Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Why Your CPU Is Holding Back Your GPU… Surprising Results!”.
Hello and welcome to tech deals, cpu and gpu bottlenecks are something often mentioned in performance testing, but rarely explained today, i’m going to show you some examples of what cpu bottlenecks look like and talk about when they matter and when they don’t. The results might surprise you. Today’S video was brought to you by you, are city keys, the best source for windows 10 and offers professional product keys at deeply discounted prices, and we have got further discounts on those at the end of this video first, let me be absolutely clear: there is always A bottleneck somewhere in your pc, something is the ultimate limit to performance. It could be your cpu or gpu, it might be your monitor’s refresh rate, your storage or your system ram.
Something is limiting your ultimate performance. This is not a bad thing. It’S just how computers work.
Allow me to give you two very extreme examples. If you take the very best cpu and gpu on the market – and you try playing cyberpunk 2077 at 8k, ultra detail, ray tracing set to ultra dlss turned off. The graphics card will clearly be the bottleneck.
2 performance you’d be lucky to get 15 frames per second, while your cpu would be utterly bored waiting for a gpu. That is not up to the task on the other extreme. If you were to set the resolution to 480p 50 render resolution minimum detail, the graphics card would have nothing to do as your cpu would be overwhelmed, trying to render out hundreds, if not thousands, of frames per second of extremely ugly graphics somewhere in the middle.
The cpu and gpu cross over which one is bottlenecking the other and that spot will change for different games resolutions, detail settings and hardware choices. There is no universal answer of x bottlenecks y, however, as a general rule spending twice whatever your cpu cost on your gpu is a pretty safe bet so long as they come from the same era. For example, if you buy a 135 dollar ryzen, 5 5600 g, then a 250 dollar rx 6600 makes a lot of sense, but a 700 rx 6900 xt does not.
Likewise. If you buy a 370 dollar ryzen, 9 5900x, then anything less than a 700 rx 6900 xt is wasted on that absolutely beautiful cpu. Now this is a general guideline.
Exceptions will exist, but it’s a good starting point to think about your component purchases. Moving on to the core point of today’s video cpu bottlenecks, one common situation that i see all too often is an older cpu and a modern high-end graphics card. A good example would be a ryzen 7 1700x and an rtx 3090ti. The 1700x was a great cpu in 2017, however, the 3090ti isn’t from 2017, it’s from 2022.. The premium card from 2017 would have been a gtx 1080 ti, and that would make for a really good pairing with a 1700x. This is far cry new dawn at high detail on the 3090ti and the 1700x look at the msi afterburner numbers at the top left of your screen. The 3090ti is not being effectively used as it cannot get enough data from the cpu to fill all of its cores. It starts off at around 50 usage, then raises up a bit as we move forward to the benchmark, but it never hits 100 percent towards the end. It’S going to drop back under 60 usage. The 1700x just cannot keep up.
It was a good cpu when it was new, but that was over five years ago. I know what you’re all thinking big surprise. An rtx 3090ti is bottlenecked by a 1700x at 1080p high detail. Well, no one buys a 30-90 ti to play at 1080p.
You’Re goddamn right there is just one problem with that argument. That was not 1080p. You were watching. That was not 1440p either that was 4k.
Yes, really a 30 90 ti at 4k in a 2019 aaa game at high detail, was being cpu bottlenecked, sometimes severely by a ryzen. 7. 1700X. I see people all the time say your cpu doesn’t matter at 4k.
Well, i hate to be the bearer of bad news, but yes, it does, for the sake of completeness and full disclosure. Here is 1080p 1440p and 4k at the same time, on the 1700x and the 3090 ti 1080p is on the top. 1440P is in the middle and 4k is on the bottom, all running at more or less the same speed. Even at 4k. We are so cpu bottlenecked. There is no real difference in performance. What you do get is higher gpu usage, so you’re using more of your expensive graphics card. So that’s nice to be completely fair.
If you turned this game up to ultra detail – or we were testing far cry 6 instead, then there would be a bit of a difference at 4k, as the 3090ti would reach full load in some places. My counterpoint to that would be the 4090 is about to launch here in a few weeks which will flip this right back to the cpu, even in far cry 6, even at ultra detail. Another important point to consider the rtx 4070 is about to launch and it is rumored to be about as fast as the 3090 ti.
It might sound silly to put a 3090 ti on a 1700x, but i’m willing to bet more than one person will try putting a 40-70 on a 1700x. I hope, after seeing this, none of you will do that. It really would be a waste of a very nice graphics card.
Now let me show you the same. Rtx 3090 ti this time installed on an i9 10 900k running at 5, gigahertz on all 10 cores that should solve the bottlenecking problem right by any objective measure. The i9 10 900k is substantially faster in both single core and multi-core performance. It isn’t double the performance of a 1700 x, but it’s not that far off either.
You can see that reflected here in the frame rate. It is noticeably faster. This is both cpus side by side. The difference is noticeable, but perhaps not as dramatic as you might expect.
