Question Will a 7700x bottleneck a 7900xtx?

[Order 66]

I would like to know if (sometime in the next few years) I upgrade to a 7900xtx the 7700x will bottleneck it. (I know the PSU needs to be replaced, but it will be replaced by then.)

 

[Order 66]

In direct response to the 7700X, it is a fast CPU, in a few years it will still be a fast CPU. There will be faster CPUs available.

Yes, if you put a faster GPU in there with the same CPU, that system may under perform compared to one that has the latest CPU, but we are talking small percentages likely.

My CPU is getting a bit dated, but at 1440p High/Max settings it doesn't really matter. Probably going to wait and see what 8000 series and Arrow Lake brings, and my enthusiasm for having a Battlemage GPU regardless if it is downgrade (If the fastest spec is supposed to be 4070 like, no big change compared to a 3080Ti)

I would say battlemage would be amazing if Intel could figure out their driver issues and if it is competitive with the 4070 at ideally half the price.

 

[Kona45primo]

7700x is fine, 7800x3d is better. But throwing money after fps is a losing game, you should be just fine.

 

[boju]

Also keep in mind your maximum capable fps should always target your monitor's refresh rate. For personal metric, that would be it. Anything over is visually wasted so if your cpu has a maximum fps output of say 300 but refresh rate is 144Hz, then you have room for a graphics card capable of doing the same amount of fps with increased details meaning many more generational graphics cards, you can still upgrade to, and still utilise very well.

Game engines mentioned earlier plays a big role and how taxing a game is, whether now or in future. A simple way to find out how many fps a cpu is capable of in a taxing game is run resolution and details as low as possible, that'll tell you how many fps you can expect.

 

[Avro Arrow]

how is it almost never? if the part is faulty then maybe it shouldn't be considered better.

Well, yes of course, but we must function under the assumption that it works because otherwise we couldn't recommend anything.

Even if you get a defective part, you have recourse and sooner or later (almost definitely sooner) your part is going to work.

The biggest factors in any purchase are:

1. Can I afford this?
2. Do I actually have a need for this?
3. Can I use this to its full potential?
4. Is there another product that would be more suitable?

Worrying about a product being defective is, for the most part, pointless. I mean, sure, you can pay attention to reliability records of certain items but with PC parts, if it works today, there is a 99.9% chance that it will work for at least the next five years (assuming you don't abuse it somehow) and a defective part is remarkably rare. I've technically owned 23 different video cards in my life and of those, technically, two were defective. I say technically because, well, you know the story, my XFX RX 5700 XT Triple-Dissipation was defective, XFX replaced it with a THICC-III model that turned out to also be defective (VRAM errors) and then replaced that with a THICC-III that has worked perfectly ever since.

I have returned cards for issues specific to those models like, the ASUS HD 6450 required ASUS drivers and wouldn't use ATi Catalyst like all of the other models. I didn't feel like being at the mercy of ASUS' driver department so I returned it and replaced it with an XFX ONE model. I once bought a couple of Powercolor HD 7870 XT cards from NCIX only to discover that the HD 7870 XT didn't support Crossfire for some reason. I returned them and replaced them with two Gigabyte HD 7970s. None of these cards were defective, but they weren't what I was looking for. So out of 23 video cards owned since 1988, only one was defective with the first replacement for it also being defective.

It's just not worth worrying about.

 

[Avro Arrow]

what is so bad about the word bottleneck?

The problem with the word "bottleneck" is that it's not something that you have or don't have. Your PC always has several bottlenecks that limit the performance of other components. All we can do is put together a well-balanced PC that minimises whatever bottlenecks are present. By doing that, we can maximise the performance-per-dollar of a system.

Here's a perfect example of an unbalanced PC by a YouTuber who calls herself "Daisy":

Now, I honestly don't know where she got her information but that PC is horribly unbalanced to the point that I would call it "lopsided". Either she trusted the wrong person or she just plain doesn't know what she's doing. Of course, she's a cutie so all of the simps in her comment section are praising her build but they're not doing her any favours. They're either stupid or they're lying (or both). Unlike them, I told her the cold and hard truth that this is a completely nonsensical configuration. I told her that she didn't have a gaming PC, she had a productivity PC that could play some games. To tell her otherwise would be doing her a disservice.

Whoever told her that it was a good idea to use an Intel i7-12700K (with an expensive liquid AIO), a wickedly overpriced NZXT Z690 motherboard and a sub-$100 RX 580 2048SP should be whipped with a wet rubber hose because it looks like she spent some serious cash on a PC that can barely play games. She could've spent (literally) half as much money as she did and still built a PC that would give her (literally) double the gaming performance that she can expect from that lopsided build. I feel sorry for people like her who listen to "friends" who are as clueless as she is but don't want to admit it. At the same time, just asking other people instead of doing your own build research is extremely lazy and so, to some degree, she deserves to get screwed, but not like this.

