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The original was posted on /r/pcmasterrace by /u/brainpalpitations on 2023-08-07 16:17:20+00:00.

Somehow people in this and other PC-centric subs have gotten this word stuck in their collective consciousness and are compulsively looping over it. It’s been stripped of its meaning and has become a catch-all for performance problems. Let’s talk about how to fix our perception of them:

A “bottleneck” is simply the output of a system being limited to that of the slowest part of the system, much as the speed at which you can remove liquid from a bottle is limited by the width of the thinnest point. In computers, this is contextual and can occur in hardware, or in software. If you think about it, you’ll realize that there is always a bottleneck in any system and each system can then be broken down into individual systems, each with their own bottlenecks. They don’t indicate any kind of problem, nor should you stress about their existence.

For example: Lets say your CPU/Memory/Storage have the potential to supply a GPU with draw calls at 120Hz, but your GPU can only send frames to the buffer at 100Hz. Our ability to produce frames in this case is limited, or “bottlenecked” by the GPU. Nothing is broken here, you just happen to have a surplus of processing power on the draw call side of the system. Let’s say you “fix” this bottleneck by upgrading your GPU to one that can send frames to the buffer at 140Hz. Now there’s a new bottleneck in the system that creates draw calls which might originate in the CPU, memory, or storage. You can chase bottlenecks around the system until you have exclusively flagship components and there will still be a bottleneck in the system.

Bottlenecks do not cause system instability, or other aberrant issues with performance. If you are not hitting expected performance targets for the “slowest” part of your system (all of which are available with a quick google search) there is some other problem with part of the system that needs fixing. Not everything is a bottleneck, and not all bottlenecks matter. So scream it a few times to get it out of your system and then stop saying bottleneck.