Will your Intel (i7, i5, i3) or AMD’s CPU good enough to support the latest NVIDIA’s GTX 1080 graphics card? A bottleneck is when your graphic card cannot perform its full potential because it is way too fast for your CPU, this will put a limit on the gaming performance. Why? For example, when your graphic cards is rendering a frame up to 120fps while your CPU can only manage to render 60fps – your CPU will have trouble rendering these frame that can cause gaming issues because of this limitation.
Here are the list chart of CPU’s that are bottleneck for your GTX 1080.
* Excellent is no bottleneck issue and Poor is bottleneck.
CPU | Score |
6th Gen Intel i7 6950x, 6900K, 6850K, 6700K, 6700, 6600K | Excellent |
6th Gen Intel i5 6600, 6500, 6400, 6300 | Good |
5th Gen Intel i7 5960X, 5930K, 5820K, 5775R | Excellent |
5th Gen Intel i5 5675R | Good |
4th Gen Intel i7 4960X, 4930K, 4820K, 4790K, 4790, 4790S, 4470K, 4471, 4770, 4470S, 4470 | Excellent |
4th Gen Intel i5 4690K, 4690, 4690S, 4670K, 4670, 4590S, 4590, 4670S, 4670, 4570S, 4570, 4440S, 4440, 4430S, 4430 | Good |
4th Gen Intel i3 4370, 4360, 4350, 4340, 4330, 4170, 4170, 4160, 4150, 4130 | Poor |
3rd Gen Intel i7 3970X, 3960X | Excellent |
3rd Gen Intel i7 3930, 3820, 3770K, 3770, 3770S | Good |
3rd Gen Intel i5 3570K, 3570, 3570S, 3470, 3470S, 3450, 3450S, 3340, 3340S, 3330, 3330S | Fair |
3rd Gen Intel i3 3250, 3245, 3240, 3225, 3220, 3210 | Poor |
2nd Gen Intel i7 2600, 2600k, 2700k, 2600s | Poor |
2nd Gen Intel i5 2300, 2310, 2320, 2380P, 2400, 2450, 2500, 2500K, 2550K, 2400S, 2405S, 2500S, 2500T | Poor |
2nd Gen Intel i3 2100, 2102, 2105, 2120, 2125, 2130, 2100T, 2120T | Poor |
1st Gen i7 920, 930, 940, 950, 960, 965 Extreme Edition, 975 Extreme Edition | Poor |
1st Gen i5 770, 760, 750S | Poor |
1st Gen i3 530, 540, 550, 560 | Poor |
If your monitor is running at 60Hz and got Excellent, Good or Fair score , you have nothing to worry about bottleneck issue you can still play games very smooth as it. But if you have a 144Hz monitor you really have to upgrade your CPU to get the full potential of your rig.