About BottleneckDetector
We built this tool because we were tired of buying the wrong hardware upgrade. Here's the full story.
On this page
Our Story
BottleneckDetector started with a frustrating experience that most PC builders know well. After spending months saving up for a new graphics card, the expected performance jump never came. Frame rates barely moved. The reason turned out to be simple: the CPU was holding the GPU back, and no one had a straightforward way to check this before making the purchase.
That moment sparked the idea for a tool that does one thing well — tells you, before you spend money, whether your current CPU and GPU are a good match, or whether one is quietly dragging the other down.
We launched BottleneckDetector in 2024 as a side project. Word spread through gaming forums and PC building communities faster than we expected. Within months, hundreds of thousands of builders were using it to make smarter upgrade decisions. We have been improving it ever since.
What We Do
BottleneckDetector is a free, browser-based PC bottleneck calculator. You select your CPU, select your GPU, choose your target resolution and use case, and the tool instantly tells you:
- Your bottleneck percentage — how much one component is limiting the other
- Which component is the bottleneck — CPU or GPU
- The severity — whether it's a minor imbalance or a serious mismatch worth fixing
- Practical advice — what you can do about it without guesswork
We cover gaming, video editing, 3D rendering, graphic design, live streaming, and general use. Each mode weights the CPU and GPU differently to reflect how those workloads actually distribute processing demands across your hardware.
The tool is completely free. There are no paywalls, no premium tiers, and no account required. We believe this kind of information should be accessible to every PC builder regardless of budget or experience level.
No sign-up. No tracking. No ads. We built BottleneckDetector to be genuinely useful, not to extract value from the people using it. You check your bottleneck, you get your answer, you leave — or you stick around and learn something new from our guides.
Our Hardware Database
Our database currently covers more than 559 CPUs and 501 GPUs, updated continuously as new hardware launches. We track releases from Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA across all market segments — from entry-level integrated graphics to high-end workstation and data centre hardware.
What's included
- Intel Desktop: Core 2nd Gen through Core Ultra 200 (Arrow Lake), plus Pentium, Celeron, and Xeon W workstation lines
- Intel Laptop: 8th Gen H through Core Ultra 200H (Lunar Lake) and Core Ultra 200HX (Arrow Lake-HX)
- Intel HEDT: X-series (Skylake-X, Cascade Lake-X) and Xeon W workstation processors
- AMD Desktop: Ryzen 1000 (Zen) through Ryzen 9000 (Zen 5), including X3D 3D V-Cache variants, APUs, FX series, and Athlon
- AMD Laptop: Ryzen 3000 through Ryzen AI (Strix Point, Zen 5 mobile), including U, H, HS, and HX variants
- AMD HEDT: Threadripper 1000 through Threadripper PRO 7000 (96-core)
- NVIDIA Desktop GPUs: GTX 400 (Fermi) through RTX 5000 (Blackwell), including Titan and SUPER variants
- NVIDIA Laptop GPUs: GTX 1050 through RTX 5090 Laptop, including Max-Q variants
- NVIDIA Professional: Quadro K/M/P/RTX series, RTX A-series, RTX PRO Blackwell, Tesla data centre GPUs
- AMD Desktop GPUs: Radeon HD 4000 through RX 9000 (RDNA 4), including Fury X, Vega, and Pro variants
- AMD Laptop GPUs: RX 5000M through RX 9000M series
- AMD Professional: Radeon Pro W-series, Instinct MI-series compute GPUs
- Intel Arc: Alchemist A-series (desktop and laptop) and Battlemage B-series
- Integrated Graphics: AMD Radeon iGPU (RDNA 3/4), Intel Iris Xe, Intel Arc iGPU, NVIDIA MX series
How we score hardware
Performance scores are derived from publicly available benchmark data across multiple testing platforms and workloads. We use a composite score that reflects real-world gaming and compute performance rather than any single synthetic benchmark number. Scores are relative — they are designed to show how components compare to each other, not to represent a specific frame rate or score in a particular test.
We update scores when new driver versions, firmware updates, or BIOS changes produce measurable real-world performance changes, and whenever we add new hardware to the database.
How the Calculator Works
When you run a calculation, the tool takes your CPU and GPU performance scores and runs them through a weighted formula that accounts for three key factors:
1. Resolution multiplier
Higher resolutions push more work onto the GPU. At 4K, the GPU renders four times more pixels per frame than at 1080p, which means it becomes the bottleneck in almost every system at that resolution. At 1080p, the CPU plays a larger role since the GPU finishes rendering frames quickly and sits waiting for the CPU to process game logic. Our formula applies a resolution multiplier to the GPU score before comparing it against the CPU score.
2. Use-case weighting
Different tasks demand different things from CPU and GPU. Gaming at 1080p is CPU-heavy. Gaming at 4K is GPU-heavy. Video editing relies primarily on the CPU for encoding tasks. 3D rendering is split between CPU (scene processing, ray tracing on CPU) and GPU (viewport rendering, GPU-accelerated render engines). We apply separate CPU and GPU weight multipliers for each purpose to produce a result that is relevant to what you actually use your PC for.
3. RAM penalty
Systems with less than 16 GB of RAM receive a penalty to reflect the real-world performance impact of insufficient memory in modern workloads. Running a heavy game or creative application with only 8 GB or less forces the system to use the page file on storage, which creates a secondary bottleneck that goes beyond the CPU/GPU relationship.
The final bottleneck percentage represents how much the weaker component is limiting the stronger one. A result of 0–8% means your components are well matched. Above 40% means there is a significant performance gap that a hardware upgrade would meaningfully address.
A note on accuracy
No online bottleneck calculator can perfectly predict real-world performance in every game and application. Results vary by game engine, specific driver versions, operating system configuration, and individual game settings. BottleneckDetector is designed to give you a reliable directional estimate — good enough to make a confident upgrade decision, not a replacement for game-specific benchmarks when you need precise numbers.
Our Values
Free, forever
We will not put a paywall on the bottleneck calculator. Checking whether your hardware is well-matched is a basic thing that every PC builder should be able to do without paying for it. The tool was free when we launched and it will stay that way.
No misleading results
Some bottleneck tools inflate results to encourage unnecessary upgrades or to drive affiliate sales. We do not have affiliate partnerships with hardware retailers. Our scoring model is designed to give you an honest assessment, including telling you clearly when your system is well-balanced and an upgrade would not make a meaningful difference.
Plain language
PC hardware can feel intimidating if you are not deep into the hobby. We write our guides, results, and explanations in plain language that a first-time builder can follow — without dumbing things down for the people who want the technical detail.
Privacy by design
We do not require an account. We do not track what CPU or GPU you select. We do not sell data to advertisers. The tool runs entirely in your browser — nothing is sent to our servers when you run a calculation. See our Privacy Policy for full details.
The Team
BottleneckDetector is a small, independent project run by a team of PC enthusiasts and hardware writers. We are not a venture-backed startup or a division of a large media company. We are people who build their own PCs, follow hardware launches closely, and got frustrated with the lack of a genuinely good, free bottleneck tool.
We do not publish individual names or photos — we are a small team and we prefer to let the work speak for itself. If you have questions about who we are or what we do, we are always happy to talk. Drop us a message at [email protected].
Get in Touch
Whether you have found an error in our hardware database, want to suggest a feature, or just have a question about your PC build, we would like to hear from you.
- General enquiries: [email protected]
- Hardware database corrections: [email protected]
- Press & partnerships: [email protected]
We aim to respond within two business days. For quick PC build questions, our FAQ page covers the most common bottleneck questions in detail.