Video cards are bottleneck?

gwlam12

Diamond Member
Apr 4, 2001
6,946
1
71
is it true that video cards bottleneck the performance of a pc?

i have:

1.4ghz T-bird,
512MB DDR Ram
60GB 7200RPM HD
and Radeon 32MB DDR (or the Radeon 7200)

So would my system be bottlenecked by the vid card?
 

Actaeon

Diamond Member
Dec 28, 2000
8,657
20
76
Yeah, you're GPU is limiting your performance, try and get a nice R8500, or a Ti200 for cheap. You'll see a very nice improvement.
 

Rand

Lifer
Oct 11, 1999
11,071
1
81
Almost any piece of hardware in your PC can potentially be a bottleneck depending upon what your doing with the PC.
Pick out virtually any major piece of hardware and I'm sure most of us can name a few situations in which it would be the primary bottleneck.

The graphics card is no exception to this trend, whether it's a bottleneck for YOU is an entirely different matter... and without knowing what you utilize your PC for I couldnt even begin to hazard a guess.
 

max105

Golden Member
Nov 10, 2000
1,139
0
76
Originally posted by: Rand
Almost any piece of hardware in your PC can potentially be a bottleneck depending upon what your doing with the PC.
Pick out virtually any major piece of hardware and I'm sure most of us can name a few situations in which it would be the primary bottleneck.

The graphics card is no exception to this trend, whether it's a bottleneck for YOU is an entirely different matter... and without knowing what you utilize your PC for I couldnt even begin to hazard a guess.

What Rand said :) It is probably a good idea to get a new video card if you plan on playing a lot of games. You could use a nice 64mb or even 128mb video card for those new upcoming games.
 

sxr7171

Diamond Member
Jun 21, 2002
5,079
40
91
But do you think that his video card is a bottleneck if the machine is used for runnning MS-Office, an occasional DVD, and web-surfing? I don't think so, but I may be wrong. For games I have no doubt that the video card is the bottleneck in his system but that would almost be a rhetorical question.