Hello, everyone! I’ve been doing some research into computer hardware lately, and one thing that I keep coming across is this idea that the speed of a processor, while important, isn’t the only thing that affects a computer’s overall performance. I’m having a bit of a hard time wrapping my head around this because I always thought that a faster processor meant a faster computer. Can anyone explain why this isn’t necessarily the case? I’m really interested to learn more about this!
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If you have a bottle full of water and turn it upside down, it pours out at a given speed/rate. If the bottle opening is smaller, it pours out slower. If the opening is larger, it pours out faster.
Now, imagine that you have a 4 bottles. 3 have small openings (GPU, RAM, chipset) and 1 bottle has a large opening (fast CPU). Turn them all over and the CPU pours out fast. But it doesn’t matter how fast it pours out. You still have to wait until the other three pour out.
This concept is the “bottleneck”. A slow GPU and RAM will “bottleneck” a fast CPU. Likewise, a slow CPU will “bottleneck” a fast GPU.
One component can only go as fast as other allows it to go.
This is a similar concept to “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link”. If you have a chain rated to 30,000 pounds but put one link in it that is rated to 10,000 pounds – the chain is only rated to 10,000 pounds.
In an ideal world, you would have a strong GPU, a strong CPU, adequate RAM, and a decent motherboard that can support it all. If you had the latest and greatest CPU and good RAM but you get an old 1060 GPU, your ability to play games will suffer incredibly. But you’d still be able to do simpler stuff like spreadsheets, Word, and surf the internet without much issue.
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