CPU Upgrade Question

[Areyn13]

So i have a question that might seem a little dumb.. but if a game is running at close to 100% gpu usage and a lower cpu usage, would you actually see any benefit in framerate from a cpu upgrade? Or is that only limited to cases where your cpu usage is higher than your gpu usage?

[minibois]

1 minute ago, Areyn13 said:

if a game is running at close to 100% gpu usage and a lower cpu usage, would you actually see any benefit in framerate from a cpu upgrade?

Nope.

1 minute ago, Areyn13 said:

Or is that only limited to cases where your cpu usage is higher than your gpu usage?

It is only the case if your CPU (or for example, only two of its cores) is at basically 100%, while the videocard is definitely not at 100%.

[Moonzy]

1 minute ago, Areyn13 said:

if a game is running at close to 100% gpu usage and a lower cpu usage, would you actually see any benefit in framerate from a cpu upgrade?

you may see a slight avg fps increase, but most of the time, the lower 1% fps (the frametime spikes) will be reduced

though it depends on how well the game is running to begin with

[Chris Pratt]

Depends, but generally no. If you're not maxing out your CPU, you're unlikely to see much benefit from a better CPU. That said, if the game is optimized for multi-core, having more cores/threads may cause an improvement. None of the tasks may be enough to max out a core, but it might be able to parallelize more tasks.

[WereCat]

3 minutes ago, Areyn13 said:

So i have a question that might seem a little dumb.. but if a game is running at close to 100% gpu usage and a lower cpu usage, would you actually see any benefit in framerate from a cpu upgrade? Or is that only limited to cases where your cpu usage is higher than your gpu usage?

depends on a game because FPS is not the only performance metric for a game

 

For example, if you have unstable frame times due to CPU you may still benefit from upgrading the CPU even if the GPU is often hitting that 100% usage.

CPU usage in games is kinda finnicky because having for example 40% CPU usage does not tell you that you have a plenty of CPU headroom, if the game is heavily single threaded then it only matters if you have enough cores and faster clock speeds will always give you better performance.

[Areyn13]

I see, so if in Far Cry 5 when i see my GPU usage drop much lower to like 60% and my CPU usage rise close to the 90-100% range, is that an example of when I might actually see a performance increase from a CPU upgrade? because in that game in particular, i don't think I've seen a single time where my 1070 reached 100% and the high CPU usage always tends to happen during the lowest fps moments

[Moonzy]

1 minute ago, Areyn13 said:

in Far Cry 5 when i see my GPU usage drop much lower to like 60% and my CPU usage rise close to the 90-100% range, is that an example of when I might actually see a performance increase from a CPU upgrade?

yes

[Gohardgrandpa]

If your cpu is hitting 100% usage in a game you need a cpu upgrade. What cpu are you using?

[Areyn13]

2 hours ago, Gohardgrandpa said:

If your cpu is hitting 100% usage in a game you need a cpu upgrade. What cpu are you using?

i5 4590

[Gohardgrandpa]

1 hour ago, Areyn13 said:

i5 4590

Are you at 1080p or 1440P?

That cpu is quite old now, you'd see a good improvement upgrading the cpu for sure