Performance questions.

[exhumedye]

Hello, I recently upgraded my PC from a 5800X to a 9800X3D(haven't changed my sig yet). Prior to upgrading I ran some game benchmarks on my 5800X to compare with the newly installed 9800X3D, with the games being:

Cyberpunk 2077
Total War: Pharaoh
Total War: Warhammer III
Black Myth Wukong
Horizon Zero Dawn: Remastered
F1 2025
Doom: The Dark Ages

I tested them without using any upscaling or frame generation, I was never expecting massive increases in performance on most of these games, I was however, expecting **some** increase in performance.

The first game I ran was Cyberpunk 2077 and the result was more or less identical. I wasn't expecting much of a difference in frame rate to be honest as it's a GPU heavy game, but not completely identical.

The next game I tested was Black Myth Wukong, and again it was an identical result.

I will say that again I wasn't expecting a big increase in this game, but I was expecting to see something.

Next up was F1 2025, this was again almost identical with only the maximum fps showing a huge boost. But I assume this is an anomaly as it didn't change the average frame rate.

At this point I'm frustrated and I wonder why I spent £1000 on 3 components to 'upgrade'. So I picked a game I knew I'd see a performance increase in. Total War: Pharaoh and Warhammer III, which thankfully delivered some very nice results.

Horizon Zero Dawn: Remastered also saw some nice gains.
Point to note: I'm pretty sure the 'upscale quality' options is irrelevant in these tests, as I had the upscaling method off entirely.

I've not included the Doom screenshots as I forgot to save the 9800X3D benchmark, but it was again very similar to the 5800X result. So I'm curious, is this normal for results to be this identical in some cases? As I said earlier, I understand that they are GPU heavy games, but I expected some improvement across the board, even if it was just an average of 5 fps.

Perhaps there are some bios settings I should have on which I don't?
Perhaps the performance increases are only seen in upscaling and frame gen?

 

[exhumedye]

Looks like you might have v-sync on or something else capping performance in some of those screenshots - Horizon Zero Dawn says V-Sync on in the settings and some of the others seem to be clipping the v-sync multiples.

This is why I don't like a lot of gaming CPU benchmarks, though I get stick for it, 1080p low settings with a 4090 or 5090 does not represent what most people will see especially if you are at 1440p or above with high or above settings paired up with a GPU below the highest tier! though you should be seeing a bit more of an uplift than that especially to minimum FPS.

I will double check the settings, but would vsync cap my frame rate below the refresh rate? I don't know much about vsync.

Did you do a fresh install of windows rather than just installing new drivers etc?

Yes, a fresh install of windows. I suffered through immense issues just to get a fresh install of windows. I had no idea that vertically mounting my GPU before installing windows would give me such stress lol.

What kind of gpu utilisation were you seeing in the games with little difference before the upgrade? If it's near 100% then upgrading the cpu wouldn't really help as the gpu is the limiting factor and that hasn't changed.

Unfortunately that's not something I took note of, I guess I'll keep that noted for next time. But I will say that I expected minimal gains in GPU intensive games, like maybe an average 3-7 fps gain, I just didn't expect identical results lol.

 

[exhumedye]

Looking at benchmarks between 5800X and 9800X3D, tends to show CP running near double the frames of the 5800X with the same GPU.

Have you tried some 3Dmark tests etc?

No I've not done any 3Dmark tests or anything like that, just video game benchmarks.

Depends on settings but by default V-Sync will cap the frame rate to the monitor refresh rate and when it can't hit that it will reduce frame rate to multiples of the refresh rate i.e. 120Hz V-Sync would either output 60, 90 (with triple-buffering) or 120Hz - reducing performance in benchmarks. If you have some form of adaptive sync though it will render at intermediate frame rates, with adaptive sync or fast sync you aren't necessarily capped to the monitors max refresh depending on settings.

Interesting, I didn't know this.
However, I just checked Cyberpunk and I had Vsync off for it, and in my Nvidia global settings.

 

[exhumedye]

What motherboard and RAM are you using?
Updated the BIOS to latest, Ensure X3d boost modes are OFF in bios etc. Maybe do a load optimised defaults and apply your EXPO profile?

MSI X870E Gaming Plus Wifi.
TeamGroup Vulcan EXPO 32GB 6000Mhz

I'm using the latest bios(updated it via the MSI Center). I'm using the default EXPO profile 1. RAM running at 6000 MT/s according to MSI Center.
I will go into bios and disable X3D boosts, then do some more tests.

oof that'll do it. Looks like Black Myth Wukong was also cranked.

The idea was to max it out and just see what it could do on the in-game benchmarks. If I play on those settings I will use frame gen and upscaling, assuming it doesn't look awful and have input lag. Otherwise I will lower the settings to a more playable state.

Just to reiterate, I never expected big gains in games like cyberpunk or black myth wukong when upgrading, as I know they are GPU heavy. I'm just surprised by the identical results lol.

 

[exhumedye]

Fair enough. Those lows being identical is especially weird - that's the one place I'd expect to see improvements.

Agreed, it does seem odd to me.

I've seen differences in other games though, at least according to memory anyway, as they don't have benchmarks. But games like Mafia the old country felt smoother and definitely had less stuttering when maxed out, same too with Cronos New Dawn and Stalker 2.

Will be interesting to see what kind of performance I get in Crimson Desert when it comes out tonight.