Will a GPU downgrade help performance?

[kitcordell]

I have an AMD Athlon X4 880k and an GTX 1060 which has quite the bottleneck. If I were to down grade to 1050 or equivalent would it help me achieve higher frame rates in games?

 

[volkgren]

No, it shouldn't help any. You need a better CPU to get higher frame rates in games.

 

[Dugimodo]

No.

If your CPU limits a games FPS to (for example) 40 fps then you will never achieve more than that regardless of graphics card used.
The way it's often described as a CPU bottlenecking a GPU or vice versa can be misleading for some people.

To remove a bottleneck you have to upgrade that item - in this case the CPU - in order to improve performance.

There is always a bottleneck and it varies by game or software application. Trying to balance the CPU and GPU won't make either perform better, it's just about saving money when a faster part won't improve performance and is therefore wasted to some extent.

 

[Dugimodo]

I was trying to think of a good way to explain bottlenecking and I think I hit upon a good analogy.

Think of the CPU as a team of people who are creating jigsaw pieces based on a description they're being supplied with and dumping them on a conveyor belt (PCIE bus). They Will stop and wait if the belt gets full because it's not being emptied fast enough.

At the other end of the belt is Team GPU who are receiving the pieces and assembling them into an image. If either team is faster they'll end up waiting around for the other team to catch up. The "bottleneck" is whichever team is going slower, it could also be the conveyor belt but that's pretty fast and not usually a problem.

I think this makes it easier to understand why the answer is no. Team CPU are going as fast as they can and can't supply the pieces any faster, Team GPU are just cruising and could go faster. If you ask Team CPU to do other jobs at the same time things get worse so it doesn't hurt if the CPU is a bit quicker for that reason.