Is my CPU bottlenecking my GPU?

[passifid]

Ok, prove me wrong with facts then.
Show me the fps increases by improving the CPU.
You're saying that he could spend £60 and improve by an average of what?? 0.5 fps? I'd say less than that. Or he could save that money and put it towards a better GPU in 6 months where he'd probably get 30fps increase for a spend of £250 (after selling his 1080ti). One of those plans is trying to balance the system, the other is trying to make sure the CPU is never the bottleneck, which typically isn't cost effective.

So CPU spend would be £120 for each fps, my plan would be ~£10 per fps.
Yes, these figures are approximate, but that doesn't mean the principle is wrong.
If money's no object then of course you get the best cpu you can, but if you do care about money, then cpu is a good place to save and suffer the very occasional bottleneck.

I'm going to have to decline your invitation to a flame war especially as 0.5fps is a guess based on no games he has mentioned, maybe he exclusively plays cities skylines while running blender? then we get what a made up 300fps increase compared to 0fps?. then the 50p per fps is warranted?
Basically the point is if he is limited by his gpu he can upgrade down the line for the price of 3 noctua fans, or 1 cheap AIO cooler. or 15 pints. which is a very cheap option considering we are talking about 4k gaming.

 

[arby1]

I'm going to have to decline your invitation to a flame war especially as 0.5fps is a guess based on no games he has mentioned, maybe he exclusively plays cities skylines while running blender? then we get what a made up 300fps increase compared to 0fps?. then the 50p per fps is warranted?
Basically the point is if he is limited by his gpu he can upgrade down the line for the price of 3 noctua fans, or 1 cheap AIO cooler. or 15 pints. which is a very cheap option considering we are talking about 4k gaming.

Haha, now you're bailing and quoting the arguments I've already mentioned? I already said that maybe he extensively plays a specific cpu-limited game then maybe it'd make sense to upgrade, but as he hasn't said that, I'm working off averages, and my numbers are pretty close to reality. And I quoted a 30fps increase with the next gen of cards, not a 300fps exaggeration you said. Everyone who designs systems knows it isn't cost effective to overspec one element to such an extent that it can never the bottleneck, but the myth of the gaming/gpu world is that any cpu bottleneck is criminal and invalidates your gpu.

 

[Kaapstad]

OP if you are gaming @2160p just about any CPU running stock will do the job. You only have to reach 60 fps as that is all a 4K monitor can use at the moment.

 

[passifid]

Haha, now you're bailing and quoting the arguments I've already mentioned? I already said that maybe he extensively plays a specific cpu-limited game then maybe it'd make sense to upgrade, but as he hasn't said that, I'm working off averages, and my numbers are pretty close to reality. And I quoted a 30fps increase with the next gen of cards, not a 300fps exaggeration you said. Everyone who designs systems knows it isn't cost effective to overspec one element to such an extent that it can never the bottleneck, but the myth of the gaming/gpu world is that any cpu bottleneck is criminal and invalidates your gpu.

6 months so the volta 80 card (because i have to assume from your put £60 towards it he isnt going to sell his ti then get a volta titan) will be 30fps at 4k higher? unlikely. there was about that margin one BF4 at 4k from a 1080 to a stock 980ti but he hasnt got his at stock clocks as its a rog strix. and in ROTTR the difference at 4k on very high was 11 fps for a stock 980ti at anandtech.
but the man asked a simple question we all answered, only you gave the has to match answer which in his position being he already has a i5 6600k is sell that buy a 6500 or 6400 and keep the change for all the effort.

 

[Ste]

4K.

No issues. GPU bottleneck

Interested in this, thinking of a 1080ti with a 4770k.
I'm at 1080 144hz.

Will be a good upgrade but definite CPU bottleneck in some situations particularly when shooting for high refresh rates.

 

[arby1]

6 months so the volta 80 card (because i have to assume from your put £60 towards it he isnt going to sell his ti then get a volta titan) will be 30fps at 4k higher? unlikely. there was about that margin one BF4 at 4k from a 1080 to a stock 980ti but he hasnt got his at stock clocks as its a rog strix. and in ROTTR the difference at 4k on very high was 11 fps for a stock 980ti at anandtech.
but the man asked a simple question we all answered, only you gave the has to match answer which in his position being he already has a i5 6600k is sell that buy a 6500 or 6400 and keep the change for all the effort.

You've misread my post again.
I said £250, not £60.
I also never recommended downgrading his cpu so that is wrong too. I truly don't understand why this is a big issue, I gave the very simple answer that almost everyone else has given that his cpu is not going to be the problem, then I also agreed with everyone (including you) that his gpu will be the primary bottleneck. So why is it such a leap to state that the best bang for buck upgrade would be waiting to upgrade the gpu if he finds performance is still lacking?

 

[Dirk Diggler]

So why is it such a leap to state that the best bang for buck upgrade would be waiting to upgrade the gpu

That's not what people are disagreeing with. You made the statement that every system should be designed with the intention of having a CPU bottleneck. Here's what you said:

In an ideal case you'd want the cpu to bottleneck you approx the same amount of times the gpu bottlenecks. That would be a fair balance

That is the statement that you are being challenged on, quite simply because it's bad advice.

In a system where the GPU is the bottleneck, you know that you are getting the maximum FPS that you can have from your hardware. If the CPU is bottlenecking, then the whole system is being choked and the graphics power the OP has spent £750+ on is being wasted.

