Will Your CPU Bottleneck that Video Card?
In short, depending on the game, if the CPU's load is consistently very high already, the CPU will very likely hold back the performance of video card upgrades. By profiling the CPU and GPU load of games you normally play, you can make better decisions for your upgrade path. Based on the results from this test:
* If the CPU load is maxed out at 100 percent across the board, the CPU needs to be upgraded first.
* If the CPU load is hovering between 70 percent and 100 percent, a video card upgrade will still offer an improvement, but the upgrade path is limited. Unless you plan on upgrading the CPU in the near future, avoid high-end video cards. A GeForce GTX 960 or Radeon R9 280 is about the most powerful card that should be considered.
* If the CPU load is below 70 percent most of the time, any video card upgrade will likely not be bottlenecked.
However, with lower overhead APIs such as Mantle, DirectX 12, and Vulkan, one can expect a bit more life out of old CPUs in the future.