Bottle Necking

[Jigoogly]

ok so I guess this is a GPU and CPU question. Well here we go, ok so first off lets go over a brief description of what bottle necking is..... Bottle necking is when your GPU is more capable then your CPU at doing "its job" and because of this your GPU can't preform to its full potential and vie versa with the CPU being more capable with the GPU. Now for some simple examples of obvious bottle necking, for instance if you had a Intel core to duo and a invida gtx 680 ftw edition your going to have bottle necking. another example would be say you have a Intel i7 3770k and a Intel integrated HD 4000.

However after a while the lien becomes very, VERY fine and it become very hard to determine whether or not there will be bottle necking before you own the card/processor and can test them yourself (one simple way to test them is to run what ever program you want to test (i.e. a game like bf3, starcraft2, crysis3, etc) and open up your task manager and go to the performance tab and in the left hand corner there will be a little indicator that is labeled CPU usage, if your running the game and it is telling you that the CPU usage is at 90-100% AND your getting lag while running the game you know your CPU is BOTTLE NECKING your GPU.


MY questions

1. How do you check when you GPU is bottle necking your CPU?/what programs are there for checking?

2. (more personal) how badly would 2 SLI'd GTX 680's bottle neck on a Intel i5-3570k 3.4ghz ?

3. what CPU would not have problems bottle necking 2 SLI'd GTX 680's?

4. how over kill is it to SLI two gtx 680s for gaming? on a scale of 1 - 10 one being intel HD 400 level ten being Watson

 

[thephenom1157]

1. use msi after burner program , and play any strong game like Battlefield 3 or farcry3...etc , if the card usage cant get 85% or higher , so you have an bottleneck
2. i5- 3570K can work fine with 2 sli GTX 680
3. i5 3570K can handle it easily , if u need more performance get i7 3770K
4. SLi 2 GTX 680 can ,max all games been released till now

 

[geofelt]

There is no such thing as "bottle necking".

As you increase graphics capability, you will always do better. Either in better frame rates, better minimum rates, more eye candy or whatever.

In cpu, adding cores, may help, depending on the game. But, a faster core will always help.

The catch in all this is that incremental improvements in either component may not give you a worthwhile value for your money.

Now, as a rule of thumb in planning a balanced gaming pc, I might suggest you budget about twice the cost of the cpu for your graphics card.

If you are looking to do an upgrade, here is my stock suggestion:

a) Run your games, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
If your FPS increases, it indicates that your cpu is strong enough to drive a better graphics configuration.
If your FPS stays the same, you are likely cpu limited.

b) Limit your cpu, either by reducing the OC, or, in windows power management, limit the maximum cpu% to something like 50%.
This will simulate what a lack of cpu power will do.


Go to control panel/power options/change plan settings/change advanced power settings/processor power management/maximum processor state/
set to 50% and see how you do.


If your FPS drops significantly, it is an indicator that your cpu is the limiting factor, and a cpu upgrade is in order.

It is possible that both tests are positive, indicating that you have a well balanced system, and both cpu and gpu need to be upgraded to get better gaming FPS.

 

[Jigoogly]

There is no such thing as "bottle necking".

As you increase graphics capability, you will always do better. Either in better frame rates, better minimum rates, more eye candy or whatever.

In cpu, adding cores, may help, depending on the game. But, a faster core will always help.

The catch in all this is that incremental improvements in either component may not give you a worthwhile value for your money.

Now, as a rule of thumb in planning a balanced gaming pc, I might suggest you budget about twice the cost of the cpu for your graphics card.

If you are looking to do an upgrade, here is my stock suggestion:

a) Run your games, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
If your FPS increases, it indicates that your cpu is strong enough to drive a better graphics configuration.
If your FPS stays the same, you are likely cpu limited.

b) Limit your cpu, either by reducing the OC, or, in windows power management, limit the maximum cpu% to something like 50%.
This will simulate what a lack of cpu power will do.


Go to control panel/power options/change plan settings/change advanced power settings/processor power management/maximum processor state/
set to 50% and see how you do.


If your FPS drops significantly, it is an indicator that your cpu is the limiting factor, and a cpu upgrade is in order.

It is possible that both tests are positive, indicating that you have a well balanced system, and both cpu and gpu need to be upgraded to get better gaming FPS.

I don't mean to be offensive but I don't think you understand bottle necking is, bottle necking is when say your GPU is a lot better then your GPU (just for argument sake) your graphics card will be able to render the code faster then your processor can process it or visa versa so in this case your GPU renders it but if the "material is not ready to be processed it will slow things down and start feeding into your processors ram and that will cause things to slow down to sometimes noticeably.