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will the intel core i5 2500k bottleneck a gtx 1060?

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Zephros

New Member
Joined
Oct 10, 2016
hi i was thinking of making my first pc be a i5 2500k gtx 1060 build
i got my hand on a 2500k for very cheap so now i need to know which graphics card to buy

i was thinking gtx 1060
 
If you don't overclock, probably not. If you do, definitely not.

Modern games just don't need much CPU anymore. CPU improvements have slowed since Sandy Bridge. The last big jump was from Nehalem/Westmere to Sandy Bridge.
 
Not a lot, no. 2500K is still a viable cpu, particularly when overclocked.

Now, you are losing out on some features of new cpus amd chipsets (usb 3, m.2, etc)... but it seems your goal is cheap. Is a 4 generation old chip your only way to go?
 
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il be having one running on my 2500k rig in sig guarantee you with an overclock it will be plenty. :)
 
I'm still in the process of it but I was looking at the what the i5 2500k @ 4.5Ghz is in comparison to my i7 6700k that I have now (going to 4.5Ghz for better speed comparisons).
Though really even a 1080 shouldn't bottleneck the CPU but doesn't mean the performance of the game might not increase due to having a newer CPU.
 
I'm still in the process of it but I was looking at the what the i5 2500k @ 4.5Ghz is in comparison to my i7 6700k that I have now (going to 4.5Ghz for better speed comparisons).
Though really even a 1080 shouldn't bottleneck the CPU but doesn't mean the performance of the game might not increase due to having a newer CPU.

Something has to be the bottlenck in a system. So if CPU is not the bottleneck, GPU is, and the bottleneck determines performance.

IPC improvements depend on the application, but from Sandy Bridge to Skylake it's about 20-25% (http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/9). So a 2500k at 4.5 GHz should be about as fast as a Skylake at 3.6-3.7 GHz.
 
I think bottleneck implies that one or the other cannot physically run at 100% due to a limitation of the other.

Usually with CPU, if the GPU cannot run at 100%(99% as usually shown), and therefore you're losing frames due to high CPU usage which cannot keep up it'd be considered a bottleneck. But if your GPU is able to fully load itself, i wouldn't call it a bottleneck anymore, just that X CPU is not as fast as Y CPU, hence a reduction of frame rates.

I don't believe a 2500k would 'bottleneck' a GTX 1060. Especially if overclocked anything past 4.2ghz.
 
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I think bottleneck implies that one or the other cannot physically run at 100% due to a limitation of the other.

At every frame the CPU has to do a certain amount of work, and the GPU also has to do a certain amount of work. They can do them at the same time, but the faster one to finish has to wait for the slower one, so the overall frame time (and therefore frame rate) is dependent on the slower of the two. That's the bottleneck, and there's always a bottleneck - it's simply the slowest component. It doesn't matter how fast your machine is, there will always be the slowest component.

If the GPU is used at 100%, that means getting a better GPU will improve frame rate, much like if the CPU is at 100%, getting a faster CPU will improve frame rate.
 
Yes, I agree, but for gaming, if the GPU is able to be pegged at 100%, the CPU is fast enough in general to not 'bottleneck' the GPU. It's not actually REDUCING the performance of the GPU. It would only be 'bottlenecking' if the GPU was sitting at say 70% with a 100% CPU load. If that makes sense? Of course there will always be one that is 'limited', but for gaming (the purpose of the OPs question), I don't think it'll be a 'bottleneck' in that it would stop the GPU from performing.
 
It will vary by game as to much if any that cpu will place a glass ceiling on the card. Being a 1060, I don't imagine it to be held back much at all. I'd get it and never look back.
 
Yes, I agree, but for gaming, if the GPU is able to be pegged at 100%, the CPU is fast enough in general to not 'bottleneck' the GPU. It's not actually REDUCING the performance of the GPU. It would only be 'bottlenecking' if the GPU was sitting at say 70% with a 100% CPU load. If that makes sense? Of course there will always be one that is 'limited', but for gaming (the purpose of the OPs question), I don't think it'll be a 'bottleneck' in that it would stop the GPU from performing.

Oh yeah definitely. The GPU isn't bottlenecked in this case. The CPU is bottlenecked by the GPU (or more accurately, the whole system is bottlenecked by the GPU).
 
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