Bottlenecks can be the worst nightmare right after you build your shiny new gaming PC. Although there are quite a few misconceptions surrounding it in the community, bottlenecks usually result from inappropriate parts picking due to a lack of research and knowledge of how computers work. There is no proven patch or fix to this problem at the software level either. The only thing you can do is to remove the bottleneck and replace it with another component that won’t limit the performance of other components.
What is a Bottleneck?
Let’s start with the basics: What is a bottleneck? There are a lot of misconceptions surrounding the idea of a bottleneck, so, hear me out. Let’s start with the disambiguation of the word. A bottle is a container made for containing fluids. And, for every bottle, no matter what shape it is, the neck is always narrower as compared to its body. This means that the fluid has to flow at a slower pace in the neck as compared to the body.
The same applies to computer processing. If someone says that your GPU is bottlenecking your CPU, he/she is meaning that your CPU is acting as the body of a bottle, where data is flowing at a much higher rate than in the GPU, where it is flowing at the rate of the neck of a bottle.
How to Find Out Whether You Have a Bottleneck in Your System
Pointing out the bottleneck can be a painful task, but thanks to MSI Afterburner and Riva Tuner Statistics Server (RTSS), it is as easy as a breeze.
To begin with, download MSI Afterburner by following this link: https://www.msi.com/Landing/afterburner/graphics-cards
Then, download Riva Tuner Statistics Server by following this link: https://www.guru3d.com/files-get/rtss-rivatuner-statistics-server-download,17.html
Install and launch Afterburner. You will be greeted with a screen like this.
Search for the gear-like settings icon in the left side panel. Click to open it. You will be greeted with another window like this.
Head over to the Monitoring tab. You will be greeted with a panel like this.
Tick all of the active hardware monitors. You want Afterburner to log all of the system stats to give accurate info on the bottlenecks it determines. Leave the following in your On-Screen Display, either as text or graph:
- Framerate
- Framerate Avg
- Framerate 0.1% Low
- Framerate 1% Low
- Frametime
- Framerate Max
- GPU Temperature
- GPU Usage
- Memory Usage
- Core Clock
- Memory Clock
- Power
- Fan Speed
- CPU Temperature
- CPU Usage
- CPU Clock
- CPU Power
- RAM Usage
After this, open up RTSS. You will be greeted with a screen like this, although you won’t have the global preset on the left panel.
Hit the add button. Another window will pop up.
Name your file, and hit open. You will have another panel like global now.
Leave the settings as follows.
After that, open any resource-heavy AAA game. Pressing F7 on your keyboard will toggle the metrics tab.
Now, look out for the percentage usage.
In this example, you can see that my GPU is at 99% usage, the memory usage is at 7745 MB out of 16324 MB, and the CPU is at 40%. Now, if one of these components hits 99% (practically 100%, but Afterburner has dual digit output only), and other components do not hit the 100% mark, you have a bottleneck in your system. So, my GPU is acting as a bottleneck here. My entire RAM and the CPU are not getting 100% utilized, which means its potential is getting wasted.
Thus, my GPU is bottlenecking my CPU, and I need to get a better card to max out the CPU usage.
Similarly, if your RAM gets filled up with other components sitting at lower usage, you need to add more RAM. If your CPU usage touches 100% without the other components hitting their margin, you have a CPU bottleneck.
By running this test, you can easily find out the bottleneck in your system, and replace it for a more balanced system.