GTX 1070 underperforming. PLEASE HELP!

[MEC-777]

It's your CPU. i5's just can't fully cut it anymore with anything faster than 1060 or RX480. I just switched from an i5-4570 to an i7-4770k (with a 1070) and even without overclocking the i7, the performance difference was eye-opening, to say the least. Significantly faster. I'm talking 20fps+ gains across a number of games and benchmarks.

 

If your CPU is anywhere near 100% in most games, it's holding back your GPU. Even if your GPU is also showing 100% usage. 

[Mrchooow]

15 hours ago, Ender15m said:

I know how to install windows. My problem is backing everything up and reinstalling it. I have a lot of games and save data on my PC and I'm not losing any of it. 

you only have partiton? you should  be able to back it up pretty easily, for games, you have to reinstall a lot of them, stand alone games or steam games?

[IAmAkiro]

17 hours ago, MEC-777 said:

It's your CPU. i5's just can't fully cut it anymore with anything faster than 1060 or RX480. I just switched from an i5-4570 to an i7-4770k (with a 1070) and even without overclocking the i7, the performance difference was eye-opening, to say the least. Significantly faster. I'm talking 20fps+ gains across a number of games and benchmarks.

 

If your CPU is anywhere near 100% in most games, it's holding back your GPU. Even if your GPU is also showing 100% usage. 

I am having same issue, just running 4670K.

Would it be best for me to ex upgrade to my socket i7 or the new kaby?

[MEC-777]

36 minutes ago, GGWP1337 said:

I am having same issue, just running 4670K.

Would it be best for me to ex upgrade to my socket i7 or the new kaby?

IMO, if you're on the Haswell socket, it's not worth the huge amount of extra money to upgrade to Sky/Kaby lake. Just grab an ebay 4770K or 4790K, overclock it and you're good to go for another few years, easy. And you can sell the i5 so you only really pay the difference between the cost of the i7 and what you make back on the i5.

 

Here in Canada, the i7-7700K is upwards of $500. Add a decent Z270 motherboard and DDR4 ram and you're easily looking at $800+ to make that upgrade. Meanwhile, I'm only out of pocket $170 after grabbing a 4770K on ebay.  

 

$800 vs. $170 and for how much difference in gaming performance? 5-7% on average, maybe.   

[Ender15m]

17 hours ago, MEC-777 said:

It's your CPU. i5's just can't fully cut it anymore with anything faster than 1060 or RX480. I just switched from an i5-4570 to an i7-4770k (with a 1070) and even without overclocking the i7, the performance difference was eye-opening, to say the least. Significantly faster. I'm talking 20fps+ gains across a number of games and benchmarks.

 

If your CPU is anywhere near 100% in most games, it's holding back your GPU. Even if your GPU is also showing 100% usage. 

Yeah but a lot more people are telling me it's not my CPU that is the problem.

4 hours ago, Mrchooow said:

you only have partiton? you should  be able to back it up pretty easily, for games, you have to reinstall a lot of them, stand alone games or steam games?

What's partiton? Well yeah but how do I keep the save data? Steam games, Origin, Ubisoft, online downloads, CDs. tons

[MEC-777]

Just now, Ender15m said:

Yeah but a lot more people are telling me it's not my CPU that is the problem.

Late 2016 I upgraded from a GTX 980 to the 1070 and was still running an i5-4570 which is basically the same as yours, just non-overclockable. While it was faster than the 980, it wasn't THAT much faster (not as fast as I expected it to be). In many games I noticed fairly high CPU usage on all cores (80%+) and in some games, 95%+ on all cores (basically maxed out). I noticed the same performance fluctuations as you mentioned.

 

A while back, I created a spreadsheet and ran my PC through a wide range of benchmarks and games and recorded the performance with the i5 + 980 and i5 + 1070. I then upgraded to an i7-4770K, OC'd it to 4.4 and ran all the same tests again with the exact same settings. The difference in performance between the i5 and i7 with the 1070 in some tests was more so than the difference in performance between the 980 and 1070 with the i5.  

 

I did not record the results with the i7 at stock clocks because I had no intention of running it stock. (That's why you buy a K CPU anyways, right? ). But from the few tests I did run with it stock, initially, it still blew the i5 out of the water. 

 

So, from what you're describing (high GPU and high CPU usage while gaming), the CPU is holding up your GPU.  

[XenosTech]

It's a cpu bottle neck you're having... I have to get a 6700k after I get my 1070 just so I don't get stuttering and I'm only gonna be gaming at 1080p @ 60Hz (until my lazy ass decides to get a 1440p or high refresh 1080p monitor). To further explain, my i5 6500 ran bf1 on 1080p ultra settings with a rx 470 and got over 100 fps quite easily and my cpu wasn't tapped out while gaming, if I were to play bf1 with the same processor I'd probably get massive frame dip since the cpu would be tapped out and can't keep up with the 1070. Either way you're going to have to buy an i7 to pair with that 1070. i5's are for 1060's and below and i7's are for 1070's and up since that should be able to feed those fast gpus info without hitting 100% usage.

[C_Jester]

I had a similar problem with my 1070 saw that my CPU was pinned and gpu usage was hovering around 50-70% and getting huge frame stuffers in some games. so I upgraded my CPU to something that could handle it and all problems are fixed my CPU runs around 50% and my gpu can run at 100% with no frame studdering from CPU bottleneck.