CPU bottle-neck, or a perfect pair?

[Pailloran]

So I'm having difficulty determining whether my couch gaming PC's CPU and GPU are a perfect pairing, or a slight bottle-neck on the CPU side, and was hoping for some advice. 

 

I'm running (important parts only):

i7 7700k (OC to 5.0Ghz, Hyper-threading on)

16GB Vengeance RGB Pro DDR4 3000 (OC to 3200Mhz)

RTX 2060 Super (OC +800Mhz memory, +95Mhz GPU)

 

I like to play The Witcher 3 in 4K 60Hz (max 60, V-Sync on, max refresh for the TV) and for the most part I maintain 60fps without issue.  Hair-works and motion blur and all that nonsense are off, and setting are mostly ultra.  On occasion in particularly busy scenes, I'll see a slight drop to no lower than about 56fps for a second or two.  So I got curios and overlaid all of my usage with Afterburner and Riva.

 

At 4k, standing still, viewing a particularly heavily populated scene, my GPU usage can sit around 90%, with all 8 CPU threads ranging between 39% and 60% usage, but maintaining 60fps just fine.  If I run Geralt around that same scene trying to stress it intentionally, the GPU will pin at 99% and I can drive the 8 threads all to 95% or higher.  When I drop to 1440p and run around the same scene, my GPU hovers in the high 40% to mid 50% range, but I can still drive the 8 threads into the low to mid 90's, though I don't drop any frames at all.

 

So I guess my question is, since I can pin the GPU at 99% in 4k and still reasonably maintain ~60fps with a few minor dips, but the 8 threads are also 95%+, would I likely see any benefit from upgrading the CPU, or are they all maxing out together?  I heard TW3 can be somewhat CPU intensive at times, but nothing ever hits 100% and stays there for me, so I don't know if a CPU upgrade would actually offload any work from the GPU, or just create a GPU bottleneck and make me want a new card also when nothing improves.

 

Any suggestions are appreciated!

[Guest]

You've got nothing more or less than my 8700K at 5ghz + 2060. 

 

Upgrade because you want to. It doesn't look as if you "need" to. If you was running a 2080ti, that may be a different story.

If you're streaming and Gaming, yea an upgrade (cpu board)  for the multi-tasking would be very desired.

 

 

[Pailloran]

12 minutes ago, ShrimpBrime said:

You've got nothing more or less than my 8700K at 5ghz + 2060. 

 

Upgrade because you want to. It doesn't look as if you "need" to. If you was running a 2080ti, that may be a different story.

If you're streaming and Gaming, yea an upgrade (cpu board)  for the multi-tasking would be very desired.

 

 

Thanks for the input, that's sort of what I figured too.  No streaming, so I guess I'll sit tight and save until I'm ready to overhaul the whole thing.  I'd like to see what the new offerings from red, blue, and green do to pricing. 

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Pailloran said:

Thanks for the input, that's sort of what I figured too.  No streaming, so I guess I'll sit tight and save until I'm ready to overhaul the whole thing.  I'd like to see what the new offerings from red, blue, and green do to pricing. 

Oh it's always the same rule of thumb. Pay more get more.  

 

Later this year, AMD is releasing Zen 3. Something to keep an eye out for!

[Pailloran]

3 minutes ago, ShrimpBrime said:

Oh it's always the same rule of thumb. Pay more get more.  

 

Later this year, AMD is releasing Zen 3. Something to keep an eye out for!

Yeah, if I upgraded this machine I was thinking B550 with something like a 3600x which wouldn't get me much further along for gaming anyway, so I may as well wait and buy 1 chip instead of 2 in the long run.

[GER_T4IGA]

Upgrading a CPU for 60 FPS gaming is never the right move imo. Unless you are running some pentium or FX stuff. That's my rule of thumb here. Even if you get, say a 10700k or something you have now spend an enourmus sum for barely increased gaming performance.

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, Pailloran said:

Yeah, if I upgraded this machine I was thinking B550 with something like a 3600x which wouldn't get me much further along for gaming anyway, so I may as well wait and buy 1 chip instead of 2 in the long run.

Uhh Im not sure that would be an upgrade if you're running 5ghz or faster on that 7700K.

 

B550 + Zen3. 

[Chris Pratt]

4 hours ago, GER_T4IGA said:

Upgrading a CPU for 60 FPS gaming is never the right move imo. Unless you are running some pentium or FX stuff. That's my rule of thumb here. Even if you get, say a 10700k or something you have now spend an enourmus sum for barely increased gaming performance.

60 fps at 4K. I almost missed that myself. That changes your math.

[Chris Pratt]

For gaming, clocks still matter more than cores, and at 5GHz already, you're not going to see much improvement upgrading. If anything the whole combo is bottlenecked if your goal is 4K@60+. It's actually pretty respectable that you're pulling that off as is, and definitely explains everything running full tilt. I'd upgrade the GPU before the CPU, if you're going to upgrade anything.

[Pailloran]

Thanks again for everyone's responses, you've pretty much confirmed what I suspected.  Everything is pretty much pushed to the max for what I'm asking it to do, but it's doing it fairly well.  I'm going to hold off and wait for everyone to release their new stuff (Zen 3, 3080/Ampere, Big Navi, etc) and see if I can snatch up something with a better IPC and a faster GPU at the same time. 

 

Then I can stick the guts of my current couch machine into the 1080p machine I cobbled together when I started having to work from home and wanted something in my office to keep my work laptop company so I could game on breaks-  an FX-8350 + GTX 1060 3GB beast, haha.  Sadly these were the best spare parts I had lying around that I hadn't already stuck in my kid's machines.  It actually isn't too terrible at 1080p/high, if you don't mind it becoming a very loud space heater ;)  Thanks again folks.