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Does a Intel Core i3-7100 bottleneck a Zotac Geforce GTX 1060 mini 3GB videocard?

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Jeeseongee

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Is the cpu too weak for the card? If so, is there any other cheap card that can run it?
 
you'll be fine, top tier i3's make great budget gaming CPUs
 
Not in the least, as far as your computer is concerned it's a quad core and it's running at a respectable frequency. I've been using Hyperthreaded i3's for my kids computers for quite some time & they kick a$$
 
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It will be fine. If you didn't bought GTX 1060 already, I would advise you Sapphire/XFX RX 470 4GB which are on discounts in some stores (they are also cheaper than GTX 1060).
 
Komshija said:
It will be fine. If you didn't bought GTX 1060 already, I would advise you Sapphire/XFX RX 470 4GB which are on discounts in some stores (they are also cheaper than GTX 1060).
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Why?? 470s are slower then 1060s
 
FreedomEclipse said:
Why?? 470s are slower then 1060s
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+1
RX480 had an awesome price week or two before the RX580 came out.
You could get one after rebate for $150 on newegg.
That was an awesome deal.
 
What they ^ said, doubled down. Could an i5 or i7 utilize the GPU more? Sure they would, but i3's are surprisingly good in gaming. One of my systems has an i3 and a 480. The most CPU-intensive game on that PC is GTA V. The CPU is frequently at 80-90% utilization and still consistently run above 45 fps, and mostly just under 60.
 
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i3`s are golden.
I was watching a comparison video between the gtx1060 and the RX570 and there was not a difference of $80 between the two.
Careful what you pay for a gtx1060 before you consider the AMD card
 
It's a fast little CPU, which should be good enough paired with a 1060 3GB.

Also use a minimum of 8GB system ram, preferably 16GB.
 
Also with 3gb on the 1060.stick with 1080p when gaming unless running a game that's not so demanding like an old game
 
alucasa said:
I doubt i3 would hold back 1080, either.

This bottleneck thing is getting out of hand. Darn Youtubers.
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It is! That's why I phrased my answer on a higher level CPU would more fully utilize the GPU. It has a better sound than "bottleneck."

However, for most GPU's an i3 is perfectly adequate.
 
FreedomEclipse said:
Why?? 470s are slower then 1060s
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agreed, people see the 4GB of RAM but they also fail to understand the chip is too slow for 4GB of RAM

rtwjunkie said:
It is! That's why I phrased my answer on a higher level CPU would more fully utilize the GPU. It has a better sound than "bottleneck."

However, for most GPU's an i3 is perfectly adequate.
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I "future proof" all my "bottlenecks" by taking a sharpie marker to my PC hardware and changing their model numbers. I then post videos of the improved FPS on youtube to show everyone how much faster the hardware is.
 
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dirtyferret said:
I "future proof" all my "bottlenecks" by taking a sharpie marker to my PC hardware and changing their model numbers. I then post videos of the improved FPS on youtube to show everyone how much faster the hardware is.
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LMAO! :roll:
 
FreedomEclipse said:
Why?? 470s are slower then 1060s
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Not by much. They are slightly slower - this will be unnoticeable at 1080p resolution. For 1440p monitors, I wouldn't even remotely consider anything below RX 580 or GTX 1070.

dirtyferret said:
agreed, people see the 4GB of RAM but they also fail to understand the chip is too slow for 4GB of RAM
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Where did you pull that info from? RX 470 has more than enough power for its 4 GB VRAM, while 8 GB is another story. For any kind of serious gaming 3GB VRAM isn't enough and definitely isn't future proof.
I tested Asus Strix RX 470 4 GB with Far Cry Primal (Ultra settings) at 1080p and it performed excellent providing almost 60 FPS (If I remember correctly, it was 57-58 FPS). GTX 1060 could approximately provide 60-65 FPS with the same hardware and same in-game settings, therefore some 5-6 FPS difference is totally & completely irrelevant.
 
