance, which is not a thing. Depending on what you do, this could be GPU, CPU, RAM, storage or even your network/internet connection.

 

When gaming you typically want the GPU to be the limiting factor, since it will usually give you more consistent performance. When you pair a very fast GPU with a very slow CPU, the GPU is often going to be underutilized, because the CPU can't send work its way quickly enough. That may result in wild performance swings, depending on how CPU intensive scene is, i.e. what work the CPU has to do on top of feeding the GPU with draw calls.

 

But that is typically only a real issue when the gap in performance is very large. For example I have a 9070 XT paired with a 5900x. In some games my CPU is the limiting factor, rather than the GPU.

 

All that does in, e.g. Doom the Dark Ages is that I'm running at 120 fps, while the GPU could actually reach 140 fps. So with a CPU upgrade the only thing that would happen is that the limiting component changes back from CPU to GPU and I get a few extra fps. Only in very CPU intensive games where the CPU is so busy with other stuff that it only rarely gets around to sending the GPU work to do could you have noticeable issues like frame rate alternating between 10-100 fps, or persistent stutters.

 

How much my CPU limits or "bottlenecks" my GPU varies per game, in-game settings and even scene by scene or level by level. In my example of Doom TDA, I'm right on the border where my performance is often limited by the GPU, but when level geometry gets less complex (less work for GPU) and/or there are many enemies on screen (CPU busy with enemy AI) can the bottleneck shift from GPU to CPU.

 

Here's a slightly older video that demonstrates at what point a CPU limit can become a real issue.

 

 

[apoKhallipsa]

5 hours ago, Kurt Mur said:

Hello

I want to buy ryzen 5 7500f or 8400f and amd rx5700xt and I want to know if there will be a noticeable(medium to large) bottleneck or little to non?

Gpu will run 100% get better one cpu would také much more than 60% circa

[Pusbucket]

7 hours ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

Every single system has a bottleneck somewhere, otherwise you'd have unlimited performance. Now let that sink in and it should click.

 

Back to where I mentioned your GPU, in many modern AAA games will be be your bottleneck. Thats a good thing. In most cases you want the GPU working as hard as it can with nothing else in your system holding it back from doing so. What you don't want is the the CPU or memory preventing the GPU from getting all the information it needs to work as fast as possible. The systems job (CPU, memory) is to feed the GPU so it never has to "wait". When the GPU has to wait on the rest of the system for its information, that results in unexpected dips in performance and other unwanted behaviors. Thats the problem people who go on about the "big evil bottleneck" are worried about.

 

 

 

Great explanation.

Good example, my system, i5-12600KF, 16 gig ram paired with an RTX 2060 gives good performance in most titles I've tried. 

One gives a clear "bottleneck" situation that points to ram as the issue.

Hogwarts Legacy on High setting gives me frame rates of 66-80's with GPU usage at 95%-100%, CPU in "mellow" scenes with no transitions at ~10-15% usage. All as it should be. Even in "fights" it stays about this level of usage.

BUT whenever I run around and force fast scene changes (running through all levels of the school for example) gpu stays at 100%, CPU ramps up to 50-60% and my poor SSD gets the living crap hammered out of it as it tries to keep stuff loading. Game still runs smooth, a testament to the coders, but it beats my system like a redheaded stepchild to keep up.

Hogwarts is a memory hog, but it clearly illustrates a "bottleneck" situation on my system.

Clearly a ram bottleneck. Bet if I went to 36 gigs cpu would stay around 15% and not hammer the drive constantly.

[Dedayog]

10 hours ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

 

Welcome to the forum! 

 

Ahh yes, every beginners worst fear, the dreaded "bottleneck". 

 

Yes, its all likelyhood your GPU will be a huge bottleneck in many modern titles given its age.

 

If you can't tell, i'm poking fun just a little because this question comes up a lot and unfortunately its usually out of a misunderstanding of the nuance behind that word. (see the little blurb under my username) A bottleneck in general terms when it comes to a gaming pc is simply the single limiting factor of performance. It could be the CPU, it could be the GPU, it could be the engine of the game.. heck it could be self imposed with a framerate limiter. One thing is always true:

 

Every single system has a bottleneck somewhere, otherwise you'd have unlimited performance. Now let that sink in and it should click.

 

Back to where I mentioned your GPU, in many modern AAA games will be be your bottleneck. Thats a good thing. In most cases you want the GPU working as hard as it can with nothing else in your system holding it back from doing so. What you don't want is the the CPU or memory preventing the GPU from getting all the information it needs to work as fast as possible. The systems job (CPU, memory) is to feed the GPU so it never has to "wait". When the GPU has to wait on the rest of the system for its information, that results in unexpected dips in performance and other unwanted behaviors. Thats the problem people who go on about the "big evil bottleneck" are worried about.

 

Given you're looking at a 7500f, a relatively current Zen4 CPU (and accompanying DDR5 RAM), that chip can support and "feed" most GPU's available today. In terms of relative GPU horsepower in 2025/26, 5700xt isn't all that fast and even at only 1080p, will almost certainly be the limiting factor in most AAA titles today. 

 

 

Then, there is that nuance mentioned earlier. It would take far too much time and effort to try and explain all the ins and outs of "bottlenecks" and how they can shift and move around from game to game, settings and resolutions but this is the kind of thing you figure out on your own the longer you stay in this hobby and take interest in learning more about how your hardware works. 

 

To recap, you'll be fine. You have the CPU power with a 7500f to support a GPU upgrade in the future as well. 

 

(Don't buy Ryzen 8000 at all, its heavily compromised)

Save this.

 

Well said.

[Mark Kaine]

On 12/27/2025 at 6:08 AM, GuiltySpark_ said:

Ahh yes, every beginners worst fear, the dreaded "bottleneck

It's real tho .. for example my first diy PC:

 

RYZEN (the almighty) 2200g

...  Well it was all fun and 30 fps until I bought a friggin 1050ti...

 

Now I got 60 fps with frequent lows of 0-5 fps because yay does that cpu suck! Lol...

 

 

Realistically I should have stopped being a PC gamer at this point but I bought a 3600 instead (and now the 1050ti was the bottleneck but much more manageable)

 

Tldr, there are 2 different kinds of bottleneck.

 

1 is "whatever"

The other you want to avoid at any cost because it's basically throwing money out of the window...