What is CPU bottleneck?

[Sj Jay]

Does it affect the game's performance?

 

[TechyInAZ]

Yes. When your CPU is bottlenecking your gpu, or in simpler terms holding your GPU back, it will make your frame rates drop because the GPU now is waiting around for a few milliseconds before it can process a pre rendered frame from the CPU.

 

[tambeshakunt]

It is when the CPU is not fast enough to keep up with the rest of the system (usually mainly the graphics card). For example, a budget CPU paired with a top of the line GPU will cause a bottleneck.

A bottleneck results in limited performance because the GPU is only able to be as fast the CPU will allow. If there is a CPU bottleneck, buying a better GPU will make NO difference to performance because it is just increasing the bottleneck. Therefore, when there is a cpu bottleneck, a slightly weaker GPU will perform much better because the bottleneck will be reduced.


Usually this term is misused and bottlenecking isn't as bad as it seems but sure, it will affect game performance negatively.

 

[Sj Jay]

Can you tell me how to select CPU after choosing a GPU so that my PC won't have any bottleneck?

 

[Matt Dobe]

I usually select my CPU first and motherboard but that's just preference.

It is more just knowledge than anything. Basically, since price is relative to performance, if you spend 60$ on a budget low-end CPU and then spend $350 on a high end GPU the CPU will most likely fail to deliver instruction to the GPU fast enough resulting in a restrictive experience. It's like putting vegetable oil in a v12 engine and expecting it to run at it's peak performance.

TL;DR
If you spend less than $100 on a CPU e.g AMD FX 4/6 X4/6 don't go and buy a top tier card.
If you spend more than $120 on a i5/i7 then you will see less of a bottleneck usually.

 

[Sj Jay]

Thanks,that was well explained.