Buying a very powerful graphics card will allow us to enjoy demanding games in maximum quality and will also give us access to advanced technologies that will improve our experience. However, this must be clear to us the performance of the graphics card can be significantly affected by the processor that we use, and that if it can’t keep up with it, our brand new graphics will hit a huge bottleneck.

Balance When building or upgrading your PC, it’s essential to enjoy good performance levels. It is pointless, for example, to mount a GeForce RTX 4090 on a PC that has an Intel Pentium G 4000 or AMD Ryzen 3 1200 processor, because we will have a big bottleneck caused by the processor and the same would happen with more powerful models like Core i5-10400F or Ryzen 5 3600.

A bottleneck occurs when a component ends up limiting the performance of another component. In this case, it is the processor that negatively affects the performance of the graphics card because it is not able to work fast enough to supply the graphics card with all the data and instructions it needs, causing the graphics card to have “idle” phases. too big.

If you are wondering how you can identify serious obstacles, the answer is very simple, when CPU utilization is very high and GPU utilization is below 85%. In these cases, the processor “blows” and the graphics card is excessive, so much so that a significant part of its potential goes to waste. may also exist less serious obstacleswhich are the ones where the CPU goes full throttle but the GPU remains at 90% utilization rate, and soft bottlenecks that occur when the GPU utilization rate remains at least 95%.

In this image we can see that there is no bottleneck in Cyberpunk 2077 with RTX 3090 Ti and Ryzen 7 5800X. The settings used were 1440p with ray tracing and DLSS in quality mode.

Screen resolution, graphics quality and processor: an important reflection

Before we look directly at what processor we need for each graphics card, it is necessary to talk about the screen resolution, as this will determine the workload that the graphics card will have to face and the impact that the CPU will have on its performance. The lower the screen resolution, the less load the GPU will take and the more weight the processor will have.and conversely.

This is very important because a processor like the Core i5-10400F can be a huge bottleneck for the GeForce RTX 4090 at 1080p, but this bottleneck is significantly reduced in 4K. The reason is very simple, in 1080p the graphics card is overpowered and needs the processor to deliver as much data and instructions as possible to develop its full potential, while in 4K the GPU has to work with 4x more pixels and will therefore be more robust and not need the CPU to he worked so fast.

This should also be taken into account graphics settings greatly affect the dependency relationship between GPU and CPU. Lowering the graphics quality will cause the graphics card to put less strain on the processor and vice versa. Enabling particularly demanding settings, such as ray tracing, will greatly increase the load on the graphics card and reduce the weight of the processor.

Everything we have seen is so important that today it is not unusual to measure the performance of different processors in games they are configured in 720p and low quality. It’s an unrealistic scenario, but it forces such a large reduction in graphics load that it’s the processor that ultimately makes the difference in terms of performance.

Before concluding, we must also remind you that on enabled by technologies such as NVIDIA DLSS, Intel XeSS or AMD FSR in games, the graphics load is also reduced and can cause bottlenecks as they lower the resolution at which each frame is rendered and increase CPU weight.

In Batman Arkham Knight, we have a significant bottleneck at 1440p with the RTX 3090 Ti and Ryzen 7 5800X, but this is due to in-game optimization.

What processor should I choose for my graphics card?

We are ready to go fully into the depth of the article to determine which processor would be the minimum recommended for each graphics card. We already said that it will depend on the screen resolution and graphic quality, so we will offer you a general recommendation that will be the ideal minimum to avoid severe narrowing even in 1080p and we will assume that our goal is to play in maximum quality.

On the other hand, in order to simplify the tutorial and make it easier to refer to, we will only provide broader references to the latest generations of graphics cards, otherwise this article would be too long and lose its value. We leave a section for older models, but this one will be more general and brief. However, if you have any questions, you can leave them in the comments and we will help you solve them.

GeForce GTX 10, Radeon RX Vega and older graphics cards

With these generations, it is difficult to find a bottleneck at the CPU level, unless we have a very old processor. From a Ryzen 5 1500X or Core i7-4770 We can easily move graphics cards like GeForce GTX 970, GTX 1060, Radeon R9 390 and Radeon RX 580.

For more powerful models such as GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1080 Ti and Radeon RX Vega 56 and 64 and Radeon VII, the recommended minimum would be Ryzen 5 2500X or Core i7-6700 to avoid serious narrowing.

For much older graphics cards like GeForce GTX 600 or GTX 700 and Radeon HD 7000, the processor is like Core i5-2500 or Ryzen 3 1200 would be more than enough to avoid a serious bottleneck, although we have to take into account that they have become obsolete and unsupported, and that their performance in current games can be quite poor.

GeForce RTX 20 and Radeon RX 5000 graphics cards

It’s two generations they still offer an excellent level of performanceespecially in the higher ranges, and which need a fairly powerful processor to develop their full potential, especially if we play in 1080p resolution.

