CPU bottleneck with RTX 3080, what can i do?

[code99]

So i got my hands on a ASUS TUF OC 3080 a couple of days ago and was eager to start playing my games that I wasnt able to with my old card only to notice that my fps is rather low and my games are stuttery.

 

2 games in particular are having issues, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Horizon Zero Dawn. 

 

In horizon zero dawn i get anywhere between 60 and 120 fps which is fine but when larger fights happen my fps drops bellow 60-50. I saw once 40 fps  ... everything feels stuttery and ... well very bad and unplayable tbh.

 

In red dead redemption, whenever i enter a town/city my fps often drops bellow 60, again, becoming stuttery and just unplayable tbh.

 

I am almost sure its a cpu bottleneck. I use MSI afterburner saw that my gpu is at 50-80% utilization while my cpu is always at 95-99% utilization.

 

My system specs are as follows (for the time being):

 

i7 4790 (non K)

16GB DDR3 RAM

1440p 144hz display

rtx 3080 

win 10 pro

850W Corsair platinum PSU

 

I know its an old cpu and I am waiting for ryzen 5000 to come out to upgrade BUT, in the mean time, what can i do to improve my gameplay experience? 

 

Before i bought the 3080 i had a 2080 (which i sold 2-3 months ago) and i didnt have such issues back then. Mind you, back then my gpu utilization was over 90 instead of my cpu so i reduced some graphical settings and everything was fine.

Now, its the other way around. I tried reducing some settings but didnt feel much of an improvement.

 

Ultimately, i thought i would see an improvement over my 2080, not the other way around.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Downscaleing resolution?

[WereCatf]

4 minutes ago, code99 said:

BUT, in the mean time, what can i do to improve my gameplay experience?

You drop resolution and/or quality-settings.

[emosun]

5 minutes ago, code99 said:

BUT, in the mean time, what can i do to improve my gameplay experience? 

lower your expectations 

[Dedayog]

Really not sure why you spent $700+ on a GPU upgrade in that system when it's your core that's weaker.  CPU / mobo / RAM.

 

I would have upgraded that instead.

 

So you definitely "know" what to do, upgrade your CPU.

[glenalz81]

3 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

Downscaleing resolution?

 

2 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

You drop resolution and/or quality-settings.

Think i'd be upscaling and maxing settings to shift the load more towards the GPU?

 

8 minutes ago, code99 said:

Ultimately, i thought i would see an improvement over my 2080, not the other way around.

The 2080 must have been almost bottlencking the 4790 in some titles i'd say.

[WereCatf]

5 minutes ago, emosun said:

lower your expectations 

That's what I always tell my partners.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

 

3 minutes ago, glenalz81 said:

Think i'd be upscaling and maxing settings to shift the load more towards the GPU?

 

If you downscale, you render at, lets say 4k, but downscale to 1080p or 1440p. Upscalling makes it look better, if rendering at a lower res

[VeganJoy]

6 minutes ago, glenalz81 said:

Think i'd be upscaling and maxing settings to shift the load more towards the GPU?

i would think so as well. perhaps set framerate caps or something, overclock the cpu (whoops nvm lol), that sorta thing. in fairness, horizon zero dawn and rdr2 are pretty poorly optimized for pc and will generally not run spectacularly on good hardware

[emosun]

5 minutes ago, glenalz81 said:

Think i'd be upscaling and maxing settings to shift the load more towards the GPU?

if their cpu is at 100% adding more load isn't going to fix that

[WereCat]

@glenalz81as he said

 

downscaling puts more load on CPU 

upscaling puts more load on GPU

 

so yes, you have a huge bottleneck and I know it because I gamed with 4770k at 1440p 165Hz with 1080ti and it was slow enough to even bottleneck my 1080ti.

Just crank up all the juicy graphics settings and anti-aliasing and enjoy  Honestly, I would suggest to limit the FPS to 100 in non-competitive games and to reduce the stuttering from CPU overhead.

[code99]

12 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

Downscaleing resolution?

 

11 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

You drop resolution and/or quality-settings.

 

I will lower settings some more, see if it helps. I already lowered a bunch of them and saw no major improvements. I will experiment some more, thanks.

 

9 minutes ago, emosun said:

lower your expectations 

Thank you for you awesome help! /s

 

6 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Really not sure why you spent $700+ on a GPU upgrade in that system when it's your core that's weaker.  CPU / mobo / RAM.

 

I would have upgraded that instead.

 

So you definitely "know" what to do, upgrade your CPU.

Why i spent 700+ on a gpu? 

 

Its easy, im building a new system and i finally managed to get my hands on the elusive 3080 gpu. I wish i was able to get all the parts at the same time but sadly ryzen 5000 hasnt launched yet. 

 

I am well aware my cpu is outdated but i was hoping there was something i could do that i didnt know already to improve my experience until i get my hands on a new cpu ...

5 minutes ago, glenalz81 said:

 

Think i'd be upscaling and maxing settings to shift the load more towards the GPU?

 

The 2080 must have been almost bottlencking the 4790 in some titles i'd say.

I will try that, i didnt think of upscaling. Does make sense ...

 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

9 minutes ago, code99 said:

I will try that, i didnt think of upscaling. Does make sense ...

