Will I get better gaming performance if I upgrade CPU?

[Ron30]

Hey,

So I have a GTX 1080 with an i7-6700k. I was gaming on a 60hz 2580x1080 monitor. Not sure what my fps in most games were but they were playable. Planning an upgrade of several components but with industry and shipping delays, etc, I'm stuck waiting on parts. I've upgraded my monitor to a 160hz 3440x1440 and my fps at native resolution is in the 20's (hitman 2 benchmark, all settings on Ultra). I will be getting an RTX 3080 (when the model I want is finally released and there's stock). I'll also be moving to an AMD R9 5900X or 5950X.

The benchmarks I'm running using the windows Game Bar don't show me as being CPU or GPU bound, so something is obviously not reporting correctly. I know my CPU is a bottleneck for 1080p, but for higher res, it looks like it's a negligible bottleneck at 1440p and higher, according to https://pc-builds.com/calculator/.

I was hoping to get the CPU and GPU upgraded at the same time, to avoid having to dismantle my water loop for 2 separate upgrades, but with the RTX availability, I'm wondering if I'm going to see any meaningful fps boost at 3440x1440, with just the CPU upgrade for now. In case it affects the calculation, I'm also running 32gb of CL15 ram at 2133mhz, limited by CPU. When I swap to AMD, I won't be speed limited so it'll be 3200mhz

 

Budget (including currency): Not applicable

Country: Australia

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: A bit of everything. Nothing specific. This question is about gaming in general though; mostly single player

 

 

[WereCat]

its ok with GTX 1080 but if you go for RTX 3080 then it will definitely be time to also upgrade your CPU

[boggy77]

the gpu is the priority for3440x1440.

[Ron30]

I'm definitely upgrading to both the R9 5000 and the RTX 3080. I don't think I can get the 3080 until early next year though, so I'm wondering if the CPU upgrade alone will increase my gaming performance until then. Or am I likely to only get a couple of extra frames?

[boggy77]

9 minutes ago, Ron30 said:

I'm definitely upgrading to both the R9 5000 and the RTX 3080. I don't think I can get the 3080 until early next year though, so I'm wondering if the CPU upgrade alone will increase my gaming performance until then. Or am I likely to only get a couple of extra frames?

probably only a few frames only.

[jaslion]

1 hour ago, Ron30 said:

I'm definitely upgrading to both the R9 5000 and the RTX 3080. I don't think I can get the 3080 until early next year though, so I'm wondering if the CPU upgrade alone will increase my gaming performance until then. Or am I likely to only get a couple of extra frames?

I doubt you'll see more than a couple fps increase with a new gpu now. I mean people have tested 4c/8t intel cpu's with the new nvidia cards and the general result is that you are missing out on about 10% gpu performance on average. Overclocking it of course fixes that a decent bit.

 

Also since you are playing at such a higher resolution don't be surprised that the rtx 3080 will perform almost identical paired with the 6700k or r9 5900x. Also keep in min that 12 cores is absolutely beyond overkill for gaming. You can totally go for a few more years with your 6700k especially with an oc.

[Ron30]

5 minutes ago, jaslion said:

I doubt you'll see more than a couple fps increase with a new gpu now. I mean people have tested 4c/8t intel cpu's with the new nvidia cards and the general result is that you are missing out on about 10% gpu performance on average. Overclocking it of course fixes that a decent bit.

 

Also since you are playing at such a higher resolution don't be surprised that the rtx 3080 will perform almost identical paired with the 6700k or r9 5900x. Also keep in min that 12 cores is absolutely beyond overkill for gaming. You can totally go for a few more years with your 6700k especially with an oc.

I know my 6700k would bottleneck an RTX 3080, but you're saying that when I upgrade both my cpu and gpu, I'm not going to see much improvement, because of my resolution? I'm not sure I understand the logic there.

[jaslion]

35 minutes ago, Ron30 said:

I know my 6700k would bottleneck an RTX 3080, but you're saying that when I upgrade both my cpu and gpu, I'm not going to see much improvement, because of my resolution? I'm not sure I understand the logic there.