• GeForce RTX 2060, RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070: we’ll need at least a Ryzen 5 2500X or Core i7-6700 to move them without causing serious bottlenecks.
• Radeon RX 5600 XT, Radeon RX 5700 and Radeon RX 5700 XT: As in the previous case, we will need at least Ryzen 5 2500X or Core i7-6700 to avoid bottlenecks.
• GeForce RTX 2070 Super, RTX 2080, RTX 2080 Super and RTX 2080 Ti: These are very powerful graphics cards, so we’ll need a processor to match. Having a Ryzen 5 3600 or Core i7-8700 will be enough to avoid a serious bottleneck, although in the case of the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, having a Ryzen 5 5600 or Core i5-11400F would be ideal.

GeForce RTX 30 and Radeon RX 6000 graphics cards

We give important a leap in terms of raw power, and this means that we also need a more powerful processor to avoid serious problems with graphics cards, which we will see below. In the most powerful models, it would be advisable to have a higher CPU to maximize performance if we play in 1080p.

• GeForce RTX 3050 and Radeon RX 6600: With Ryzen 5 2500X or Core i7-6700 we won’t suffer from a serious bottleneck, although if we play in 1080p with activated DLSS or FSR, it is advisable to have Ryzen 5 3600 or Core i7-8700.
• GeForce RTX 3060, RTX 3060 Ti, Radeon RX 6600 XT and RX 6700: the jump that occurs in performance is significant and for this reason it is recommended to have at least a Ryzen 5 3600 or a Core i7-8700. If we play in 1080p with activated DLSS or FSR, a more powerful processor can make a significant difference (Ryzen 5 5600 and Core i5-11400F would be ideal partners in that case).
• GeForce RTX 3070, RTX 3070 Ti, RTX 3080, Radeon RX 6700 XT, RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT: They are models that offer a very high level of performance and that, even at 1440p resolution, require a powerful processor to develop their full potential. Starting with the Ryzen 5 5600 or Core i5-11400F, we wouldn’t suffer from any serious bottleneck, even at 1080p.
• GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, RTX 3090, RTX 3090 Ti and Radeon RX 6900 XT-6950XT: They were the most powerful models of their generation, we can consider them equivalent to each other and they are still at the top of the sector. In this case, we should also accompany them with Ryzen 5 5600 or Intel Core i5-11400F, so that we do not suffer a serious bottleneck even in 1080p.

GeForce RTX 40 and Radeon RX 7000 graphics cards

Newly released new generations of NVIDIA and AMD set a new performance ceiling in the graphics sectorIn fact, the GeForce RTX 4090 is so powerful that even at 4K we can see a certain bottleneck for processors that previously performed quite well at this level.

• GeForce RTX 4070 Ti and Radeon RX 7900 XT: These are two models that generally perform at the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti level, so we’ll also need a Ryzen 5 5600 or an Intel Core i5-11400F to avoid serious bottlenecks.
• GeForce RTX 4080 and Radeon RX 7900 XTX: both represent a significant performance jump compared to the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti. If we are going to play in 4K, the Ryzen 5 5600X or Intel Core i5-11600 will do without any problems, but if DLSS or FSR is activated or when playing at a lower resolution, it is recommended to have the Ryzen 5 7600X or Core i5 -12600.
• GeForce RTX 4090: it’s the most powerful graphics card on the mainstream consumer market. Starting with Ryzen 5 7600X or Intel Core i5-12600, we will not suffer from serious bottlenecks, but if we activate DLSS or if we play at a resolution lower than 4K, a faster CPU will give us better performance.

Final remarks: The importance of optimization

A clear example of a bottleneck in Battlefield 2042 due to poor optimization.

To complete this article properly, it is necessary to talk about it the importance of optimization todayand how badly some games are made, because this is a problem that can cause obstacles in perfectly balanced teams, and in these cases you should not worry, because unfortunately you will not be able to do anything.

Most games today only scale well on quad-core, eight-thread processors, and some on six-core and twelve-thread processors. Having a processor with more than six cores and twelve threads won’t make a significant difference in games because they aren’t optimized to use them properly. What will make a big difference will be the IPC of the processor and its operating frequency..

So if your goal is to play games and you have to choose between an 8 core 16 thread processor with low IPC like Ryzen 7 1800X or a 6 core 12 thread processor with higher IPC like Ryzen 5 5600 the second would undoubtedly be the best option, in fact, the difference in gaming performance between the two is overwhelming in favor of the Ryzen 5 5600.

All in all, you shouldn’t obsess over the IPC issue to the point of underestimating the number of cores and threads, because today having less than 4 cores and 8 threads means we can’t play with guarantees and the ideal is to achieve a configuration of 6 cores and 12 threads. Processors with 8 cores and 16 threads make sense only in very specific cases, for example when we will be playing in the background and doing other things at the same time.