 

upscalling gives more fps, which puts more load on cpu. Downscalling puts more load on the gpu, removing some bottlenck.

[emosun]

11 minutes ago, code99 said:

I will try that, i didnt think of upscaling. Does make sense ...

 

no it actually didnt make sense which is why everyone ehre questioned why they would say it. you don;t reduce load on a 100% cpu by just trying to lag out other components. 

sure the cpu usage would go down but it doesnt make the cpu any faster. 

[emosun]

2 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

Downscalling puts more load on the gpu, removing some bottlenck.

no thats just moving the bottleneck , not removing

[Helpful Tech Witch]

3 minutes ago, emosun said:

no thats just moving the bottleneck , not removing

the gpu isnt bottlwnecking in this case, the cpu is.  Even with down scaling. There will be a (larger or smaller? IDK. a larger bottle neck [literallly] world be a less bottlenecked system) lower bottleneck, as eventually, you hit system ram bottleneck, with the lower bandwidth of ddr3. 

[emosun]

2 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

the gpu isnt bottlwnecking in this case, the cpu is.

yeah and loading the gpu more while not removing anything having to do with the cpu isn't gonna fix that , you have to actually load the cpu less

[Helpful Tech Witch]

3 minutes ago, emosun said:

yeah and loading the gpu more while not removing anything having to do with the cpu isn't gonna fix that , you have to actually load the cpu less

which you do, if you make the gpu work harder. You stop giving it frames the cpu cant process in time.

[emosun]

1 minute ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

if you make the gpu work harder. You stop giving it frames the cpu cant process in time.

.......... that doesnt make the cpu faster , it's just making the gpu slower , so the cpu has less to do.

so all you did , was move the bottleneck. Unless you;re under the impression that your cinebench scores would somehow be higher.

why is this even a discussion? lol. it's slower than a Ryzen 3 3200GE , it's not like someones going to convince me it has untapped potential here lol

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Just now, emosun said:

.......... that doesnt make the cpu faster , it's just making the gpu slower , so the cpu has less to do.

I know, it makes the gaming experience far better tho..... The cpu has less work to do, and stutters would decrese. 

 

1 minute ago, emosun said:

so all you did , was move the bottleneck

No, it would be a (once again, its a smaller bottleneck, but the terminology here is weird) the cpu is still bottlenecking.

3 minutes ago, emosun said:

ol. it's slower than a Ryzen 3 3200GE

its not tho? At least from what I can tell.

[svmlegacy]

1 hour ago, code99 said:

<snip>

Has anyone suggested dropping the power limit of the 3080 way down? That might help free up the 4790. Also good is making sure VSync is enabled at 60 Hz, and anything particle physic related have the settings reduced in.

TBH, my 3770K was paired well with a GTX 780 at 1080p, so this is one heck of a bottleneck you're dealing with.

[Gohardgrandpa]

Your cpu is maxed out. It’s gonna pump out what it can and unfortunately with those games it’s showing it’s age plus they arent optimized good on pc.  
I don’t blame you for grabbing the 3080, I would of too but this isn’t anything out of the normal your dealing with. 

 

Seems like you hang onto your hardware for a long time and there isn’t anything wrong with that. You’ll just have to tough this out til the new ryzen cpus come out. I’d make sure you go at least 8 core 16 thread on the new cpu 

[Dedayog]

11 minutes ago, Gohardgrandpa said:

Your cpu is maxed out. It’s gonna pump out what it can and unfortunately with those games it’s showing it’s age plus they arent optimized good on pc.  
I don’t blame you for grabbing the 3080, I would of too but this isn’t anything out of the normal your dealing with. 

 

Seems like you hang onto your hardware for a long time and there isn’t anything wrong with that. You’ll just have to tough this out til the new ryzen cpus come out. I’d make sure you go at least 8 core 16 thread on the new cpu 

He bought a 2080 and then soldf it  few months ago, then bought a 3080.  He doesn't hold onto everything long

 

Still, the 3080 with a 4790(non K) is a bad call, bad pairing, bottleneck, etc.  

 

Now he's getting the same performance as before but out $700-$800.  How is that a good call?

 

He also has to spend another $300+ in addition to get better performance whereas he could have spent just $300 and kept the 2080.  For 1440p 144Hz, this was he smart balanced play.

 

He's about to have a very serious rig, since if you can afford a 3080 right now you can afford a few hundred more for the rest

 

[code99]

The 2080 thing was just a bad call, an impulse buy i would say.

I was planning to build a new gaming rig and one day i just went for a 2080 with plans of buying a ryzen 7 3700X cpu to go along with it.

 

But then, only a couple of months later i found out nvidia was coming out with rtx 3000 soon and amd with zen 3 ... that kinda changed my plans.

 

I decided to wait for those parts to release before i built a new system.

 

I put my 2080 for sale shortly after that and only managed to sell it 2-3 months ago. Kinda regretted buying it in the first place.

 

 

After selling my 2080 i went back to my old as f*** amd r9 290 gpu .... let me tell you, that thing dont do 2k very well.

 

That is the reason i bought a 3080 right now, my 290 was simply not cutting it and i didnt see any point in waiting some more. I bought it the first chance i got.

 

Now im waiting for 5th of next month to get my hands on a ryzen 7 or 9 ...