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Testing CPU/GPU bottleneck

Soldato
Joined
6 Sep 2016
Posts
10,781
I was playing War thunder at maximum settings, 2560x1440p and I was getting around 75-85fps. CPU usage around 30%

Xeon 5670 OC at 4.0-4.5 approx ghz. ATI 480 I think 8GB version. 24GB RAM.

Does that mean if I test try a 7900XTX or similar CPU usage will stay the same, GPU will be 100% as well, and have higher FPS? Or will CPU usage go up as now I have a faster GPU? Or that War Thunder isn't that CPU intensive so CPU usage will stay the same?
 
No point buying a new high end card unless you're planning to upgrade the entire system soon, you won't get the performance you'd be paying for. GPU would probably not be at 100% while the CPU is trying to keep up with feeding it data.

Are you not happy with the current performance?
 
I was playing War thunder at maximum settings, 2560x1440p and I was getting around 75-85fps. CPU usage around 30%

Xeon 5670 OC at 4.0-4.5 approx ghz. ATI 480 I think 8GB version. 24GB RAM.

Does that mean if I test try a 7900XTX or similar CPU usage will stay the same, GPU will be 100% as well, and have higher FPS? Or will CPU usage go up as now I have a faster GPU? Or that War Thunder isn't that CPU intensive so CPU usage will stay the same?
That cpu usage could be an average of all your cores. You need to know what the individual cores are doing. Usually one or two cores will be maxed out.
 

ok. what is the util on the left that shows all that info? With the radeon OSD it justs CPU, so unsure if total (probably is) and how efficient multi core is per game
 
Not sure if the AMD overlay does individual cores. Msi afterburner does. You will need to set this up to see if any of your cores are at 100%. If they are you are GPU bound.
 
Not sure if the AMD overlay does individual cores. Msi afterburner does. You will need to set this up to see if any of your cores are at 100%. If they are you are GPU bound.

Did you mean CPU bound?

If your CPU cores are maxed, the CPU isn’t going to get any faster.
 
ok doom eternal is around 30% also

war thunder first core was 95% and others 25-30%

Stock 3.20 CPU.

So basically limited by GPU and not CPU.
This is just from me and with no bottleneck calculating whatsoever, but I would say a RX 480 will be the primary bottleneck in most modern games at 1440p, it just doesn't have the grunt for this resolution.

However, if you upgrade to a 7900 XTX, the Xeon CPU will now be the primary bottleneck.

There's a fair few videos on YouTube about the old Xeons that you might like to watch, e.g.:
 
Anything similar that isn't so power hungry? 7800XT is similar performance - but it's a bit too expensive
RTX 4060 is a decent chunk faster than a RX 6600 and uses similar power (~130 watts), you can get them for around £250, or less if you spot a deal.
 
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