What's bottlenecking?

[Jayliss]

Plz explain 

[Cereal5]

 

[AshleyAshes]

Bottlenecking is when angry nerds tell you that you need to spend $200-$600 on a new CPU and possibly motherboard to make your GPU run about 10% faster because doing otherwise is somehow a 'waste of money'.

[done12many2]

 

5 minutes ago, Jayliss said:

What's bottlenecking?

 

A word that's in every other thread in the graphics section of LTT.

 

Not nearly as big of an issue as everyone is making it.

[Mark77]

Its the concept that without certain parts being at a certain performance standard, installing other faster parts will probably be a waste of money.

 

For instance, for many 'use cases', using a hard drive on a post-LGA775 system would be considered a severe bottleneck versus using a SSD. 

 

When applied to gaming, its the concept that you can upgrade the CPU all you want, but without a faster video card, your gaming experience won't be faster.  Or likewise, you can upgrade the GPU all you want, but without a certain amount of CPU performance, you probably won't see an increase in performance. 

 

In a nutshell, I cringe when I go into the "New Builds" section and see people suggesting some sort of Skylake or Haswell configuration, with a HDD for the boot drive. 

 

[NumLock21]

A lost in performance not from the actual hardware itself, but from that person's imagination.

Gots a GTX 1080, went out and spend another $1700 on a 6950X. "Still bottlenecks"

Sheeeeeittt!!!

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, NumLock21 said:

A lost in performance not from the actual hardware itself, but from that person's imagination.

Gots a GTX 1080, went out and spend another $1700 on a 6950X. "Still bottlenecks"

Sheeeeeittt!!!

Really, there will ALWAYS be -some- bottleneck in a system.  -Something- has to be slower than another thing.  It's nearly impossible for everything to be in perfect balance.  That said, I'd never seen anyone cry about their GPU bottlenecking their excessive CPU, leaving their CPU wasting cycles, despite the fact that most higher end builds are doing just that on most games.

[done12many2]

1 minute ago, AshleyAshes said:

It's nearly impossible for everything to be in perfect balance.  

 

You obviously haven't seen me in a one-legged ass kicking contest.  

[Cereal5]

6 minutes ago, Mark77 said:

Its the concept that without certain parts being at a certain performance standard, installing other faster parts will probably be a waste of money.

 

For instance, for many 'use cases', using a hard drive on a post-LGA775 system would be considered a severe bottleneck versus using a SSD. 

 

When applied to gaming, its the concept that you can upgrade the CPU all you want, but without a faster video card, your gaming experience won't be faster.  Or likewise, you can upgrade the GPU all you want, but without a certain amount of CPU performance, you probably won't see an increase in performance. 

 

In a nutshell, I cringe when I go into the "New Builds" section and see people suggesting some sort of Skylake or Haswell configuration, with a HDD for the boot drive. 

 

yeah cause people who are spending $600 on a build a) cant afford an SSD and b) aren't smart enough to know that buying some used parts are much better for price/performance. or any kind of performance at all

[vanished]

What is it?  It is the idea that one component is not powerful to keep up, and so is holding back everything, making other more powerful components spend time sitting around with nothing to do.  ie, they could run faster if the bottleneck was removed.

[NumLock21]

15 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Really, there will ALWAYS be -some- bottleneck in a system.  -Something- has to be slower than another thing.  It's nearly impossible for everything to be in perfect balance.  That said, I'd never seen anyone cry about their GPU bottlenecking their excessive CPU, leaving their CPU wasting cycles, despite the fact that most higher end builds are doing just that on most games.

True, one can never get rid of a bottleneck, no matter how much they try. Does a machine with absolutely no bottleneck, means they must buy the most expensive parts like a Titan X(P) along with a 6950X? No, it doesn't work that way. Trying to get rid of bottlenecks is a battle, where the human never wins. My rig contains a X99 CPU with a very old HD5850. After seeing that, looks like some here are being wheeled into a mental institution wearing a straitjacket.

[AshleyAshes]

14 minutes ago, Mark77 said:

Or likewise, you can upgrade the GPU all you want, but without a certain amount of CPU performance, you probably won't see an increase in performance.

See, I don't think that this is necessarily that true.  While certainly nightmarishly old hardware will always lag; If you put a GTX 1080 on a Core2Duo, it's still not going to run GTA5 at 60fps.  However there are years of decent hardware that would always benefit from a new GPU.  You could take the venerable Sandy Bridge Intel i5 2500K, put a GTX 1080 on it, and it would hugely benefit from that GPU.  It may not get the same frame rates you'd see if an i7 6700K was used, but there'd still be a very meaningful performance gain and a 2500K+1080 setup would be a pretty fierce gaming machine.

[Guest]

20 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

A lost in performance not from the actual hardware itself, but from that person's imagination.

Gots a GTX 1080, went out and spend another $1700 on a 6950X. "Still bottlenecks"

Sheeeeeittt!!!

