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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."

7 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Heat is killer by macdaddy357 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What are you using to keep your gaming PC cool?

    --
    How ya like dat?
  2. I need advice on this too! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    My 386sx 16 is just not not enough to handle Falcon 4.0! The box specs IBM PC compatible, 286 min, 640k and an Ad Lib sound card ... and I am at least 1.5 those specs. I mean WTF man??!!

  3. Re:OS? Hardware? by TimCapulet · · Score: 5, Informative

    Since the poster says he is an avid gamer, it is probably safe to assume that he runs Windows XP.

    A site that I have always found helpful is AnandTech. Every couple of months or so they publish a guide on recommended hardware for different performance levels of computers. The systems they recommend are usually designed so that no one piece of hardware is a bottleneck on the performance.

  4. 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.

    1. Re:None of you are answering the question... by strider44 · · Score: 5, Informative

      I won't play on a gaming rig with less than 2GB RAM. *Looks down at my puny 1GB rammed computer and sobs* Anyway I want to add another point (and I'm adding this as a 3D developer rather than a game player as such!) that really what's bottlenecking your system depends on the application/game rather than the actual system. Sure some setups might do better than others just generally, but considering a generally well rounded system then really it almost totally depends on which game.

      For example, one app/game (say your average FPS) might have the polygons and maps neatly optimised in memory (assuming you have enough) just loaded at the start of the level while you might also play a flight simulator which will be constantly streaming data from the hard drive. For the first game getting a 1337 SCSI hard drive won't help a bit, but it'll probably make things easier on the flight simulator.

      For memory, having 2GB vs 3GB on a game that only uses 1GB of memory won't do you any good. Having less than required would be horrific though, especially if you don't have that 1337 SCSI hard drive to cope with all of the swapping from disk. Having extremely quick 2GB memory might help compared to slow 3GB memory, however for games like RTSs where the units are probably all held on display lists on the video card anyway there won't be much streaming of memory to the video card so having faster memory won't help *all* that much (don't get me wrong, it will help, just not as much as you might hope).

      I'd guess that most games now-a-days would be a balance between an uber video card and an uber CPU. Of course each different game would have a different optimum balance so I guess you're stuffed there.

      Wow, looking back at my message I realised that I said lots of interesting things that didn't help one bit in answering the question except by saying "Nice try mate, but it's not that simple". Anyway I'll stop now.

  5. Lights by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think you should add flashing lights. Maybe one of those fishtank windows. Don't forget to paint your case and don't buy a power supply unless it's painted black.

    Be sure all the fans you buy have LEDs in them, and your front panel should be covered by a motorized door that you can open by remote control.

    Then you will have a "gaming rig" instead of just some workstation with a video card in it.

  6. Re:OS? Hardware? by theqmann · · Score: 5, Informative

    Note: I posted the original article.
    (It's a Windows machine, as the majority of newly released commercial titles don't play well with Linux.)

    It's a multi-tiered question. I've built a number of gaming machines in the past, and upgraded various components over the life of each machine. I've always wondered if there is a way to figure out if getting a video card with more texture memory would help much, or upgrading to faster or less latency RAM would help, or all that's needed is just getting _more_ of it. It doesn't really help to get RAM though if the CPU/GPU/HardDisk is the bottleneck. Thats why I was asking the question in the first place. I'm sure a lot of people who upgrade their gaming machines might get help from this as well. This is for all of us who want to upgrade, but are not quite sure which component needs it the most.

    For reference, I've been building machines on a medium budget, getting middle to upper class hardware. I've got a gig of 3-3-3 PC3200 RAM, a nice SATA RAID0 array, a GeForce 6800, and an Athlon64 3200+ rig. I know that most components I have could be upgraded, but not intrinisically which ones are the most crucial to performance. I play all sorts of games, from RTS (AoE, Empire Earth, etc) games, to FPS (Quake 4, UT2004), to simulations (SimCity 4).

    -QMan