Should I upgrade to i7-4790K - Battlefield 5 bottlenecking?

[SkScotchegg]

Hi there, I was speaking to my friend at work and he said I should buy i7-4790K because it's the best CPU I can buy for my motherboard which is socket 1150. The reason I was thinking about an upgrade is because I recently bought RTX 2080 CPU and installed it in my PC which is quite old and I wasn't getting the performance I was expecting in Battlefield 5.

I installed MSI afterburner and Rivatuner and in-game it's only using 50-60% GPU but all my CPU cores on my intel i5 4690k shows 100% in use. They often go down to 92% but then keep switching like this:

88% 92% 96% 100% 100% 100% 94% 100% 92% 100% 100% 92% 96% 100% 100% 100% 92% 100%

that's an example of what I see on my screen with the stats for all 4 cores during a battleifled 5 game.

So I believe that my CPU is bottlenecking. My CPU runs at base clocks speeds of 3.5ghz because I don't know how to overclock and I don't have the correct cooling on my CPU to overclock.

So do you think I should buy the i7-4790K and it will make a big difference?

EDIT: My full specs are

Asus Maximus VII Ranger Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard
Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor
Kingston HyperX Beast 16GB (4x4GB) PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit
Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gbs - Windows 10 installed on here.
Samsung 970 EVO Polaris 500GB M.2 2280 PCI-e 3.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive - Battlefield 5 installed on here.
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2080 Gaming OC 8192MB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card

Thanks in advance.

 

[SkScotchegg]

Yup, your CPU is the bottleneck. Which motherboard do you have? Unless it's a Z-series you won't be able to overclock. That said, you mention cooling. You are quite right to do so because your CPU may be throttling itself because it's getting too hot. What CPU temperatures are you getting?

People say that AMD are due to be releasing new CPUs sometime soon, so it might be worth waiting.

Hey mate, thanks for quick reply, my motherboard is "Asus Maximus VII Ranger Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard" and does allow overclocking. I'm not sure of my CPU temp right now but it's always been kept cool by my current cooler. I'm just on my way out the door with my daughter to bowling but I'll check CPU temp in bios when I get back for you.

I was thinking maybe the 4790k would be a good option because it's i7 and it runs at 4ghz so thought it would make a big difference. Plus you can buy that CPU for £110 2nd hand. Do you think it would solve my issue?

 

[SkScotchegg]

Okay, you have a Z-series motherboard so you can overclock. To overclock you're going to want a decent CPU cooler so as to keep temperatures down. Something like a Noctua D15 or a be Quiet Dark Rock Pro

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 CPU Cooler= £73.99
• 1 x Noctua NH-D15 Dual Radiator Quiet CPU Cooler with two NH-A15 Fans= £84.95

​

Thanks for your help so far mate, I just checked to see which one I'm using and it's called "OcUK Tech Labs - Prolimatech Megahalems Rev.C "Overclocker Edition" which cost me £52.97 from Overclockers.

I just checked my CPU temp with "Core Temp" software and it says my CPU idles at 38° and under load I get all 4 cores going to 48°.

I'm really not sure what to do because the reason I never got into overclocking is because I thought it was complicated and my cousin told me I would need to buy a liquid cooler like Corsair H110 or Corsair H100i etc. And then I would have to take off my current cooling system and install a new one and learn how to overclock.

Where as I thought if I just bought a 4790k that would do the job, but I've been reading other post online by other gamers that play Battlefield 5 and they said they get 100% usage with their 4790k as well. They said it is a big upgrade over 4690k for all other games but for Battlefield 5 it's still not enough to avoid bottlenecking.

So I guess this leaves me with three options, either I buy a new CPU cooler and learn to overclock my i5 4690k or I buy 4790k or I buy a whole new motherboard/CPU/ram bundle from overclockers.

What would you guys do if you were me in this situation?

 

[SkScotchegg]

No one mentioned an upgrade to 16GB RAM? 8GB will give poor performance these days. Need to find it cheap though. Its not wasted cash, but you don't want to pay hundreds of pounds either.

Oh I've just updated my OP to reflect that it's 16GB now as I upgraded later down the line. I've done a lot of upgrades to this PC over last 5 years with the latest addition being the RTX 2080 that arrived on Friday.

Well I've listened to everyones comments and I appretiate all your advice. I think I have decided to just stick with my current setup for now because other games like Metro, Far Cry 5, Doom, Resident Evil 7, Star Wars: Battlefront 2 and my VR games all run great and don't use as much CPU. So seems pointless spending more money right now for just one game.

Plus Battlefield 5 actually runs really good, when I play Squad mode or domination I'm getting 100-140fps with a mixture of ultra/high settings and when I play conquest with 64 players I get 70-80fps and it feels smooth and looks great so I guess I shouldn't worry about it.

I just thought because my CPU was running at 100% it was a problem but I guess i'll just ignore it for now.

EDIT: Also just to let you know guys, I tried that Ray Tracing but I don't think I will use it for multiplayer in Battlefiled because I only get 60fps with ray tracing set to low in DX12 so not worth it for me. I like to have high as possible fps.

So I think I will only use Ray Tracing for single player games like Metro Exodus.

Overall I am happy with the new card, I've been messing with Overclocking it using Precision X1 which I really don't know what I am doing but it seems to work.

I'll just wait another 6 months+ and then maybe think about upgrading CPU/motherboard/ram.

BTW out of curiosity how come you guys talk so much about AMD Ryzen CPU's? Are intel not the best anymore?

 

[SkScotchegg]

Update, been playing Metro Exodus last few hours with DX12, DLSS, Ray Tracing set to high and ultra settings and I've been getting 80% CPU usage with 65% GPU usage, game runs butter smooth and looks beautiful so I'm happy with the RTX 2080 performance.