Bottlenecking question

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Hi all :)

I was watching a video on YouTube about bottlenecking, I basically understand that you have a strong GPU and a weak CPU that the GPU wont perform at 100% blar blar blar...

Now what I did yesterday was, used a GPU and CPU monitor and whilst in Valley benchmark, my GPU was floating between 95-100%.

Would this be classed as a bottleneck? as it doesn't keep to 100% while under full load. (not a straight line basically)

i3 3220 @ 3.30Mhz
HIS 7850 2GC @ 1050/1250
 
I currently have a similar situation.

I have a I7 950 @ 4ghz and a Radeon HD 5830 1GB (or 2GB i cant remember).

when i had the AMD system monitor software running my CPU was hardly reaching 20% when gaming (had this running on the second monitor to watch) but my GPU was continuously sitting at 89% to 100% usage.

i currently have a 970 in the house but I'm not allowed near it till Christmas!! lol

what % is your CPU running at when your doing this at all as i find my CPU is hardly being touched
 
imo it should always be your gpu that bottlenecks your systenm in games, ie if you were to upgrade your gpu, you'd get a significant speed boost, your cpu and ram at a low % and your gpu at 100% is how it should be. was it this video you watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAgpvWc4VBM seems to suggest as long as you have a decent quad core, you wont be significantly bottlenecked by your cpu.
 
Don't worry about it and don't use benchmarks to detect 'bottlenecks'.

It's a massively overused term and worth remembering that there is no always-relevant system bottleneck, only in certain uses - e.g. sometimes weak CPU/powerful GPU is the right choice (actually most of the time for most gamers - only a few games require much CPU, but most specs make sure they handle these situations as insufficient CPU performance is harder to work round than when it's GPU), sometimes the reverse is ideal. So if you're worried about it in a certain use then test in that use.

(OK, if you've too little RAM to even launch your OS or something then that's kinda a special case :p)

Every system in every use will have some component that is the slowest part and is holding back the system somewhat, and some over-enthusiastic people would call this a bottleneck. If it's not restricting other components from doing their job then forget about it. Also, even if it is significantly restricting other components, this is only worth worrying about if you're getting inadequate performance. e.g. 150 fps instead of 300? Who cares. 40 instead of 60? Smaller drop, but more relevant. If your GPU usage is sitting around 100% (95 to 100 is close enough! You'll never get perfect 100%) then the GPU is not being bottlenecked, even if faster other components could make the system run slightly faster overall.

Also, sometimes it's hard to see what is limiting your system, you'll generally do better comparing with similar systems with a component different to see what the effects are. Monitoring usage may give you a signal, but not necessarily tell you anything useful, especially where software caps are in place.
Edit: The video does this acceptably, tweaking his components to see how it impacts usage etc. Notice how his score drops a bit going i7 to i5 without dropping GPU usage - this shows that there are more contributors to performance than just GPU power, even when the GPU is the most limiting factor - this is not a bottleneck though!
 
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It was the Jayz2cents review on YouTube.

I will take some screen shots later on when im home with the evidence i gathered.
 
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