Now that PC has a serious bottleneck, but the word bottleneck is being thrown around so often that it has become the noobs' boogeyman. I think that "balanced" and "unbalanced" is a better way to describe a PC build than just saying "bottleneck" because a bottleneck could be caused by anything. You could have a PC that's perfectly balanced (impossible, but humour me) but it could still be horribly bottlenecked if it's still using spinning platter hard drives.

 

[Order 66]

The problem with the word "bottleneck" is that it's not something that you have or don't have. Your PC always has several bottlenecks that limit the performance of other components. All we can do is put together a well-balanced PC that minimises whatever bottlenecks are present. By doing that, we can maximise the performance-per-dollar of a system.

A perfect example of this would be a build by a YouTuber who calls herself "Daisy":

Now, I honestly don't know where she got her information but that PC is horribly unbalanced to the point that I would call it "lopsided". Either she trusted the wrong person or she just plain doesn't know what she's doing. Of course, she's a cutie so all of the simps in her comment section are praising her build but they're not doing her any favours. They're either stupid or they're lying (or both). Unlike them,I told her the cold and hard truth that this is a completely nonsensical configuration. I told her that she didn't have a gaming PC, she had a productivity PC that could play some games.

Whoever told her that it was a good idea to use an Intel i7-12700K (with an expensive liquid AIO), a wickedly overpriced NZXT Z690 motherboard and a sub-$100 RX 580 2048SP should be whipped with a wet rubber hose because it looks like she spent some serious cash on a PC that can barely play games. She could've spent (literally) half as much money as she did and still built a PC that would give her (literally) double the gaming performance that she can expect from that lopsided build. I feel sorry for people like her who listen to "friends" who are as clueless as she is but don't want to admit it. At the same time, just asking other people instead of doing your own build research is extremely lazy and so, to some degree, she deserves to get screwed, but not like this.

Now that PC has a serious bottleneck, but the word bottleneck is being thrown around so often that it has become the noobs' boogeyman. I think that "balanced" and "unbalanced" is a better way to describe a PC build than just saying "bottleneck" because a bottleneck could be caused by anything. You could have a PC that's perfectly balanced (impossible, but humour me) but it could still be horribly bottlenecked if it's still using spinning platter hard drives.

ryzen 5 7600x and RX 7700xt and nvme SSD. I think that is balanced anyway.

 

[Avro Arrow]

ryzen 5 7600x and RX 7700xt and nvme SSD. I think that is balanced anyway.

Yeah, that would be pretty good, except that the RX 7700 XT isn't currently worth buying. IIRC, the performance of the RX 7700 XT should be similar to your RX 6800.

 

[Order 66]

Yeah, that would be pretty good, except that the RX 7700 XT isn't currently worth buying. IIRC, the performance of the RX 7700 XT should be similar to your RX 6800.

yeah, but with 4gb less VRAM. What is your idea for a “perfectly balanced” ( I know perfectly balanced is not possible) system?

 

[USAFRet]

yeah, but with 4gb less VRAM. What is your idea for a perfectly balanced system?

There is no "perfectly balanced system".

 

[Order 66]

There is no "perfectly balanced system".

I know that, @Avro Arrow already mentioned that it was impossible. I suppose I should put quotes around perfectly.

 

[Avro Arrow]

yeah, but with 4gb less VRAM. What is your idea for a “perfectly balanced” ( I know perfectly balanced is not possible) system?

Ok... we're going down a rabbit hole with this one because a balanced system isn't an exact term. A system that's balanced for one gaming purpose might not be balanced for another. For example, a system that is used by an avid player of Overwatch, Fortnite, CS:GO, COD:MW2 or PUBG would be completely different from a system used by someone like me who plays AAA FPS and RP games like Elder Scrolls, Far Cry, The Witcher, Assassin's Creed or Starfield. The other important thing to remember is the budget that you're working with.

For the sake of not taking a week to demonstrate, I'll show you a simple but effective method for matching up CPUs and GPUs. The method I show will be crude but usable because it's always a (semi-)rough estimate at best unless you're trying to match CPU and GPU for one specific game (and almost nobody does that). This is because every game bottlenecks differently, but this method will probably be more-or-less as effective as any other with its relative simplicity being a definite asset for most people. This will give a result that's close-enough to make an informed and effective choice.

Let's use something that isn't insanely expensive but still great for gaming like an R5-7600. To assess a CPU's gaming performance capabilities, I use TechPowerUp because they still have gaming numbers at 720p. For CPU gaming performance metrics, the lowest resolutions produce the purest numbers because if a CPU is capable of 200FPS at 720p it's capable of 200FPS at 8K because resolution has no effect on the rate of CPU draw calls.

TPU has a 12-game suite, which isn't ideal but it's good enough for most people's purposes because while no two games are the same, the variation between them usually isn't massive. There are always outliers but they're relatively rare and impossible to account for without going so in-depth that it wouldn't be feasible to cover in this post. Their existence is also so rare as to not really change anything even if I dug up every single one that I could find.

