If your only goalis to run something as fast as possible, then no. So the answer is yes, there is absolutely a point where a card is overkill. Were you saving money by buying that top-of-the-line card several years ago? Keep in mind that power requirements are usually higher on a higher end GPU, so you had to buy a $130 power supply to put enough watts into that card where a mid-range card would have done fine on a $40 power supply (at 400 watts or so). So a $350 card now outperforms a $550 card from a few years back. A GTX 1070 today outperforms a GTX 980 from a few years ago. In 2-3 years time, there will be a new generation of chips out there.

You try to refer to it as future-proofing (without using those words), but that is a false idea. Is that worth an extra $400? That's a value question. Maybe you can ramp up the details to ultra-settings. If I can buy a GTX 1050 for $150 and play my game at 60 fps, what would a $5 do for me? Nothing. 'is it overkill', what does that mean? Does it mean can you run X? Or are you measuring it against something? You've completely ignore the cost side of the equation: But the i3 as a whole might be considered and a overkill with a high level card. So much so that it was a higher score (which is based off of frame rates and load times and fill rates) I can see that some of the i3 Maybe can be thrown in the Overkill cat. But in this case the older CPU still netted a gain from a newer GPU. That chart from Tomshardware Stated that the i5 3450 was 100% bottle necked, Which I think they mean that it will slow the 1080 by a random %. It is hard to find ones that didn't OC the Video card to insane levels. Opens a new window a i7 7700K with a 1070 at 5900 marks. Opens a new window i5 3450 with a 1080 6100 marks Opens a new window i7 7700K with a 1080 3d marks 6900 On 3d mark the only GPU/CPU Site I can get that does a nice round score with all the CPUs I came up with this

Maybe to the degree that it does is the question. Ok That form used a low end i5 3450 said that a 1080 Bottlenecked it 100% of the time.

Overkill 3 pc size