Hello, im building my first PC, and here will be my specs please tell me if anything will be bottlenecked, if so then what I would need to change. AMD Athlon II x4 640 3.0ghz Quad Core Processor EVGA Gtx 460 1GB Graphics card MSI 785GM-P45 MotherBoard 1TB Seagate HDD 4GB DDR3 1333 Gold memory kit (RAM) 550Watt Power Supply Sorry, If I missed something but I believe thats everything.
I don't see how you would be too affected unless you were going for a 4.0GHz overclock or more. Then memory might start becoming a bottleneck. Other than that you're limited a little bit by how far you can upgrade that build.
Well, i'll be using the PC specifically for gaming, and no I won't really overclock to much maybe my processor from 3.0 to 3.2ghz but thats about it and how is the harddrive the bottleneck?
You'll get better performance in games with a Phenom II Quad or even Dual core (don't go for a Phenom 1). The Athlon x4 lacks level 3 cache which is basically a small amount of very fast memory on the cpu itself. This is the main difference between current Athlons and Phenom II's and it means that instead of being able to keep vital parts of data on the CPU it will have to send it back and forth to the slower ram. There aren't many games that actually utilize 4 cores all at once, most modern games will only use 2 (even GTA4 will run optimally with 3 cores although you may need to turn clip recording off) so If you can't quite stretch to a quad core Phenom II then a dual or triple core version would serve your needs just as well. Check here for graphs: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-processor-core-i3-athlon-ii,2666-5.html
As I mentioned in your other thread, you need to overclock your CPU to reduce bottleneck in games like Crysis which doesn't use more than 2 cores: Grab a decent CPU cooler and try to push your Athlon II X4 to 3.7~3.8GHz. Also download and use MSI Afterburner to overclock your GTX460 1GB's to at least core clock 800MHz/shader clock 1600MHz, and memory clock to 1000MHz (4000MHz effectively).
IMO (some of this has been said) -Make sure that PSU is branded -Get a cheap 60Gb Sandforce SSD for your Boot Drive if Possible (alongside the 1TB drive) it makes more difference than you can imagine in general use. Mechanical hard drives are the slowest thing in any system and Bottleneck everything that interacts with them. -Swap that MEH Athlon II for a Phenom II or better yet go 1156 + G6950 and OC -Swap that 1333Mhz Ram for some nice 1600Mhz -Add a decent third Party Cooler
Firstly, there is technically no such thing as 'bottle necking'. A lot of people think that with a crap CPU, it must be bottle necking the GPU, which is a long way from the truth. Most games rely on the CPU and GPU fairly equally. In this case, the game would use all thats available from the GPU, and all from the CPU (that it needs). This may result in a poor FPS, not because of bottle necking though... purely because the CPU isn't up to the job, and the game would require some decent oomph from both parties - not just one. Therefore if your CPU isn't up to it, your FPS will start to suffer, however the GPU will continue being used as much as possible. The GPU is only resonsible for rendering the visible graphics... the CPU does everything else. Thinking about it, thats quite a big job. Some games however are GPU dependant... meaning they don't require a great deal of CPU power. GRID is a good example of this. With a 3GHz Quad Core I wouldn't think you would have many problems. Perhaps some heavily CPU intensive games will suffer, but will still be perfectly playable. But yes, as there is no such thing as bottle necking, clearly you can't suffer from it
Recall he said bottlenecking in any way. This includes not only the relationship the CPU has with the GPU but also the relationship the CPU has with the FSB speed, the memory, the HDD, etc. If you wanna go all technical with the terms you could say he's asking which parts are the most limiting factors in his PC. You do raise a good point though, about gaming and its stress on the CPU, which I raised earlier.