Hi,

I was wondering how you know when you are bottlenecking your cpu or gpu.  Right now I am running a core 2 Quad 2.40 q6600 processor and have a 1 gig 9800gt graphic card.  My question is what will bottleneck first?

Thanks

It depends on the game and the settings you run it at.  One simple test is to tweak your anti-aliasing settings.  If you can turn anti-aliasing up or down and it has no effect on frame rates at all, then you're limited by your processor.  If turning anti-aliasing up or down has a substantial impact on your frame rates, then you're limited by your video card.

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Originally posted by Quizzical
It depends on the game and the settings you run it at.  One simple test is to tweak your anti-aliasing settings.  If you can turn anti-aliasing up or down and it has no effect on frame rates at all, then you're limited by your processor.  If turning anti-aliasing up or down has a substantial impact on your frame rates, then you're limited by your video card.

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Even the genre of the game plays a little on what will bottleneck your PC.

Such MMO's require more system memory (not Graphics card) because Graphics card memory is only used for rending textures. However,

1. mmos arent as graphic intensive as other genres such as FPS. They dont have as many textures found in games like Crysis.

2. MMo's are system hoggers, using up loads of ur CPU and memory resources to cope with all the stuff thats going on around you. You'll find that you can actually increase the stability of your frame rate buy having more system RAM.

Why does RAM effect MMo's frame rate?

All programms are uploaded to your memory, from iexplorer to msn messenger, to antivirus to games etc.

Therefore when you run out of system memory (RAM) your PC's like "argh what now, oh i know i'll use virtual RAM".

Virtual RAM is (pagefile.sys) is fake memory store on your harddrive, now this usually large, however, harddrives have much slower bandwidth speeds, so much so you actually see this by your frame rate dropping while your harddrive light is constantly on.

If your harddrive light is constantly on it means your using virtual memory instead of system memory, as when you load a program into system memory it shouldnt use the harddrive again unless its calling for data that isnt already uploaded.

Anyway this gets very confusing.

But the indicator for low RAM in mmo's is that your hardrives LED is constantly lit working like a hamster spinning away! and you've a slide show frame rate whilst in those busy cities, or even worse in large raids (cuz you'll aways gett some frame rate loss when theres many ppl around you as your pc needs to know what they are doing, wearing, level etc).

Ps: having a good processor and graphic card also helps, and are more important than memory to a certain extent, but if you have a fairly decent cpu and graphics card, but a small amount of memory, better to make the pc an all rounder and go for memory.

When the game needs to use the HD it will help to have a SSD. Of course you should have enough RAM. But it happens anyway. And when you enter a new area/zone with a lot of players and objects(like a city) the game will often have to load data from the HD so that you can see those players and objects. And if you use a old and slow HD it will take same time before you can see all those players and objects. And the game will lag and sometimes freeze until its finished. So HD performance is very important and can also be a bottleneck.

Thanks, very imformative.  Most likely I will just get more ram.  I am currently running with 3 gigs.

Originally posted by Kaelaien

Thanks, very imformative.  Most likely I will just get more ram.  I am currently running with 3 gigs.

are you running 64 bit system? probably not, in that case you can get 100gigs it'll be the same as 3 gigs

Another good check is to change the screen resolution and compare frame rates. A CPU limited system will see very little change in frame rates, whereas a GPU limited system will see a large and significant change in frame rates.

The bottleneck will vary based on what game you are benchmarking - something like FFXIV can tax some of the best gaming rigs out there (not because it's that good, it's just that poorly written), whereas something like the original Starcraft could likely be run on an integrated graphics card and a decade-old CPU and not break a sweat.