Ultimate Bottlenecking Guide/Discussion Thread!

[TechyInAZ]

Gaming. I believe video editing with GPU acceleration is entirely GPU based, so that shouldn't be affected.

 

[TechyInAZ]

Thought I'd share a bit more info on bottlenecking that probably seems quite crazy!

Look at Tom's latest article on DX11 and Core efficency:http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/multi-core-cpu-scaling-directx-11,4768-6.html

At 1080P in project cars, you can see that the the 8 Core, quad core, and 6 Core I7s are actually bottlenecking the GTX 1080. This is because the GTX 1080 is so pumping out so many frames at 1080P (because it's an overkill resolution for that card), that the game actually goes from being GPU bound to being CPU bound.

This is another reason why my charts won't be 100% accurate. There are some scenarios like this that are incredibly rare. But still do happen.

 

[why_wolf]

good idea. But can I suggest you merge the lists into a single spreadsheet instead. Be much easier to maintain and for people to find their CPU/GPU combo. Made a quick conversion, used purple instead of magneta. I didn't feel like going through the color wheel to find it in excel.

https://1drv.ms/x/s!AjtvBaDMjQ6qisJUGbpUzC-h_Z9CwA

 

[TechyInAZ]

good idea. But can I suggest you merge the lists into a single spreadsheet instead. Be much easier to maintain and for people to find their CPU/GPU combo. Made a quick conversion, used purple instead of magneta. I didn't feel like going through the color wheel to find it in excel.

https://1drv.ms/x/s!AjtvBaDMjQ6qisJUGbpUzC-h_Z9CwA

Good idea. When I have time I'll try and merge them.

 

[OverclockDaddy]

bro can u post additional video cards like lower or medium series, asides from the geforce 10 series cards only thanks!

 

[TechyInAZ]

bro can u post additional video cards like lower or medium series, asides from the geforce 10 series cards only thanks!

No problem. Just give me a few weeks.

 

[rhys136]

Just wanted to say thanks for the chart been looking for something to show whether a i7 5930k would bottleneck a 1080 and couldn't find a clear resource. Quick question do you think the games upcoming that will utilize DX12 will throttle the 5930k? Obviously a guess but hopefully an educated one 😛

 

[dolokhov]

Basically, this has taught me that my FX 8350 is useless for gaming. I love it for work related functions (it runs our ERP like a champ), but this makes me very sad. I was eyeballing a 1070 as a gift to myself but it looks like that would be pointless now.

 

[TechyInAZ]

Just wanted to say thanks for the chart been looking for something to show whether a i7 5930k would bottleneck a 1080 and couldn't find a clear resource. Quick question do you think the games upcoming that will utilize DX12 will throttle the 5930k? Obviously a guess but hopefully an educated one 😛

DX12 will change most of these bottlenecking charts once it goes mainstream. Since more cores will be used, a LOT of the CPUs you see that bottleneck current cards won't bottleneck them anymore.

 

[axe41031]

I'm running a i7 2600 at 4.37 ghz and a 1070 FTW; i see some bottle-necking but not that much. Runs BF1 at 85-120 FPS at 1080p on ultra.

 

[Ali Tauseef]

MERGED QUESTION
Question from orca-4444 : "Help me understand bottlenecking"

I built my PC last year with the intention to upgrade when pascal/polaris was released. Now that the majority of cards of these generation have released(and my case can't fit a 490), I'm thinking about upgrading. The two cards I'm looking at the most are the GTX 1050 Ti, GTX 1060, and GTX 1070. I've found that the Titan X (Which has ~ GTX 1070 performance) gets somewhat bottlenecked by a nonovercockable i5, which is what I have. So my question is, will I see this sort of loss on a 1050 ti and 1060? Or would I just see a loss on the 1070?
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/intel-haswell-refresh_4.html
Thanks.

BOTTLENECK:
Usually bottleneck occurs when one part of one's PC is too good for a game and the other is too weak.
So the part that is too good won't be able to perform to it's full potential which decreases the FPS, thus causing a bottleneck.

 

[ckesimli]

Why are you misleading people by claiming that an FX 8370 will "bottleneck in everything with a 1080, 1070 and 1060 while an i5 6400 will only bottleneck a 1080 in only select applications? Have you done these test yourself and tested those CPUs in games like Witcher 3 and Tomb Raider? How can you honestly lie to peoples faces that an i5 6400 will bottleneck a 1080 in only the worst case scenarios with its 2.7 base clock? What about World of Warcraft and online games in general? What about higher resolutions than 1080? I'm not even going to mention recent games like DOOM, which have been out for some time. Very dishonorable of you.

http://wccftech.com/fx-8370-i5-6400-gaming-comparison/

 

[TechyInAZ]

Why are you misleading people by claiming that an FX 8370 will "bottleneck in everything with a 1080, 1070 and 1060 while an i5 6400 will only bottleneck a 1080 in only select applications? Have you done these test yourself and tested those CPUs in games like Witcher 3 and Tomb Raider? How can you honestly lie to peoples faces that an i5 6400 will bottleneck a 1080 in only the worst case scenarios with its 2.7 base clock? What about World of Warcraft and online games in general? What about higher resolutions than 1080? I'm not even going to mention recent games like DOOM, which have been out for some time. Very dishonorable of you.

http://wccftech.com/fx-8370-i5-6400-gaming-comparison/

Please backup your statement with something better than that. A R9 Fury X, is a lot slower than a GTX 1080.

