Hey everyone. So I recently built my first gaming pc and have been playing a lot of Arma 3. In singleplayer I can manage to get around 40 fps on mostly high settings. When I switch over to multiplayer however, I am usually reduced to anywhere from 30 to 15 fps. I know this game is very cpu intensive when it comes to multiplayer, but I feel like my cpu should be able to handle it. Maybe it's just wishful thinking though. Here are my specs, and any advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Arma 3 sort of just has that problem, sometimes. People have been complaining about that ever since the first available alpha release. Switch around to some different multiplayer game modes and servers, see if anything changes.
By definition a bottleneck is when a component can't perform at its full potential because another part of the computer is too weak. And it varies depending on what is running on the PC at the time.
Starcraft 2, for instance, is very CPU dependent. With an i5 there are situations you can easily be CPU bottlenecked with a low end card such as a 750 Ti or R9 270.
Other games such as Battlefield 4, will be much more GPU dependent. With lower end card, there will be very little performance different between an i5, i7, and FX 8350.
I do not know how you came to the conclusion that bottlenecks only exist in extreme cases.