CPU/GPU combination bottlenecks.

triniP

Commendable
Dec 9, 2016
10
0
1,510
I am trying to put together a new (fairly) budget oriented build and am currently looking at getting an i5-6600k (with z170 board although oc'ing would be very minimal and might not even happen) and cheapout and go for a RX480 8GB, the only thing is; will the rx 480 bottleneck the 6600k. Another question I had, is would it be worth to get the rx 480, even if it bottlenecks, and then sell it and use the return, with some extra money saved to buy a 1070 later down the road.

Another Idea I had is to swap to a 6400 for the 6600k, drop the price premium from a z170, and try to scrape together for a 1070. Only I'm not sure if the 6400 would then bottleneck the 1070.

(notes)
-This PC is being built for my sister, who primarily will play games, although there is a good chance she will take up some content creation.
-This is a fairly budget build, last month I had very similar parts with 6600k (not paired with a z170 mobo though, I know I am stupid lol.) and rx 480 8gb totaling to about $750-ish USD.
-If anyone has similar specs to either of the suggested builds, if you could post some benchmarks from some popular games that would be really useful, thanks.
-The way im using bottleneck is probably incorrect, but the way I mean it is: are these a good combination/ are these components sufficient enough to play games (future games too) at ultra/high settings @ 1080p 60hz?

Thanks in advance for any help or responses you can give me, and sorry for any inconvieniences I am causing by posting this, this might just be an utterly stupid question lol.
-triniP
 
Solution
Using a 6600k an a Z170 motherboard already puts you out of the "budget" PC area. What games exactly?

A i5-6500 along with a RX 470 / 480,GTX 1060 3GB will run any games out now at 1080 just fine.

If this is a new build you also need to budget to the operating system, monitor/keyboard/mouse, that's about $250 there even if you don't go for a fancy setup.

Stysner

Reputable
Apr 9, 2015
317
0
4,960
Not even close. But do go for the 6600K, 6400 could bottleneck. Only 2.7GHz on all cores, you ideally want to be at least around 3.4GHz on all cores (so not boost. All cores). In some games 2.7GHz will outright destroy the performance.

Even if you don't OC it, that 6600K is waaayyy better than the 6400. A 6600K could slightly bottleneck a GTX 1080 in certain games (couple of FPS loss maybe), but not an RX480 or 1070.

Note that this depends on the type of game. If a game requires crazy CPU horsepower, it will bottleneck ANY card, since the CPU can't keep up with the game code (easiest way I can explain it). But the 6600K has more than enough power to fully use pretty much any card if the game is optimized anywhere near acceptable levels.
 
Using a 6600k an a Z170 motherboard already puts you out of the "budget" PC area. What games exactly?

A i5-6500 along with a RX 470 / 480,GTX 1060 3GB will run any games out now at 1080 just fine.

If this is a new build you also need to budget to the operating system, monitor/keyboard/mouse, that's about $250 there even if you don't go for a fancy setup.
 
Solution