Also, all the information you see has been gathered from user feedback and from other forums.

 

[Bem-xxx]

The FX 8xxx bottlenecks? We are not in the 2012.
From Guru3d

From Technologyx.

 

[ckesimli]

R9 Fury X may be slower than a 1080, naturally. But it is quite a bit faster than an RX 480 or a GTX 1060. My claim is not that the FX 8xxx will not bottleneck with a 1080, because it will. BUT, you claiming that a 2.7 GHZ i5 6400 will not bottleneck a 1080 is absolute (language). The i5 6400 is quite a bit worse than even the i3 6100 when it comes to gaming performance.

Now I would like you to show me concrete evidence that an 8370 bottlenecks a GTX 1060 in ALL GAMING APPLICATIONS whereas the i5 6400 is not limiting your GPU in EVERY GAME out there as your spreadsheets suggests.

Language Edit by Moderator. This is a family friendly website.

 

[TechyInAZ]

I did not say that a core i5 6400 will NOT bottleneck a 1080. Only minutely. However I should probably move that to blue instead of magenta.

I'll get back to you on concrete evidence i'm out and about right now.

Also, I'm only using games from today for my bottlenecking charts. Anything old like BF3, CSGO, WoW etc. don't count.

 

[TechyInAZ]

After watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV6EyhNb6vg I can say that ok, point taken, I was wrong. Thank you for showing me that the FX 8350 is still capable of not bottlenecking the GTX 1060 in most titles.

BTW...For everybody else, that is the purpose of this thread. The charts you see are not perfect! It's only via user feedback that I am able to fine tune each chart to it's finest.

 

[why_wolf]

the point is really to make a quick reference chart (similar to Tom's GPU hierarchy chart), especially for older CPUs to newer cards as those kinds of reviews can be hard if not impossible to find. Right?

 

[ckesimli]

The information presented in these charts is probably not relevant for people looking to build a system in 2016 from scratch, but it is way misleading if they already have an AMD based system which needs a GPU upgrade. The point is, there is no way you would be %100 bottlenecked by an FX 8350-70 or even an FX 6350 (as in you would definately see FPS increases all the way up to a Titan XP) but the increase will probably not be as much as you would get with a higher tier skylake. With that being said, I have seen dozens of videos about the subject and can say that i3-6100, i5-6400 and the i5-6500 are about equal in gaming performance. I also have seen some videos that reveal that the Vishera based FX chips perform similarly to these processors when they are clocked 4 Ghz and up. Furthermore, one game favours AMD, the other Intel as it has always been, it is near impossible to determine if and when the bottleneck will occur. So, if you need a GPU upgrade and have an FX system, you will be more than happy with the increases to FPS you get if you upgrade to an RX-480, GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 and you do not need to build an Intel based system from scratch to enjoy the performance benefits of the newer GPUs.

Just wanted to get it out there as the term "bottleneck" is being thrown around a lot, like AMD chips are so insufficient, you wouldn't see any performance gains when going from a 750ti to a 1060, which is simply not true. Again, the lower price, the ability to overclock and better multithreaded performance makes these chips still relevant and you can be sure that the adaptation of DX12 and Vulkan APIs will level the playing field even further.

 

[TechyInAZ]

Yes it is INCREDIBLY hard to find solid charts on bottlenecking with the latest GPUs on the web right now. Which is why it's taking me a long time to finish these charts.

ckesimli, I see your point. I need to update my guide with some clarification.

The charts are based on the latest games of today, AoS, BF1, Crysis 3, Doom. If I was to incorporate all games, that would be impossible since some games get bottlenecked more than others like you said.

 

[TechyInAZ]

Hey all. A Maxwell bottlenecking chart is in the making right now. But I'd also like to know if you all want me to do a Hawaii AMD bottlenecking chart aswell?

 

[seanwee]

I have a i5 4460 and a MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X 6G.
In Crysis 3 (Max settings ,4x Msaa ,no motion blur) , the CPU usage is 100% on all cores but the GPU only shows 50-65% usage.

Hope this helps in fine tuning.

 

[TechyInAZ]

It does, thanks sean!

Just updated this thread with Maxwell chart, please read the following text in red.

 

[seanwee]

It does, thanks sean!

Just updated this thread with Maxwell chart, please read the following text in red.

Always happy to help 😉

 

[OverclockDaddy]

i think almost all amd cpus will bottleneck those new 10 series cards according to the chart, i think u can make (if you just want) amd fx cpus and older 9 series cards like gtx 960-980? ............i hope amd zen will keep up this time because the fx cpus is so far behind like 5 year old architecture, im going intel for now