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Would my CPU bottleneck at 4k?

beany_bot

beany_bot

beany_bot

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Hi all. I'm starting to save up for a 1080Ti or Vega. (I know neither actually exsist yet but planning ahead so I have enough money).

My absolute goal is to go from 1080p gaming to 4K gaming.

I want to do this by this time next year.

Question is, even though we don't know the specs of these hypothetical cards yet. we can guesstimate as to their speeds.

Will my CPU bottleneck my "theoretical" rig at this time? I know that pushing 4K games is hard work on the GPU, but does it put much more strain on the CPU?

I was kind of holding off upgrading my mobo/CPU/RAM until late 2017/early 2018 if possible.
 
Not so much a theoretical question because there's currently SLI rigs out there with far more horsepower than a single 1080 ti and those rigs don't appear to be bottlenecked when using an I7 processor. You don't say what cpu you have but your sig shows a devils canyon i5. Ultimately it may become the weak point but I suspect you'll be dropping only a few fps.
 
Nope, your CPU will be fine for 4k as its down to the GPU like you said.

One a side note, gaming at 4K isnt all that. I have an 4k monitor @ 60hz and I play my games on 2K at home because gaming at 144hz on a 2k monitor feels much better than gaming on 4k @ 60hz.
 
malachi said:
Nope, your CPU will be fine for 4k as its down to the GPU like you said.

One a side note, gaming at 4K isnt all that. I have an 4k monitor @ 60hz and I play my games on 2K at home because gaming at 144hz on a 2k monitor feels much better than gaming on 4k @ 60hz.
Click to expand...

Yeah i'm really struggling to decide between 1440p, 1440 UltraWide and 4K

The thing is, I've never seen more than 60fps so "don't know what i'm missing".
I'm not a competitive twitch based battlefield type gamer. And I can't seem to tell the difference between say 50fps and 60fps. They both look silk to me. Only when it drops below 50 do I notice. I spend a lot of time in games like rust and gta v just gawping at the stunning views. That's why i felt that 4K was for me. But I don't know. And it's not just gaming, I would love to watch some of the youtube content thats in 4K.Asuming the 1080Ti (or whatever) can game at 4K. then I guess it's a case of why not?
 
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beany_bot said:
Yeah i'm really struggling to decide between 1440p, 1440 UltraWide and 4K

The thing is, I've never seen more than 60fps so "don't know what i'm missing".
I'm not a competitive twitch based battlefield type gamer. And I can't seem to tell the difference between say 50fps and 60fps. They both look silk to me. Only when it drops below 50 do I notice. I spend a lot of time in games like rust and gta v just gawping at the stunning views. That's why i felt that 4K was for me. But I don't know. And it's not just gaming, I would love to watch some of the youtube content thats in 4K.Asuming the 1080Ti (or whatever) can game at 4K. then I guess it's a case of why not?
Click to expand...

I suppose it depends on different people. I have had my 144hz monitor for nearly 6 months then I got a 4K monitor last week. Yes, the 4K res is nice but with general movement round my desktop, 60hz feels so slow compared to 144hz its like night and day.

The sweet spot is when we get 4k monitors at higher refresh rate.
 
Resolution has nothing to do with CPU and is only GPU dependant.
If your current CPU can push 60fps at 1080p then it will do the same at 4K as long as your GPU can handle it.
Now for me i5 2500K running at 4.8Ghz wasn't enough anymore after upgrading to 980ti and I was getting slowdowns in some games (Crysis 3, GTA V and few others) where the GPU usage was dropping and upgrading to 6700K at 4.5Ghz solved it completely.
 
The only game that apears to max my CPU is FSX. But it will always max a CPU as it hardly touches the GPU. It's all about single core speed. All textures and things are loaded through the CPU. all the GPU does is AA (and only if you force it to through Nvidia Inspector or Catalyst Control Centre). Alas, I digress.
 
z10m said:
Resolution has nothing to do with CPU and is only GPU dependant.
If your current CPU can push 60fps at 1080p then it will do the same at 4K as long as your GPU can handle it.
Now for me i5 2500K running at 4.8Ghz wasn't enough anymore after upgrading to 980ti and I was getting slowdowns in some games (Crysis 3, GTA V and few others) where the GPU usage was dropping and upgrading to 6700K at 4.5Ghz solved it completely.
Click to expand...
+1
 
z10m said:
Resolution has nothing to do with CPU and is only GPU dependant.
If your current CPU can push 60fps at 1080p then it will do the same at 4K as long as your GPU can handle it.
Click to expand...

No that's not quite right.

Higher resolutions need more GPU power. Lower resolutions (less than 1080p, usually) become so easy for GPUs that they stop being the bottleneck and start hitting the CPU more.

But you're right that if the CPU copes at one resolution it should be fine at higher res's with the same GPU. Getting a faster GPU with the same CPU might need a resolution jump to keep things balanced though (like the OP going to 4k).
 
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