Here's the math:
Total Games = 12
Total FPS = 2493
R5-7600 AVG FPS = 2493 ÷ 12
∴ R5-7600 AVG FPS = 208 (using integer rounding)

So, we have 208FPS as the average. I'll reiterate that this 208FPS is the average regardless of resolution or graphics settings. So, to match this card, these are what you'll need:

At 1080p: R9 7900 XTX (at 212FPS)
At 1440p: RTX 4090 (at 209FPS)
At 2160p: RTX 4090 (at 133FPS)

Ok, so now here comes the nuance... You could theoretically use an RX 7900 XTX or RTX 4090 if you have the money and gaming is all that you care about but what this post really shows is that, for gaming, an R5-7600 is literally all that you need CPU-wise and it wouldn't bottleneck any video card except for the RTX 4090 at 1080p (but let's be honest, who cares?). To keep up with this CPU, you need at least a 7900 XTX at 1080p and at least an RTX 4090 at 1440p. At 2160p, no card can keep up with the Ryzen 5 7600 in gaming. Of course, it's not going to provide 208FPS in all titles as the outliers here were Watch Dogs Legion at the low end with 88FPS and CS:GO at the high end with 625FPS.

Going in the other direction is much easier to recommend because since the least-expensive Zen4 CPU on the AM5 platform rivals the gaming performance of the R7-5800X3D, there is no need to recommend anything else because every GPU below the RX 7900 XTX is going to be the limiting factor (more often than not) when paired with an R5-7600 and the XTX will be the limiting factor above 1080p. Remember, for the most part, all you need for gaming is a CPU that's fast enough to stay out of the GPU's way.

Now that we have 208FPS as the average baseline, you can use TPU's relative performance chart to get the average FPS numbers for other CPUs:

Again, it's crude, but easy to use for most people and surprisingly effective!

 

[Order 66]

Ok... we're going down a rabbit hole with this one because a balanced system isn't an exact term. A system that's balanced for one gaming purpose might not be balanced for another. For example, a system that is used by an avid player of Overwatch, Fortnite, CS:GO, COD:MW2 or PUBG would be completely different from a system used by someone like me who plays AAA FPS and RP games like Elder Scrolls, Far Cry, The Witcher, Assassin's Creed or Starfield. The other important thing to remember is the budget that you're working with.

For the sake of not taking a week to demonstrate, I'll show you a simple but effective method for matching up CPUs and GPUs. The method I show will be crude but usable because it's always a (semi-)rough estimate at best unless you're trying to match CPU and GPU for one specific game (and almost nobody does that). This is because every game bottlenecks differently, but method will probably be more-or-less as effective as any other with its relative simplicity being a definite asset for most people. This will give a result that's close-enough to make an informed and effective choice.

Let's use something that isn't insanely expensive but still great for gaming like an R5-7600. To assess a CPU's gaming performance capabilities, I use TechPowerUp because they still have gaming numbers at 720p. For CPU gaming performance metrics, the lowest resolutions produce the purest numbers because if a CPU is capable of 200FPS at 720p it's capable of 200FPS at 8K because resolution has no effect on the rate of CPU draw calls.

TPU has a 12-game suite, which isn't ideal but it's good enough for most people's purposes because while no two games are the same, the variation between them usually isn't massive. There are always outliers but they're relatively rare and impossible to account for without going so in-depth that it wouldn't be feasible to cover in this post and their existence is so rare as to not really change anything even if I dug up every single one that I could find.

Here's the math:
Total Games = 12
Total FPS = 2493
R5-7600 AVG FPS = 2493 ÷ 12
∴ R5-7600 AVG FPS = 208 (using integer rounding)

So, we have 208FPS as the average. I'll reiterate that this 208FPS is the average regardless of resolution or graphics settings. So, to match this card, these are what you'll need:

At 1080p: R9 7900 XTX (at 212FPS)
At 1440p: RTX 4090 (at 209FPS)
At 2160p: RTX 4090 (AT 133FPS)

Ok, so now here comes the nuance... You could theoretically use an RX 7900 XTX or RTX 4090 if you have the money and gaming is all that you care about but what this post really shows is that, for gaming, an R5-7600 is literally all that you need CPU-wise and it wouldn't bottleneck any video card except for the RTX 4090 at 1080p (but let's be honest, who cares?). To keep up with this CPU, you need at least a 7900 XTX at 1080p and at least an RTX 4090 at 1440p. At 2160p, no card can keep up with the Ryzen 5 7600 in gaming. Of course, it's not going to provide 208FPS in all titles as the outliers here were Watch Dogs Legion at the low end with 88FPS and CS:GO at the high end with 625FPS.

Going in the other direction is much easier to recommend because since the least-expensive Zen4 CPU on the AM5 platform rivals the gaming performance of the R7-5800X3D, there is no need to recommend anything else because every GPU below the RX 7900 XTX is going to be the limiting factor (more often than not) when paired with an R5-7600 and the XTX will be the limiting factor above 1080p. Remember, for the most part, all you need for gaming is a CPU that's fast enough to stay out of the GPU's way.

Now that we have 208FPS as the average baseline, you can use TPU's relative performance chart to get the average FPS numbers for other CPUs:

Again, it's crude, but easy to use for most people and surprisingly effective!

Thanks, That explains why I am gpu limited at 1080p even with a 6800.