Welcome to Techpowerup.

Answer to your question is that you will be totally fine.

alucasa said:
I doubt i3 would hold back 1080, either.

This bottleneck thing is getting out of hand. Darn Youtubers.
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Indeed they spread this word like a disease even not knowing what it means. The medical diagnose would be bottleneck phobia.
 
the term bottleneck is connected to the balanced system theory which often comes up when a system build is being discussed..

it all gets a bit contradictory.. on the one hand an I3 wont bottleneck a 1060 or maybe even a 1080 but on the other hand it would not be a well balanced system.. :)

trog
 
i3s are great for pure gaming. Streaming/recording game play makes them choke but for that you really need something with as many logical cores as possible.
 
as someone with a metric crap ton of (older) i3's and i5's around the house, as long as the clock speeds are up there (i'll say 3GHz+) even going all the way back to a second gen i3 can genuinely feed a modern gaming system just fine.

Their weakness is the lack of extra cores - multi tasking in the background becomes impossible without issues (things like AV scans, browsers, windows udpates etc need to be disabled/manually controlled)
 
rtwjunkie said:
It is! That's why I phrased my answer on a higher level CPU would more fully utilize the GPU. It has a better sound than "bottleneck."

However, for most GPU's an i3 is perfectly adequate.
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Its still super vague.

Look at minimum FPS differences between the i3's, the Ryzens and a full fat quad i5 or i7 and we could be looking at anything from a 0% to a 60% FPS loss depending on the game. Even without taking OC capability into the mix, which will make the gap even larger.

Every system is about balance, and while i3 + 1060 is good balance, an i3 + 1080 certainly is not. In the end money is best spent on a very well balanced system, because then you'll actually notice where you put that money.

However I would also focus more on an RX480 than a 1060 right now. The 1060 is too expensive, or performs worse if you get the cheapo one.
 
Vayra86 said:
In the end money is best spent on a very well balanced system
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Since I play on 1440p now, my i5 6500 can just do it, when I play GTA V and lots of explosions going on (using mods), CPU usage can go up in the 90+ % peak loads...
If I had to start over again I would have bought a i7 6700K but I can't complain much since it's just working well overall without issues, paired with my 1070.
You could say "Well balanced" since it runs well overall.
 
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Komshija said:
Where did you pull that info from? RX 470 has more than enough power for its 4 GB VRAM, while 8 GB is another story. For any kind of serious gaming 3GB VRAM isn't enough and definitely isn't future proof.
I tested Asus Strix RX 470 4 GB with Far Cry Primal (Ultra settings) at 1080p and it performed excellent providing almost 60 FPS (If I remember correctly, it was 57-58 FPS). GTX 1060 could approximately provide 60-65 FPS with the same hardware and same in-game settings, therefore some 5-6 FPS difference is totally & completely irrelevant.
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Lol, future proof lol, lol contradicts himself in the same post, lol serious gaming...oh man thanks for the laughs fan boy that was good but seriously your all wrong
 
dirtyferret said:
Lol, future proof lol, lol contradicts himself in the same post, lol serious gaming...oh man thanks for the laughs fan boy that was good but seriously your all wrong
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I always like to read highly intelligent "lol" answers.

Some recent games already utilize up to 4 GB VRAM when you max-out details, so, logically, we can expect future games to utilize more than 4 GB, just as it was the case with 2 GB VRAM three or four years ago and 1 GB five or six years ago. For instance, back in time 2GB VRAM was plenty, but today some games need more than 2 GB VRAM for smooth gaming with high in-game details.

RX 470 is cheaper than GTX 1060 and just slightly slower, therefore I see no reasons for picking NVidia card. If the trend from previous years continues, and I'm very sure it will, extra 1 GB VRAM will be much more useful in the future than ~8% faster chip.

AMD offers better bang-for-buck and this is very important for many individuals who are on the budget and who buy components by themselves (without mommy and daddy factor).
 
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