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Sure fire way to ID a CPU bottleneck?

RipGroove

RipGroove

RipGroove

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I know this is the GPU forum but it's relevant in this case I think. So, is there a quick easy way to tell if a system is CPU bound when gaming? Asking for a friend actually but I usually check mine by making sure I have no FPS limiters in place and play some well optimized games and if my GPU usage is 98-99% then I assume my CPU is not causing a bottleneck.

I know there must be a quick easier way of finding out?
 
The term bottleneck is missed used a lot of the time.

Simply looking at performance usage isn't showing the big picture.

For example a GPU loosing usage can be from coding and architecture optimisation.
I'll use the case for a new console generation the reason games become better over the lifetime of the console is due to reducing bottle necks in coding improved performance is gained.

AMD Vega series is an perfect example of this development had to code further into this GPUs architecture to get the most out of the GPU vs Nvidia GPU designed for gaming workloads RDNA improves on this a lot.

So basically looking at task manager for bottlenecks isn't going to be the answer.
 
As far as I'm aware it's just like you describe.
Make sure the GPU has all its settings to run at max. Install Afterburner, play a modern 3D demanding game at your desired resolution, and check to see if the gpu is running at 99% or there abouts.
If it isn't, then either the cpu isn't up to the task, or the game isn't graphically demanding enough, for the gpu.

But then you could argue, who cares as long as it looks good enough and your getting the frame rates your happy with.
 
Oh I totally agree. Was just wondering if there was a quick easy test as such, a bit like running GPU-Z and seeing what the PerfCap Reason is but something that would highlight the CPU as the cause of throttling.
 
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Measure FPS at regular settings where GPU is well utilised.
Then drop everything graphics related to absolute minimums. If FPS is comfortably higher than on regular, CPU is not a bottleneck.
 
RipGroove said:
Oh I totally agree. Was just wondering if there was a quick easy test as such, a bit like running GPU-Z and seeing what the PerfCap Reason is but something that would highlight the CPU as the cause of throttling.
Click to expand...


When your gpu doesn't run at 100%
 
You have to check both CPU and GPU usage.

If both CPU and GPU usage is near 100% then there is no bottleneck.

CPU 60% and GPU 100% = GPU bottleneck
CPU 100% and GPU 60% = CPU bottleneck

You also need to look at what all CPU cores are doing. For example, a single threaded game could max out one core and that would be a CPU bottleneck. However, the total CPU usage would only be 16.6% on a 6 core CPU.
 
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CuriousTomCat said:
You have to check both CPU and GPU usage.

If both CPU and GPU usage is near 100% then there is no bottleneck.

CPU 60% and GPU 100% = GPU bottleneck
CPU 100% and GPU 60% = CPU bottleneck

You also need to look at what all CPU cores are doing. For example, a single threaded game could max out one core and that would be a CPU bottleneck. However, the total CPU usage would only be 16.6% on a 6 core CPU.
Click to expand...

But is it really though? Surely that's a software bottleneck rather than an hardware bottleneck.

Software/coding and hardware bottleneck all has to be taken on board.
 
shankly1985 said:
But is it really though? Surely that's a software bottleneck rather than an hardware bottleneck.

Software/coding and hardware bottleneck all has to be taken on board.
Click to expand...
Technically you could argue that but getting more single threaded performance would still help in those cases or getting devs to re write it?

In some games such as Warzone faster RAM helps a lot when GPU is being held back
 
shankly1985 said:
But is it really though? Surely that's a software bottleneck rather than an hardware bottleneck.

Software/coding and hardware bottleneck all has to be taken on board.
Click to expand...

Yes you're right, the PC in that scenario wouldn't have a CPU bottleneck and I certainly wouldn't recommend a CPU upgrade. However, that piece of badly optimised software would still cause a CPU bottleneck. I guess you could call it a software bottleneck though since the software is holding back the CPU.
 
As others said, get afterburner and monitor CPU and GPU usage in games to see what is happening for real.

Its usually only much of an issue if the screen resolution, GPU and CPU combo are poorly matched together or one is really weak
 
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