No. What I mean is the 6700k is barely going to bottleneck you at the resolution you play at. Especially if you oc it then there will be barely any difference between it and a newer cpu as the gpu will be maxed out regardless.

[Ron30]

Ah ok. Thanks. That's exactly what I was asking.

[Mark Kaine]

38 minutes ago, Ron30 said:

I know my 6700k would bottleneck an RTX 3080, but you're saying that when I upgrade both my cpu and gpu, I'm not going to see much improvement, because of my resolution? I'm not sure I understand the logic there.

You're way too hung up on "bottleneck" 

 

There will always be a "bottleneck" somewhere... 

 

You don't even know what fps you get right now... So the message your sending is quite confusing, no offense... 

 

 

Just wait for the gpu you want and see if *anything* improves for you. 

 

 

[Ron30]

Yeah, I realise there will always be a bottleneck with one item or another. My original question was whether a CPU upgrade alone will increase performance, and my current fps (example provided from the hitman 2 benchmark at ultra settings) is low 20's. No offense taken, but while I don't know what fps I was getting before my monitor upgrade, I do know what it is now, based on that single and repeatable benchmark from hitman 2. If there's another preferred benchmark to run, that would make the question clearer, let me know.

The purpose behind the initial question is whether I should get the CPU when it's released, forcing me to rebuild my water loop, and then rebuild it again in a couple months when I can hopefully get the gpu, or whether I should just wait and get it all at once in a few months. Jaslion's response suggests I should just wait.

[steelo]

If I'm not mistaken, higher resolutions utilize the GPU more than the CPU. However, when you do upgrade to something like a 3080 your CPU will most likely serve as a bottleneck.

[Ron30]

16 hours ago, steelo said:

If I'm not mistaken, higher resolutions utilize the GPU more than the CPU. However, when you do upgrade to something like a 3080 your CPU will most likely serve as a bottleneck.

Yeah that's right. Generally 1440p and over is not CPU bound, but my test didn't show me as CPU or GPU bound (I suspect the XBOX Game Bar isn't accurate, and that I actually am GPU bound), so I thought I'd check if a CPU upgrade would help, but I've got my answer now.

[superfantastic]

I don't want to hijack this thread but I have a i7 9800x, is that one better than the one you currently have? Or do I need to upgrade too

[Ron30]

The 9800x is better than the 6700k. The higher the number, the newer, and hence, better the cpu (generally speaking). Whether you need an upgrade depends on the rest of your parts, what you're using it for, and if it's not performing as well as you'd like.

[Ron30]

Update: So I looked at benchmarks posted online of Hitman 2 at 3440x1440 with a GTX 1080 and noticed that many were done with i7-6700 CPU's and all had much higher fps than me, at ultra settings; about 50-ish fps. Not sure when it happened, but it looks like most of my settings had turned themselves down from ultra to high or medium, except Super Sampling which had set itself to 2.00. I set everything back to the highest setting, with the exception of the following.
- Motion Blur: Off

- Dynamic Sharpening: Moderate

- Super Sampling: 1.00

 

When I re-ran the benchmark, I was getting an average of 50fps with a few little stutters here and there at the start of the benchmark - clearly Super Sampling was the detrimental setting. I also now had more consistent measurements; CPU ran at or near 100% the entire time, but GPU ran at about 66%. This leads me to think that a CPU upgrade will have a greater benefit than originally anticipated, but due to resolution, I expect this benefit to still be fairly small overall. Online benchmarks of this game with ultra settings and a GTX 1080, using an i7-8700k have an average fps of 57.
From the bottleneck calculator I'm using, it looks like an 8700k is about the sweet spot for CPU pairing with a 1080, so upgrading to a 5900X or 5950X will only bring me up to that 57-ish average FPS. At this point, the performance seems fine (or I could overclock slightly) until I'm able to upgrade both CPU and GPU, but neither individually will make much of a difference, if any at all.