Is there just a set point a bottleneck will begin at?

[Spartaton]

Say I've got a gtx 1080 and put it in a computer that bottlenecks it down to the performance of a gtx 1070. Would this mean that the computer would not bottleneck a 1070, or could it still bottleneck a 1070?

[SpaceGhostC2C]

3 minutes ago, Spartaton said:

Say I've got a gtx 1080 and put it in a computer that bottlenecks it down to the performance of a gtx 1070. Would this mean that the computer would not bottleneck a 1070, or could it still bottleneck a 1070?

Well, you are answering yourself: you say the computer performs as if it had a 1070, hence a 1070 would deliver the same. If it doesn't, then you don't have a 1080 system performing as if it had a 1070, but better.

[Benjals]

15 hours ago, FireFlame9222 said:

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If he knew he probably wouldn't have asked

[Spartaton]

15 hours ago, FireFlame9222 said:

-snip-

I know it's to do with various components in the pc, but that's about it. I figured the answer would be what it is, but wanted to make sure before I made a mistake. Better to be safe than sorry.

Edit: Plus I've only ever heard it talked about in terms of upgrading an old gpu to a new one, which doesn't really shed that much light on the topic.

[SageOfSpice]

Bottlenecks are always dynamic.

 

If your CPU only has enough horsepower to shuttle enough data to saturate a 1070, then you would in theory gain no performance benefit from owning a greater GPU.

 

In reality, it depends on a plethora of factors such as the architecture of the chip, the drivers, and the applications themselves. The GPU only has one job, so it can't do the job of other components. Therefore, it can really only work with what it is provided.

[The Falcon]

23 minutes ago, Spartaton said:

I know it's to do with various components in the pc, but that's about it. I figured the answer would be what it is, but wanted to make sure before I made a mistake. Better to be safe than sorry.

Edit: Plus I've only ever heard it talked about in terms of upgrading an old gpu to a new one, which doesn't really shed that much light on the topic.

In the simple none geek terms.

Bottlenecks are caused by one piece of hardware having to wait on another piece of hardware. The longer the wait the worse it is. 

This can be ram waiting on data coming from a hard drive, gpu waiting on information coming from a cpu or waiting on textures to come from the hard drive or ram etc etc etc. 

Also how did you afford a 1080 if you cant afford the upgrade around it? Just out of curiosity...

[Enderman]

A lot of people don't understand how computer bottlenecking works.

If you have for example a i7 3770k, no matter how weak or powerful a GPU you have, it will always get less fps than a 6700k.

This is because both the CPU and GPU contribute to performance.

 

There are extreme cases such as having a really low power CPU with an enthusiast GPU, and then you won't see any improvement between a 1070 or 1080, but that is an extreme case.

You also can never know the clear line of a bottleneck because every game will behave differently in an extreme case like this.

 

So you can kind of think of a bottleneck as X% reduction in theoretical max performance.

The greater the max performance, the more fps you're missing out on, but overall the % you get remains the same.

[Glenwing]

3 hours ago, Enderman said:

There are extreme cases such as having a really low power CPU with an enthusiast GPU, and then you won't see any improvement between a 1070 or 1080, but that is an extreme case.

That's what "bottleneck" used to mean a few years ago, but I guess these days it just means the tiniest hint of a component affecting performance...

[Enderman]

5 hours ago, Glenwing said:

That's what "bottleneck" used to mean a few years ago, but I guess these days it just means the tiniest hint of a component affecting performance...

Which basically means you will always have a bottleneck.

A newer CPU like a 7700k will give you higher fps. A newer GPU like a 1180 will give higher fps.

You can never win!

[Mira Yurizaki]

Just because your computer doesn't make a graphics card perform as fast as another configuration, all other things considered, doesn't mean you have an absolute performance cap.

 

Here's where I thought definitely there needs to be an upgrade: when I upgraded my Athlon X2 3800+ system from a GeForce 7800 GTX to a 8800 GT, one game saw no improvement, one game saw less dips, and only one game saw a significant upgrade.

 

But I messed around with other configurations. One time I had a Core 2 Duo E8400 equivalent run some tests on a GTX 460 SE, then put a GTX 980. The GTX 980 still improved things across the board, but only by a factor of 2.

 

And in my current config, my i7-6700 did worse in some tests than my i5-4670K with the same video card, but when I upgraded to the GTX 1080, it saw a the same improvement most other people did.

 

So really, don't worry about not getting the most of your hardware. It's very hard to do that. Just set a performance goal and upgrade when you're not getting it.

[typographie]

12 hours ago, Spartaton said:

Say I've got a gtx 1080 and put it in a computer that bottlenecks it down to the performance of a gtx 1070. Would this mean that the computer would not bottleneck a 1070, or could it still bottleneck a 1070?

There's no such thing as a PC that will always bottleneck a GTX 1080 down to a specific point (such as = to a 1070). It may do that in one game, and not in another. Bottlenecks do not exist across the board, it is extremely dependent on the game and your combination of settings.

 

To answer your question, the "bottleneck" is the inability to exceed a certain framerate. Any other card that would also exceed that framerate would also be bottlenecked. If another card wouldn't reach that framerate, the bottleneck shifts back to the GPU. What that maximum framerate [allowed by your CPU or whatever else] is depends on the game and your settings.

 

Let's take a scenario where your GTX 1080 would be able to reach about 85 FPS in a certain game, but for whatever reason is bottlenecked to 70 FPS. And let's say a GTX 1070 would have managed 68 FPS in that same scenario if you dropped it in and kept all else the same. In that case, the bottleneck has shifted back to the GPU. Whatever was preventing the framerate from exceeding 70 is still there, but now you're under it with the GPU at 100%. It's possible that in another game, the GTX 1070 would also be bottlenecked; or maybe neither would be.

[Spartaton]

20 hours ago, The Falcon said:

Also how did you afford a 1080 if you cant afford the upgrade around it? Just out of curiosity...

I built a new pc with a 1080, but figured my old one might still have some life left. It's 7 years old, but was top of the line back then. So, I moved the old components into a newer case, got everything working, and plan to test how it performs with my 1080 in it. If it does well my plan is to replace some parts, such as the gpu, and sell it.