How to find bottlenecks?

[JonJ678]

Hey. I'm wondering what approach can be taken to find the 'limiting component' in a desktop computer.

I see a lot of threads to the effect of 'my computer is a bit too crap, what can I do with £x to make it better'. I'm wondering about the rational behind the answers, is it solely based on past experience or is there a more rigorous route available?


I think gaming is fairly simple, in that you need a graphics card sufficient for the resolution and fps you desire, and the same fps at various resolutions indicated a processor bottleneck. But how on earth do you discover when the ram or motherboard is limiting your system?

 

[Ben M]

motherboard will limit how much of an overclock you can get out of your CPU, it won't limit your system on its own.

As for RAM, it doesn't tend to be a bottleneck in games. But if your RAM is going to 0% free, it is a bottleneck.

The best way to work out if something is a limiting factor (proper name for a bottleneck) is to reduce or improve how good it is, and see if your performance is reduced. e.g. run a benchmark at 200mhz less and see if you get a worse score. You can have more than one limiting factor at a time (you would see performance gains from both increasing gpu and cpu clocks)