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Discovering Bottlenecks in PCs Built for Gaming?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the what's-the-hold-up dept.

QMan asks: "I, like many others here at Slashdot, am an avid gamer. Recently, I've been thinking about upgrading my gaming PC, but with all the mish mash of components in the box, I don't really know which components are slowing down the rest, and would be an ideal candidate for replacement. I'm looking for advice on how to discover the inherent bottlenecks in my system, whether they be from my video card, RAM, CPU, or other components. I've tried various benchmarking utilities, but they generally give an overall performance rating, but not much info on which device(s) had the most impact in limiting that rating. I'd imagine many of you out there have encountered the same problem, and might have ideas on where to start."

3 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. OS? Hardware? by MyLongNickName · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Perhaps you should give us the OS you are running. That will greatly impact the answer(s) you will get.

    For example, if you were running Windows 2000 or greater, there are various performance monitors that will give you a good clue about what is actually going on while your game is playing. Otherwise, you are in a guessing game.

    Alternatively, you could swap out components and do observation based tests. However, this tends to be subjective, and less reliable.

    Bottom line: give us more details, and someone might be able to help.

    --
    See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
  2. Heat is killer by macdaddy357 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What are you using to keep your gaming PC cool?

    --
    How ya like dat?
  3. None of you are answering the question... by tengennewseditor · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The poster is asking for utilities that will help him discover the bottleneck in his gaming machine. He is not asking how to improve performance for a particular setup, and that is why he did not post specs for his system. He probably should have posted what OS he is using, but since this question is about gaming you can assume that he's using Windows, or at least has access to a Windows boot.

    I wanted to clarify the original question because I'm looking for this kind of utility myself and was getting annoyed at everyone simply asking for specs.