Resolution affecting fps

[Hielke]

I have been playing at 1440p for a year now and performance wise it has been all over the place. Most games I can get stable around 70 fps but for some of the newer titles like the Anthem demo my fps is somewhere between 30 and 100 depending on the scene. Now my friend who has a way weaker pc in every hardware aspect can run this game stable at 50-60 fps at 1080p without noticeable drops which cause those nasty lag spikes which I suffer from. 

 

So I thought, why not lower the resolution to 1080p? The image might get a little blurry but the performance should increase, right? This is not the case for me at all. I have tested this in 4 games (witcher III, CoD4 Blackout, Dues Ex and the Anthem demo). Why doesn't the performance increase when the resolution gets lowered? Is it because my monitor's native resolution is 1440p? 

I would love to understand this!

[Ezio Auditore]

It usually has nothing to do with the native resolution of the monitor.

Is your cpu not as good as your gpu? This seems to be the case as you are getting very unstable fps even at 1440p.

Also do you have enough ram?

Exact sys specs would be useful.

[Hielke]

It is true that my cpu is not as powerfull as my gpu. But my question is: Shouldn't fps increase when lowering resolution when keeping the same hardware specs? Because this doesn't seem to be the case for me. I need more fps, so I am considering switching to a 1080p monitor, but I do not know if this will actually increase my fps since lowering resolution ingame doesn't do anything for me besides making the image more ugly. 

 

Specs: 

• CPU
  Intel i5-6600K 3,50GHz

  GPU

  1080ti
• Motherboard
  Gigabyte B150M-D3H
• RAM
  Crucial Ballistix 16GB DDR4-2400
• Storage
  240GB SSD Crucial BX200 + 500GB SSD 850 EVO + 1TB HHD Sata III
• PSU
  Corsair 650 Watt
• Display(s)
  iiyama 2560x1440p, 70Hz, 27 inch

[Nolanl83]

40 minutes ago, Hielke said:

It is true that my cpu is not as powerfull as my gpu. But my question is: Shouldn't fps increase when lowering resolution when keeping the same hardware specs? Because this doesn't seem to be the case for me. I need more fps, so I am considering switching to a 1080p monitor, but I do not know if this will actually increase my fps since lowering resolution ingame doesn't do anything for me besides making the image more ugly. 

 

Specs: 

• CPU
  Intel i5-6600K 3,50GHz

  GPU

  1080ti
• Motherboard
  Gigabyte B150M-D3H
• RAM
  Crucial Ballistix 16GB DDR4-2400
• Storage
  240GB SSD Crucial BX200 + 500GB SSD 850 EVO + 1TB HHD Sata III
• PSU
  Corsair 650 Watt
• Display(s)
  iiyama 2560x1440p, 70Hz, 27 inch

well quite frankly your FPS IN Anthem is probably going to be bad considering they more than likely have optimized it fully as to why your not getting better fps whilst switching that is odd and quite frankly im not sure how to help 

[ki8aras]

57 minutes ago, Hielke said:

It is true that my cpu is not as powerfull as my gpu. But my question is: Shouldn't fps increase when lowering resolution when keeping the same hardware specs? Because this doesn't seem to be the case for me. I need more fps, so I am considering switching to a 1080p monitor, but I do not know if this will actually increase my fps since lowering resolution ingame doesn't do anything for me besides making the image more ugly. 

 

Specs: 

• CPU
  Intel i5-6600K 3,50GHz

  GPU

  1080ti
• Motherboard
  Gigabyte B150M-D3H
• RAM
  Crucial Ballistix 16GB DDR4-2400
• Storage
  240GB SSD Crucial BX200 + 500GB SSD 850 EVO + 1TB HHD Sata III
• PSU
  Corsair 650 Watt
• Display(s)
  iiyama 2560x1440p, 70Hz, 27 inch

your gpu is a bit overkill when paired with an i5 6600k

[Hielke]

3 minutes ago, ki8aras said:

your gpu is a bit overkill when paired with an i5 6600k

Sure, but you do not answer my question. Why doesn't fps increase when lowering resolution? There should be a logical answer to this question.

[ki8aras]

Just now, Hielke said:

Sure, but you do not answer my question. Why doesn't fps increase when lowering resolution? There should be a logical answer to this question.

because the bottleneck is your cpu not your gpu(higher framerates are harder on the cpu)

[Hielke]

That still does not explain it. Even when lowering the resolution to 720 there is no difference in performance.

