amd fx 6300 paired with gtx 970?

[Kyle Noonan]

so im going to build my first computer and i was wondering if pairing a 6300 with a gtx 970 would be bottlenecking performance?

 

[mdocod]

If the FX-6300 can achieve your FPS goals in the games you want to play, and the GTX970 can achieve your visual quality goals at those FPS goals, then they will work just fine together for you.

Such a combination, would be best suited to a build with visual quality given greater priority than frame rate. An FX-6300 + GTX970 is a good value combination for playing modern DX11 games at 1440P resolution with high/ultra details and some post processing, with FPS goals ~40FPS +/-.

If your goal is to achieve ultra competitive 100-144FPS, then the FX-6300 is a poor CPU choice to realize this goal. An overclocked i5 haswell is a better CPU for playing modern games at 100FPS+ (regardless of what GPU is chosen).

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It's important to understand that any CPU can bottleneck any GPU given the right set of conditions, and any CPU can work well with any GPU given the right conditions. A GPU can not compensate for a CPU, nor can a CPU compensate for a GPU. They have separate workloads. You should select your CPU based on the compute workload generated by your FPS goals in the games you want to play. Then select your GPU based on the visual quality you want at that goal FPS. Any attempt to select the CPU based on the GPU, or the GPU based on the CPU is fundamentally flawed.

On a final note:
The Athlon X4 860K is actually a bit better for gaming workloads than the FX-6300. It also costs less to implement, and the whole platform is much more efficient.