The i9 10900k is still bottlenecking, the rtx 3090ti. The i9 is awesome, but it’s not that awesome. Cpus still have plenty of room to improve. That was 1440p high detail, a resolution that many people think is usually gpu limited. However, in this case, neither cpu can keep up with the 3090 ti. The i9, of course uses more of the gpu than the ryzen 7. Does it’s faster and 12th gen alder lake and the upcoming zen 4 will do an even better job of using the 3090 ti’s amazing performance now to be fair, this is far cry new dawn, replace it with 20 other games or change the detail, settings or resolution, And the numbers will move around.
This is meant to be an example to help you understand your own numbers, not the end-all, be-all of all cpu and gpu advice for all games. It is now disclaimer time we are testing a 2019 game at high detail. If you play cyberpunk 2077 at ultra detail with ray tracing on at 4k, with a 3090 ti you’re going to be 100 gpu bottlenecked and the cpu is going to matter much less to a point, you can only go so far down the cpu list before it Matters no matter what extreme resolution and detail setting that you run at a core 2 duo. E6600 from 2006, will technically launch and run cyberpunk, but it will not run properly regardless of resolution or detail setting or what ridiculous graphics card that you install for what. I hope are obvious reasons for anyone watching this video games evolve over time and with them come more demands from our graphics cards and cpus. This video is not meant to tell you that a zen, 4 or raptor lake is required to play games with new gpus.
Rather, it’s meant to show you that the situation is far more nuanced than you might think. One of the most frequently asked questions that i get asked all the time which should i upgrade my cpu or my gpu. They don’t tell me what games they play. What resolution and what frame rate they want without that information? There is no useful answer to the question because it could be either of them or both. Sometimes it’s both the tldr of this video is your cpu matters for gaming, even at 4k, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, one more thing.
I said at the start of this video that i’d share when the bottlenecks matter and when they don’t. Despite the cpu bottlenecks shown here far cry, new dawn would play smoothly on both of these cpus, just not at the same frame rate at 1440p high detail. The 1700x averaged 81 frames per second, with a 61 percent low. The 10900k averaged 141 frames per second with a 107 one percent low for those of you who want the math done for you in your youtube videos.
The i9 10 900k is 74 faster than the 1700x at 1440p. That’S impressive! In fact. The 10900k has a higher one percent low than the 1700x averaged. There really is that big of a difference between these two cpus. However, as i said earlier, both cpus will play the game smoothly and that is a key point often ignored when looking at benchmark charts. The eight cores on the 1700x may not be epic in 2022, but they are enough to provide smooth frame times, which makes it feel faster than it really is.
Thank you all so much for watching to the very end of this video, two gold stars to all of you for still being here like this video, if you like it share it with your friends, if you love it remember to subscribe to the website with a Big huge red button directly below hit the bell notification icon to be notified when new videos come out check the links in the video description, i will link to a variety of things. You’Ll have to go down there and see what i end up putting there, but i’m sure there’ll be some fun stuff, like maybe 120 ryzen, 7 3700x cpus that are unbelievably good value on ebay right now in the fall of 2022, go have a look, and then You will also find links to our social media, twitter, discord, etc. Down there now the shopping links down there are affiliate links to amazon, newegg and ebay, using those supports the channel at no extra cost to you and if you feel like buying something, including hrf, peanut butter.
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You could reverse these chips for sure you could put a i5 6400 here for intel. You could put a ryzen 7 5800x here for amd and the results would flip. The amd chip would crush the intel chip. This is just what i happen to have on hand.
I took a look at the results. I was a bit surprised and thought. Oh, we can make a video out of this. Let me know what you think in the comment section below your support is greatly appreciated.
Thank you so much for watching. I will see all of you next time you ui city keys, is the best source for genuine windows and office, professional product keys that work the first time every time get 25 off their already amazing prices, using our code td20 and the link in the video description Below fifteen dollars get you a windows, professional oem key that is a real product, key and activates directly with microsoft, or get a full copy of office, 2019 professional plus for fifty dollars that redeems at setup.office.com, using your microsoft account or why not both and the nice Thing use them forever, as they link directly to your microsoft account and work through reinstalls. We have been using a ui cd keys for over three years now and highly recommend them somewhere in the middle of those two examples. The cpu and gpu cross over, which is with with with which that’s all folks, but putting a 700 rx 6900 xt on that who wrote this seriously.
It isn’t quite double the performance of a 1700x, but it’s not that far off either. You can see here reflected you can see that here reflected in the now to be fair. This is far cry new dawn, replace it with 20 other games or change the detail, settings and the numbers will move around.
This is not meant to be an example to help you all i have to do is read the words that i wrote. You would think that would be easy to anybody out there watching this. I encourage you to try it.
Reading from a teleprompter is not as easy as you think the written word doesn’t translate to spoken word as nicely as you’d. Think it’s a it’s a it’s a learned, skill uh i’ve been doing it for a little while, but yeah part 31. Take six. You .