Adding an extra 1080 could help ... making more bottleneck

[Guest]

Here is another one from Linus. Bit old but still usable

 

 

[NumLock21]

1 minute ago, dexxterlab97 said:

Adding an extra 1080 could help ... making more bottleneck

must now switch to a dual socket motherboard.

[done12many2]

1 minute ago, NumLock21 said:

must now switch to a dual socket motherboard.

 

People are actually going to think this will help.  

 

I'll blame you when all the "I think my xeons are bottlenecking" threads start popping up. 

[ybriK]

It's when people suggest an i7 over anything even if you have a low end GPU because they know next to nothing about bottlenecking.

[NumLock21]

5 minutes ago, done12many2 said:

People are actually going to think this will help.  

I'll blame you when all the "I think my xeons are bottlenecking" threads start popping up. 

They can just add a dual redundant psu.

[done12many2]

1 minute ago, NumLock21 said:

They can just add a dual redundant psu.

 

You know you're in deep shit when your PSU is the bottleneck!!

 

Is it me or did the OP disappear on us?  He got more than he bargained for on this one.  

[Bleedingyamato]

44 minutes ago, Mark77 said:

Its the concept that without certain parts being at a certain performance standard, installing other faster parts will probably be a waste of money.

 

For instance, for many 'use cases', using a hard drive on a post-LGA775 system would be considered a severe bottleneck versus using a SSD. 

 

When applied to gaming, its the concept that you can upgrade the CPU all you want, but without a faster video card, your gaming experience won't be faster.  Or likewise, you can upgrade the GPU all you want, but without a certain amount of CPU performance, you probably won't see an increase in performance. 

 

In a nutshell, I cringe when I go into the "New Builds" section and see people suggesting some sort of Skylake or Haswell configuration, with a HDD for the boot drive. 

 

Not everyone has or feels like spending the extra money on a SSD.  SSDs are still far more expensive for a lot smaller than a HDD.  

 

So if someone wants to save money and/or have a good amount of storage space then getting a HDD only might be the preferable option.  

[NumLock21]

1 minute ago, done12many2 said:

 

You know you're in deep shit when your PSU is the bottleneck!!

 

Is it me or did the OP disappear on us?  He got more than he bargained for on this one.  

Well you will basically need 2 of everything, from monitors, keyboards, mice, mouse pads, and even chairs.

[Bleedingyamato]

37 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

What is it?  It is the idea that one component is not powerful to keep up, and so is holding back everything, making other more powerful components spend time sitting around with nothing to do.  ie, they could run faster if the bottleneck was removed.

Why are so many people giving butthurt answers to this?

 

This is one of the few posts here that's actually a legit answer.

 

Bottlenecking as I understand it is basically what you said:

 

That you could have a component be weaker enough vs another that it would hold it back and not allow the more powerful component to perform to its full ability.  

 

Plain.  Simple to understand.  0% sass.  Why is that so hard for people?  ?

 

 

It does seem that some people misunderstand bottlenecking and/or worry about it too much.  But that's no reason to give crap answers instead of helpful ones like yours...

[done12many2]

21 minutes ago, Bleedingyamato said:

Why are so many people giving butthurt answers to this?

 

This is one of the few posts here that's actually a legit answer.

 

Bottlenecking as I understand it is basically what you said:

 

That you could have a component be weaker enough vs another that it would hold it back and not allow the more powerful component to perform to its full ability.  

 

Plain.  Simple to understand.  0% sass.  Why is that so hard for people?  ?

 

 

It does seem that some people misunderstand bottlenecking and/or worry about it too much.  But that's no reason to give crap answers instead of helpful ones like yours...

 

Good point.

 

In addition to your recognition, I think @Cereal5, @Mark77, and @dexxterlab97 provided "legit" responses as well.  With that said, I'll move along to the next "Bottlenecking" thread showing up in a few minutes.  

[Cereal5]

16 minutes ago, done12many2 said:

"Bottlenecking" thread showing up in a few minutes

tell me about it

 

44 minutes ago, Bleedingyamato said:

Why is that so hard for people?

This forum is a great forum, but we hear the same thing over and over again. And once or twice I get it. But every day? is it that hard to type in "computer bottlenecking" into google or youtube and look at the results? people should ALWAYS try to research stuff themselves before coming to the forums. But no one does. Especially the newbies. and you can tell

[Bleedingyamato]

57 minutes ago, Cereal5 said:

tell me about it

 

This forum is a great forum, but we hear the same thing over and over again. And once or twice I get it. But every day? is it that hard to type in "computer bottlenecking" into google or youtube and look at the results? people should ALWAYS try to research stuff themselves before coming to the forums. But no one does. Especially the newbies. and you can tell

Maybe they did try and didn't have any luck?  

 

Success or failure with any search engine like Google is extremely dependent and sensitive to how you search.

 

How you phrase a search, spelling, etc. can affect what results come up and how many are actually relevant to the searcher.  

 

I know something of what I'm talking about: I'm a MLIS student and one thing I've learned is how easy it is to completely screw up a Google (search engine) or database search and come up with only crap results.  lol

 

 

 

Even if you see something often that doesn't mean people don't deserve a straight answer and help.