Encountering a bottleneck, whether it affects the GPU or CPU, is not an enjoyable experience.
When these bottlenecks occur, you will see a diminished frame rate or might experience stuttering, and that is not a pleasant way to play video games.
Before proceeding, we need to pause for a moment and make you aware that it might not be a restrictive issue if you’re experiencing stuttering or a sluggish frame rate.
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What Is A GPU Bottleneck?
In the domain of computers, bottlenecking means one component performs far superior than another, forcing it to slow down to maintain equilibrium between the two.
In addition to a GPU bottleneck, there is also a CPU bottleneck. Let’s examine the disparities between the two and how they fluctuate depending on the game you’re playing.
As you might already know, some games are more reliant on your CPU than your GPU. These include some of the most popular simulation games, such as Cities: Skylines or the Civilization series. Because these games need to perform a lot of simulation (as the genre’s name suggests), they need the CPU to process all that data in order to function properly.
Conversely, there are games that tax the GPU far more. These are typically visually stunning AAA games, such as The Witcher 3 and Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla.
As the GPU is specifically designed to work with visual data to enhance the appearance of the game, it will be placed under a substantially greater strain when dealing with graphically intricate games.
Both these types of bottlenecks occur when there is a significant power mismatch between your components.
An old CPU paired with a powerful GPU can create a lot of frames, but the CPU needs time to work on its own tasks which slows down the GPU’s ability to send all the frames to the screen.
Likewise, if you pair a powerful CPU with an entry-level GPU, the CPU will have to wait until the GPU produces the requested frames. In effect, this is exactly what a GPU bottleneck is.
How To Solve Either Of These Bottlenecks
Let’s begin with the CPU bottleneck, as the answer here is more clear-cut.
There are a few actions you can take, with the easiest one being to reduce the CPU-intensive options in the game’s settings. This will significantly enhance your in-game FPS.
Although these largely depend on the game you’re playing, we can still give you examples. Settings likely to create a CPU bottleneck include draw distance, population density, vegetation, and similar.
Another simple solution is to stop any superfluous background processes, as they might place an extra burden on the CPU. An unconventional way to restore balance is to increase the screen resolution and create more work for the GPU.
Other than improving the CPU or RAM, there aren’t many other effective solutions for CPU bottlenecking.
When discussing GPU bottlenecking, we run into more of a quandary. There is only one solution, and it is unlikely to be a popular one. The only thing you can do to reduce the load on your graphics card is to lower the graphical settings in the game’s options.
There is a positive side, however: a GPU bottleneck won’t cause stuttering as a CPU bottleneck could. The downside is that the frame rate will be significantly lower.
The best way to prevent any sort of bottlenecking is to choose your components and check that they are compatible carefully.