[ki8aras]

4 minutes ago, Hielke said:

That still does not explain it. Even when lowering the resolution to 720 there is no difference in performance.

ya because like i said the limiting factor on your pc is the i5 6600k not the gtx 1080 ti

[Hielke]

Can someone with some more experience please give me a proper answer? Instead of just pointing a finger at 1 of my pieces of hardware and writing one sentence about it? I'm sure that's not how this forum is meant to be used. 

Once more, the question: Keeping all factors constant (hardware), why doesn't lowering resolution (ingame) result in an increase in performance?
Follow up question: Since changing ingame resolution does not seem to affect my fps (thoroughly tested), will a 1080p resolution monitor (currently using 1440p) increase my frames per minute? 

[tikker]

1 hour ago, Hielke said:

Can someone with some more experience please give me a proper answer? Instead of just pointing a finger at 1 of my pieces of hardware and writing one sentence about it? I'm sure that's not how this forum is meant to be used. 

Once more, the question: Keeping all factors constant (hardware), why doesn't lowering resolution (ingame) result in an increase in performance?
Follow up question: Since changing ingame resolution does not seem to affect my fps (thoroughly tested), will a 1080p resolution monitor (currently using 1440p) increase my frames per minute? 

Because lowering the resolution actually works against you:

2 hours ago, ki8aras said:

because the bottleneck is your cpu not your gpu(higher framerates are harder on the cpu)

1 hour ago, ki8aras said:

ya because like i said the limiting factor on your pc is the i5 6600k not the gtx 1080 ti

The GPU renders the frames, but the CPU has to process physics, AI, audio etc. and tell the GPU what to render where after it has done its calculations. Your GPU may happily be able to render 120 frames per second, but if the CPU cannot calculate those 120 frames per second, you will not see an improvement.

If your CPU cannot handle the load the GPU puts on it, lowering the resolution is not going to gain you, because the CPU cannot keep up with the GPU even more. You could try the opposite: increase the resolution to push the load more towards the GPU. Though that will probably mean 4k, which isn't exactly performace friendly either.

 

Switching to a lower resolution monitor is similar to switching the ingame resolution. What matters it the resolution the game gets rendered at. The GPU then up- or downscales as necessary.

[Hielke]

Thank you for your clear explanation! I understand that I have to upgrade my CPU. 

But explain this to me: How can my friend who has a very similar cpu (I forget which one specifically, but around the same power, generation and amount of cores as mine), and a gtx 1060 3GB have such better results at 1080p? I've watched him play the same games as me and he has better, more stable fps at high settings than I have at low. 

 

Is the mismatch between my cpu and gpu slowing me down even further than his setup which is "worse" in each regard? Because if you were to look at each piece of hardware individually, all of my hardware would be considered faster. 

[Hielke]

I should restate my question: How is it possible that my friend has better performance at 1080p?

 

My friend's setup: i5-7500 @ 3.4GHz + gtx1060 3gb = stable 50-70 fps at medium-high settings at 1080p with little to no lag spikes

My setup: i5-6600k @ 3.5GHz + gtx1080ti, both not overclocked = unstable 40-100 fps at medium-high settings at 1440p with the exact same results at 1080p with very frequent lag spikes.

[RogueCow]

While running games, use a system recorder (CPU-Z/GPU-Z) to watch your hardware. If you see your cpu cores
constantly hitting 100%, you know what is causing your issues (CPU Bottleneck). 

Next, you can run benchmarks (3dMark for example) and compare your results to systems with similar specifications. If your 
Results are radically lower, you know you have an issue.

Also, I'd recommend using google to research your question thoroughly before posting a question, as there is plenty of information
out there on this very topic. http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3512228/gaining-fps-dropping-lower-settings-changing-resolution.html is a good one.

 

On 2/3/2019 at 11:52 AM, Hielke said:

Can someone with some more experience please give me a proper answer? Instead of just pointing a finger at 1 of my pieces of hardware and writing one sentence about it? I'm sure that's not how this forum is meant to be used. 

If any one bothers to reply to your post, it is an attempt to help you. Your limited testing and info points to a bottleneck in your system, likely your cpu. 
It is then up to you to research what that means, and further understand it. Yet instead you respond with a passive aggressive insult because a random person on the internet didn't hold your hand tighter and write a novel for you? 

THAT is not how this forum is meant to be used