Diagnosing 3 guides
Working out what is actually happening in the machine you already own.
- How to tell if your CPU is bottlenecking your GPU Forget the percentage. There is a five-minute test using software you already have, and it gives you a real answer instead of a number.
- Why your GPU usage is low, and when that is a problem Low GPU usage usually is not a bottleneck. Here are the seven real causes, ordered by how often they turn out to be the answer.
- Which graphics settings cost the CPU and which cost the GPU Turning down the wrong half does nothing. A list of which settings belong to which component, and what to change depending on what is limiting you.
Choosing 5 guides
Deciding what to buy, including the cases where the answer is nothing.
- How much VRAM do you actually need? 8 GB at 1080p, 12 GB at 1440p, 16 GB at 4K — with the reasoning, and why your monitoring overlay is lying to you about it.
- Should you upgrade the CPU or the GPU first? The two upgrades differ in cost and consequence more than people expect. A procedure for deciding, including when to spend nothing.
- How many frames per second do you actually need? The gap between 60 and 144 is large and worth money. The gap between 144 and 240 is small and mostly is not.
- How much power supply do you actually need? Adding up TDP figures overshoots badly. What matters is transient spikes, and that changes the answer in both directions.
- How to pair a CPU and GPU in a new build Budget split, the ratios that actually hold, and why building deliberately unbalanced is sometimes the right call.
Understanding 4 guides
Why hardware behaves the way it does, when the short answer is misleading.
- Is a bottleneck actually bad? Every system has one. The question is not whether you have a bottleneck but whether it costs you anything you can perceive.
- Why 1080p and 4K give opposite upgrade advice The same pair of parts gives opposite answers at different resolutions. This is the single most misunderstood thing about PC performance.
- What 3D V-Cache actually does, and when it is worth paying for Why a chip with lower clocks beats a faster one in games, which games care, and the work where X3D is actively the wrong choice.
- How to read a bottleneck calculator result What a calculator can legitimately know, what it cannot, and how to tell the difference — including for this one.