Which graphics card matches your processor (or vice versa) without bottlenecks.
The most expensive mistake when building or upgrading a PC is creating an imbalance: pairing a very powerful graphics card with an old processor that can't feed it frames, or the other way around. This tool fixes the component you already own and ranks all of the other type by how well they fit, marking the range in which the build stays balanced at your resolution.
Candidates appear in three states: "too weak" (your fixed component has power to spare and you could go higher), "balanced" (the sweet spot) and "bottleneck" (the candidate is so powerful that your fixed component can't keep up and you waste money). The boundary between balanced and bottleneck is exactly the sensible ceiling to buy for that component.
Mind the resolution: at 1080p the processor becomes a bottleneck sooner, so the ideal range of graphics cards is lower; at 4K almost any powerful card fits because the load falls on it. The analysis uses a modern AAA game profile and 32 GB of RAM.
Pairing a CPU and a graphics card well is really about deciding where you want the limit to sit. The recommendation starts from the resolution you play at and the frame rate you want to hold: with those two figures you know how much CPU is needed to prepare those frames and how much GPU to draw them, and from there comes the range of cards that fits your processor without wasting money.
The most common mistake is looking only at the graphics card. A high-end card with a modest processor at 1080p and 144 Hz spends half the match waiting; the same pair at 4K and 60 Hz works perfectly. There are no good or bad pairings in the abstract — only pairings that suit a specific goal.
What you do besides gaming counts too. If you stream with software encoding, edit video, or keep dozens of tabs and apps open, extra CPU cores stop being a luxury. If you only game, the money almost always belongs in the graphics card.
The platform is the part people forget and the one that costs most later. A processor implies a socket, a chipset and a memory type; moving up a tier halfway can force you to replace the motherboard and RAM as well. It is worth checking whether the socket you choose has an upgrade path before deciding over a twenty-euro difference.
As a rule of thumb: at 1080p with a high refresh rate, invest in the processor; at 1440p, split it; at 4K the graphics card takes nearly the whole budget and a current mid-range processor is plenty.
That your fixed component is more powerful and could drive a higher option. It is not bad —you have spare margin— but you could make better use of it with a more ambitious purchase.
That the candidate is too powerful for your fixed component at that resolution: you'd pay for performance you won't actually see.
Yes. Fix your weakest component and you'll see how far you can push the other without imbalance; that tells you exactly where to invest.
It will work, but at 1080p you will lose part of the performance you paid for. Also check that the power supply copes and that the motherboard has a PCIe slot with enough bandwidth.
Yes, especially on AMD processors and in CPU-limited games. The big jump is going from a single module to dual channel; beyond that, gains from frequency are moderate.
An NVMe SSD will not raise frame rates, but it cuts loading times dramatically and avoids the stutter of open-world games that stream data as you move.