Possible Bottleneck or no?

[Twoodboi]

Cpu; And phenom ii x4 965 3.4gz
CPU cooler:Artic freezer Xtreme Rev. 2 CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Asus m4a79 xtd Evo
Ram: 8gb ballistics 1660mhz
GPU: PNY GTX 1060 oc 3gb

During gameplay of fallout 4 settings are set at high and after spawning in sanctuary after 5 minutes or so the fps goes from 60-34 and bounces around. Then the cards LEDs will go to red signaling overheating of the card causing me to either pause the game or keep playing risking a crash which has happened many times so I'm wondering if the CPUs performance is restricted by not enough processing power or the GPU not running at full capacity due to the CPUs preformance

 

[Ecky]

Your card should not be overheating. Is it clogged with dust? Is your case ventilation good?

That said, chances are good that your GPU's utilization is very low, because you have a CPU that doesn't meet even the minimum requirements for many modern games. Just as an example, if your CPU can deliver 34fps in a scene and your GPU can deliver 100fps, you'll only get 34fps (limited by the slower component). You'll see your CPU staying near 100% and your GPU around 33%.

 

[Twoodboi]

Your card should not be overheating. Is it clogged with dust? Is your case ventilation good?

That said, chances are good that your GPU's utilization is very low, because you have a CPU that doesn't meet even the minimum requirements for many modern games. Just as an example, if your CPU can deliver 34fps in a scene and your GPU can deliver 100fps, you'll only get 34fps (limited by the slower component). You'll see your CPU staying near 100% and your GPU around 33%.

Case ventilation for CPU and GPU are both extremely well taken care of. In fact I took two 120mm fans and placed one under each fan from the graphics card to inhance it's heat disapation. So what you're saying in layman's terms is get a more current​ processor? Also case and components are cleaned extremely regularly not a spec of dust at anytime​ (not literally)

 

[Ecky]

Overheating is a separate issue. Your CPU being slow and causing low framerates is not what is causing crashing. If you're getting an overheating indicator LED on your GPU, something is physically wrong. What does software say your temps are?

 

[Viking2121]

Unfortunately that board is only a 790FX board so you are varly limited to only the Phenom II x4 or x6 CPU, FX CPU's will not work.

You can however overclock the CPU, them 965's are well known to run at 4ghz pretty easily, you just want to keep temps below 62c on the core. Also if you want to experiment with overclocking, the CPU-NB on them Phenom II's can't make things quite a bit faster, I gained 20more FPS in BF3 on my 1100T 3000mhz CPU-NB vs its stock 2000mhz. HT-Link you gain nothing raising this unfortunately, keep RAM at or below its rated speed or 1600mhz, Ram speed really don't have any measurable performance gains on the 790fx chipsets.