How to check for bottlenecks? Mainly CPU and Graphics Card?

[Black Panther]

Which is the most reliable way to determine which part of your system is bottlenecking your rig?

I do have my suspicions that my E4300, even overclocked at 3.0Ghz, might be bottlenecking my 8800GT, but I'm not sure if I'm right because it's just my impression.

For example, when playing Oblivion I get +50 fps even in full view of grass and shimmering gates. However I downloaded a mod which increases the amount of NPC's (non-playable characters) and I notice that when there is a large amount of NPC's my fps start jumping from 50 to 25 and back up, causing stutter.
Also, during Crysis on high settings DX9 I mostly get 40+ fps which I think is very good for that game. But if I happen to be in an area with a lot of Koreans the fps drops down to below 10! On the other hand I get an almost constant 35-45 fps even if I'm making large explosions (graphically taxing?) but there are only 2 or 3 Koreans rather than 6+.

As regards benchmarking tools, which is what I'm looking for actually, I ran the everest benchmark which placed my processor on par with the 8400... Superpi 1M gives me 18 seconds... and I get 12782 marks in 3dMark06.

Where do you think my problem lies and how can I confirm it?

 

[mrhuggles]

hehe, anything can be a bottleneck if you hit it hard enough, you just have to deside if these things are something you wanna do and are willing to spend enough money to make it happen

btw if programs are quad core friendly you could get a really huge boost that way

 

[keakar]

well the enemy are AI generated charactors so thats why they use a lot more resources than explosions which are mostly much less taxing depending on the situation.

i cant help you with the rest

 

[CrackerJack]

give us a 3dmark screenie.

 

[yogurt_21]

shoot my quadt at 4GHZ will still bottlneck an 8800gt, cpu's seem to be the major weakpoint in most rigs. but if it isn't affecting normal gameplay, I wouldn't worry about it. no use in going out and buying a more expendsive cpu only to find out that you're still bottlenecked. lol

bottlenecking is part of the rig no matter what you do. if it's not the cpu, it's the gpu, if it's not the gpu, it's the monitor, if it's not the monitor it's the memory, if it's not the memory, it's the hd, if it's not the hd , it's the motherboard. and so on and so forth. therse really no such thing as an unbottlenecked rig these days.

the situations you're describing are typical for the titles, oblivion is glitchy especially with a mod installed and crysis is the worst optimised game in history. (well maybe tied with vampires the masquerade: bloodlines)

now if you were getting these problems in cod4, hl2 ep2 or some other well optimised title, then you might have a reason to upgrade. but if you were to upgrade, I'd do your memory as well, some nice 1066 ddr2 would greatly help with ocing.

 

[Black Panther]

give us a 3dmark screenie.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=4136536

 

[CrackerJack]

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=4136536

The bottleneck isn't that bad, better than my 5000+ 3.2Ghz. Looks good to me

 

[lemonadesoda]

Problem about "bottleneck" is that it is different for every application. So what bottlenecks a benchmark, is different from what bottlenecks ONE game from ANOTHER, etc.

3Dmark06 is a nice overall power test. BUT, Quad cores score much higher CPU marks than Duos. While it is true that they can process twice the threads of a duo, in practice, most games are not optimised for quad cores. Hence a 3dmark06 score isnt such a great demo of typical games performance.

Try running 3 other benchmarks (they dont take long).

1./ Lightsmark
2./ FurMark
3./ AquaMark

None of these 3 are all-rounders like 3dmark06. BUT they do scale more realistically with typical game performance. Here are a few comparisons:

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?p=779470#post779470
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?p=742045#post742045

Dont worry about these being AGP benchmarks. The point is to compare CPU and GPU speeds on benchmarks other than 3dmark

 

[spearman914]

A benchie should give you an answer. Compare your results with someone with the same hardware. If one score is lower then expected then that means its bottlenecked.

 

[smig]

as said before, and as you said yourself, even the same game will behave differently in different situations.
if you mostly play single player games that mostly require AI then you need a better CPU and memory to support it.
for multiplayer games you can use a less strong CPU but you will need a better internet connection

 

[JC316]

Lets put it this way, with a Q6600@ 3.6GHZ, I was making 13K 06 scores. You don't seem that bad and if your games run smooth, then you don't have a bottleneck.

 

[CDdude55]

I don't care about bottlenecks. I just want my games to run smooth enough to play them.

 

[niko084]

Crysis uses tons of cpu and gpu, your probably bottlenecked at both honestly, in different places.