Bottle Necking Need To Know?

[DJ Tucker]

Just a question that i need to know more about and the title says it all! i know what bottle necking is a little but need to know how you would know if your system is bottle necking and what is the bottle neck!

[bandix666]

Hi

First, you already said you know something about bottlenecking, but i´ll explain it anyway.

I´ll do an analogy with something that has nothing to do with computers, and then i´ll explain your case in particular.

For instance, if you want to do fire, you need a sparkle of some sort, oxygen, and something to burn, like paper or gasoline. If you have a lot of oxygen and tons of gasoline, it won´t do you no good, if you don´t have any sparkle. Absence of sparkle is bottlenecking your ability to create fire ;-)

Now, in computers, if you want to play games, imagine you have the best cpu known to man, 48gb of ddr3 memory, ssd... the works, but you have an intel onboard gpu. Some games won´t even run... what´s the problem? the gpu is bottlenecking your system. in a system like that it would be easy to pinpoint the origin of bottlenecking. In yours it could prove a bit more difficult. The more balanced the system, the more difficult to pinpoint the bottleneck. First, you play with a 17´´ panel with a low resolution, so it seems to me you don´t need much more power in any of your components. Nevertheless, if you are asking about bottlenecking, probably you feel like there is lower performance in some instances than expected. Probably, in a game that doesn´t support sli, you could feel low performance, because of the GPU. If i was in your place, before improving any other components, i would get a 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 compatible monitor, and go from there.

Now... you REALLY want to know what is bottlenecking in your system. Notice, in every game, different components represent the bottleneck, since some games are more cpu dependent and others, more gpu dependent.
You need more hardware, loaned maybe, to test OR, you could simply check for reviews online. For instance, you have X GPU, you go and check for X Gpu reviews, and compare results. If the review has similar results with a better cpu for instance, the gpu or other component would be the bottleneck on that game, since improving cpu won´t do no good! Now, if with the same system, you see a significant improvement, with a single component change, that would be the bottleneck

You can do the same for other components. A bit troublesome, but... if you really want to ... go for it!!!

[Major_A]

From looking at your sig the biggest bottleneck is the 17" monitor. You aren't able to fully utilize your SLI setup.

[DJ Tucker]

i have looked at this woth care and i can get 90% usage on both cards on this monitor but what i don't understand is that a game i have called turok the latest one runs at 50-60fps vsync off but only uses 60% of each card and 370mb of memory on each card! surely if it uses more power it would run better. no!

[skier]

how can you even stand using a standard width 17"? the only reason i'd use a monitor that small is if it were a 120hz CRT

my main is just a 19" widescreen but i'm getting a 1080p asap, monitors are really cheap right now

your monitor should really be the most expensive part of a computer if not tied with GPU or CPU at least but currently your 17" is the cheapest part because you can get a 19" for under 100USD

[Major_A]

i have looked at this woth care and i can get 90% usage on both cards on this monitor but what i don't understand is that a game i have called turok the latest one runs at 50-60fps vsync off but only uses 60% of each card and 370mb of memory on each card! surely if it uses more power it would run better. no!

Most people buy SLI setups to play at high resolutions with all the details turned up. I'm sure most of the games you play would be just fine with one card at 1280x1024. Find any review of a SLI/Crossfire setup on the internet and you'll see that as the resolution increases so does the benefit of two cards.

[DJ Tucker]

how can you even stand using a standard width 17"? the only reason i'd use a monitor that small is if it were a 120hz CRT

my main is just a 19" widescreen but i'm getting a 1080p asap, monitors are really cheap right now

your monitor should really be the most expensive part of a computer if not tied with GPU or CPU at least but currently your 17" is the cheapest part because you can get a 19" for under 100USD

in the uk it's not so cheap and this has a responce time of 8ms and a contrast ratio of 500:1 which is not great at all but i am happy with the frame rates i get at this resolution!

i have looked at this woth care and i can get 90% usage on both cards on this monitor but what i don't understand is that a game i have called turok the latest one runs at 50-60fps vsync off but only uses 60% of each card and 370mb of memory on each card! surely if it uses more power it would run better. no!

Most people buy SLI setups to play at high resolutions with all the details turned up. I'm sure most of the games you play would be just fine with one card at 1280x1024. Find any review of a SLI/Crossfire setup on the internet and you'll see that as the resolution increases so does the benefit of two cards.

so your saying that my cards will perform better at higher resolution but will it not lower the frames rates as many reviews i have seen on my res to the text one up 1680x1050 are between 5-15 fps depending on the game!