As has been pointed out to you, if the OP followed your advice when designing his system then he'd have paired his 1080ti & 4k screen with a 6400 just so he could have all those CPU bottlenecks that you claim would be an indication that he got value for money.

When you spend almost £2k on a GPU and screen, the very last thing you want to see is 100% CPU usage on a target 60fps system. That's the very concern that prompted the OP to create this thread in the first place.

 

[imginy]

That's not what people are disagreeing with. You made the statement that every system should be designed with the intention of having a CPU bottleneck. Here's what you said:



That is the statement that you are being challenged on, quite simply because it's bad advice.

In a system where the GPU is the bottleneck, you know that you are getting the maximum FPS that you can have from your hardware. If the CPU is bottlenecking, then the whole system is being choked and the graphics power the OP has spent £750+ on is being wasted.

As has been pointed out to you, if the OP followed your advice when designing his system then he'd have paired his 1080ti & 4k screen with a 6400 just so he could have all those CPU bottlenecks that you claim would be an indication that he got value for money.

When you spend almost £2k on a GPU and screen, the very last thing you want to see is 100% CPU usage on a target 60fps system. That's the very concern that prompted the OP to create this thread in the first place.

Yeah agreed cpu bottlenecks are horrible especially when you only have 4 threads as you get instant massive drop in frames and turning settings down doesn't help much.

gpu bottleneck you turn a setting or 2 down and your good smooth frame rate again.

 

[Shoza]

Threadjack... sorry!

I have a similar question as I have an original Sandybridge i5 2500k overclocked to 4.6ghz with 16gb ram and a GTX 970 which I think is reasonable but PUBG is woeful and I want to find the bottleneck.

I ran HW Monitor which shows:

CPU utilization at 86% and all 4 cores around 90%
Ram usage around 10gb
GPU utilization 100%
GPU memory utilization 53%
GPU buffer utilization 63%

Running 1080 and no desire to go any higher on the res - other than the game being poorly optimized what do you think would help the most, a new graphics card but would it actually help that much?

 

[Dirk Diggler]

@Shoza could you run Rivatuner and report what FPS you are getting?

 

[Arterion]

Wow, this kind of blew up! Thank you very much for all the insight, I really appreciate sharing your knowledge and taking the time to post your thoughts.

I think I'll go ahead and overclock my CPU a bit, and see what effect that has, if any.

As a few people have mentioned about some games behaving differently, most of my time since getting the 1080Ti has been spent playing Destiny 2, a bit of Vermintide, I'll likely pick up CoD WW2.

 

[passifid]

Wow, this kind of blew up! Thank you very much for all the insight, I really appreciate sharing your knowledge and taking the time to post your thoughts.

I think I'll go ahead and overclock my CPU a bit, and see what effect that has, if any.

As a few people have mentioned about some games behaving differently, most of my time since getting the 1080Ti has been spent playing Destiny 2, a bit of Vermintide, I'll likely pick up CoD WW2.

You'll be fine with an overclock

 

[Dirk Diggler]

If I get time this week, I'll do a post on how to work out what is bottle-necking a system. I see this kind of thread time and again, and there's a lot of misconception around the subject. It's actually relatively quick and easy to work out whether your system is experiencing a bottleneck, so hopefully I can find some time to share the info.

 

[arc@css]

If I get time this week, I'll do a post on how to work out what is bottle-necking a system. I see this kind of thread time and again, and there's a lot of misconception around the subject. It's actually relatively quick and easy to work out whether your system is experiencing a bottleneck, so hopefully I can find some time to share the info.

Like others I'm sure, I would also be interested in this.

I've also got a 6600K but play at 1440p.


Edit: I should add that I don't want you to feel that you have to do it, so no pressure.

 

[Davanius]

Not going to get involved in any argument here but you should be overclocking the cpu with a 1080ti.

I have tried my 1080ti with an i5, i7 and a ryzen 1600.

Even though at 4k you are gpu bound you should still pair that 1080ti with something better imo if and when you can afford it.

Yesterday I installed a 2600k into a z77 build that had an ivy bridge i5 cpu.

With the same gpu at 1080p we saw a good improvement across some games even getting some 30 fps increases.

Yes, at 4k you won't see that but for peace of mind you don't want to starve the gpu.

 

[Shoza]

@Shoza could you run Rivatuner and report what FPS you are getting?

Hard to give an exact figure but average 50-90 FPS with everything on lowest settings, 1080 res and high view distance which seems poor to me even though the 970 and i5 are a bit dated - the cpu overclocked should keep the system up to speed a bit more than it seems.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

I've created a quick tutorial on this. Feel free to post any questions: https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/how-to-tell-if-theres-a-bottleneck.18799039/

Hopefully this will save any further hijack of the OP's thread.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

Hard to give an exact figure but average 50-90 FPS with everything on lowest settings, 1080 res and high view distance which seems poor to me even though the 970 and i5 are a bit dated - the cpu overclocked should keep the system up to speed a bit more than it seems.

As it stands, your GPU is currently the bottleneck, but only just.

I suspect that you want high frame rates (100+) and at 1080p you will be CPU bottlenecked as soon as you upgrade your card. Target FPS is a big factor, especially at lower resolutions as this shifts the work from the GPU to the CPU.