Tgxiii is exactly right. Perfect analogy, one I would've used myself
After all, I'm sure that's where the term came from!!
And yes; "A computer is only as fast as it's slowest component" holds true overall, but really it should be "A computer is only as fast as the slowest component currently in operation," meaning that it's only as fast as the slowest part it's currently
using; in other words, when you're on the internet, whether you have a 4Mbps cable connection like me, or a 56kbps dial-up connection, your modem is the bottleneck. When you're playing a game- on say, a 1GHz Pentium 3 with a Radeon 9700 Pro, your CPU is the bottleneck (well actually, so is your FSB, and RAM...). For me, when i play a game like.. Quake III on my 300MHz G3, with my Radeon 32MB DDR, my CPU is the bottlneck at low resolutions, until i crank it up to higher than 1280x1024x32 with everything cranked.
So, I suppose the definition should possibly be: "Your computer is only as fast as the component operating most slowly at a given time in your activities- in other words, in some games your CPU will bottleneck it, others the GPU will bottleneck it if the pixel fillrate/bandwidth/gemetric fillrate isn't saturated...
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