Choose your CPU and GPU from the dropdowns to see how well matched they are across 1080p, 1440p, and 4K.
At 1080p, your CPU does more of the work and bottlenecks appear more often. At 4K, the GPU is under heavy load and CPU bottlenecks almost disappear. Moving to a higher resolution is one way to reduce a CPU bottleneck.
No system is perfectly balanced. A 10–15% bottleneck is normal and expected. Only above 25–30% does it meaningfully impact performance enough to justify an upgrade specifically for balance.
AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D and 7800X3D use 3D V-Cache to dramatically increase gaming performance beyond their base clock speeds. They are outliers in the lineup — often the best gaming CPUs despite lower all-core performance.
If your GPU is the bottleneck, upgrading the GPU directly improves FPS. If your CPU is the bottleneck, upgrading the CPU will reduce the bottleneck but you may still be GPU-limited in many scenes.