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Dropped $700 on a high-end GPU, then realized my CPU was the real bottleneck
About 3 weeks back I snagged a shiny new RTX card from a Micro Center in Austin. Plugged it in, fired up Cyberpunk, and my FPS barely moved from my old card. Turns out my 6-year-old i5 was choking it hard, spent another $300 on a motherboard and chip after that. Has anyone else burned cash on a GPU upgrade before checking if the rest of their rig can keep up?
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jason7524d ago
Watched my buddy do the exact same thing last year. He had a 1080 Ti that was still fine, but he blew $800 on a 4080 just to get like 10 more frames in Warzone. Turns out his old i7-6700K was maxing out on every core while the GPU sat there barely working.
After he swapped in a newer processor, the difference was night and day. He went from constantly stuttering to smooth 144fps. The worst part is he'd asked me about it before buying and I told him to check his CPU, but he figured the GPU was the only thing that mattered for gaming.
Cost him an extra $350 for a board and chip he wasn't planning on, plus the hassle of a full rebuild. Now he always checks bottleneck calculators before upgrading anything. You're not alone, this happens to tons of people, especially if you've had a rig for more than a few years.
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