I recently upgraded my gpu and am wondering if my cpu is holding my gpu back?

[superfantastic]

So I have an i7 9800x, not overclocked or altered in any way. I used to have a gtx 1070 which I have replaced with an rtx 3070. I tweaked it a little, undervolting it and giving it a tiny memory boost. I ran a few benchmarks to test the tweaks and I was getting better fps and less heat every time (lowering the temperature was my main reason for undervolting).

 

I just saw a video about someone using a 4790k with a 3080 and he noticed a massive gain in fps when he upgraded the cpu to a 12700k. My cpu is ofcourse newer than his old one, but when I check the website cpubenchmark.net, it's single core score is only slightly better than that of the 4790k. And I have been led to believe that single core performance is very important for gaming.

 

So what do you think? Is my cpu holding my gpu back? Would I get a massive performance gain if I upgrade the cpu?

[Coachdude]

A 9800X is going to hold a 3070 back somewhat, how much depends entirely on the games you're trying to play, what resolution you're running them at, and at what framerates you're looking to achieve. It's a Skylake-X based cpu and uses the Mesh interconnect as opposed to the lower-latency ring bus that other Skylake-derivatives are based on. That being said it's still a reasonably capable 8 core processor, so I don't imagine the performance would be that bad, but you will see gains moving to something Alderlake or even Zen 3 based, but at this point I wouldn't consider Zen 3 when Alderlake is just downright faster. Whether or not the upgrade is warranted is entirely up to what performance levels you're satisfied with, and considering you're on a 9800X with an X299 platform, I would assume you have other considerations like PCIE expansion and the like rather than just raw performance, and if not you chose the wrong platform to be entirely honest. 

 

Still, I would try overclocking it a bit to extract a bit more performance from it before considering swapping everything out. If the performance is still satisfactory to you, then there's really no need to replace it. So test it with the games you play, and go from there. 

[superfantastic]

3 minutes ago, Coachdude said:

A 9800X is going to hold a 3070 back somewhat, how much depends entirely on the games you're trying to play, what resolution you're running them at, and at what framerates you're looking to achieve. It's a Skylake-X based cpu and uses the Mesh interconnect as opposed to the lower-latency ring bus that other Skylake-derivatives are based on. That being said it's still a reasonably capable 8 core processor, so I don't imagine the performance would be that bad, but you will see gains moving to something Alderlake or even Zen 3 based, but at this point I wouldn't consider Zen 3 when Alderlake is just downright faster. Whether or not the upgrade is warranted is entirely up to what performance levels you're satisfied with, and considering you're on a 9800X with an X299 platform, I would assume you have other considerations like PCIE expansion and the like rather than just raw performance, and if not you chose the wrong platform to be entirely honest. 

 

Still, I would try overclocking it a bit to extract a bit more performance from it before considering swapping everything out. If the performance is still satisfactory to you, then there's really no need to replace it. So test it with the games you play, and go from there. 

Yes I did choose the wrong platform. What happened was, I got a pc back in 2017 from a parts picker website when I didnt really know anything about pc's yet. Wasn't very smart. Literally all I knew was that the gtx 10xx series were the newest video cards and that i5 was ''midrange'' cpu. I really just picked whatever back then... Pc was still a huge upgrade from my old one which had a gtx 460 and some old processor so I was happy. But when I later wanted to upgrade my pc and wanted to learn more about them I realised I didnt have much room for upgrades with this motherboard and that the Xtreme cpu's aren't even true gaming cpu's. I didnt have much money and still blindly wanted an upgrade so I went from an i5 7640x to the i7 9800x. I noticed basically no difference using the same gpu, maybe 2 or 3 fps.

 

Now I upgraded the gpu and it's definitely a big boost. with the 1070 I struggled to run cyberpunk on medium and get even 40fps. But with the 3070 I get anywhere from 80 to 160 fps depending on what is happening with everything on ultra at 1080p (no RT).

 

I am happy with the performance currently, but the feeling that my cpu is holding my gpu back a lot is annoying. I can't overclock it since it already runs quite hot, regularly at 80c.

[superfantastic]

14 minutes ago, Coachdude said:

A 9800X is going to hold a 3070 back somewhat, how much depends entirely on the games you're trying to play, what resolution you're running them at, and at what framerates you're looking to achieve. It's a Skylake-X based cpu and uses the Mesh interconnect as opposed to the lower-latency ring bus that other Skylake-derivatives are based on. That being said it's still a reasonably capable 8 core processor, so I don't imagine the performance would be that bad, but you will see gains moving to something Alderlake or even Zen 3 based, but at this point I wouldn't consider Zen 3 when Alderlake is just downright faster. Whether or not the upgrade is warranted is entirely up to what performance levels you're satisfied with, and considering you're on a 9800X with an X299 platform, I would assume you have other considerations like PCIE expansion and the like rather than just raw performance, and if not you chose the wrong platform to be entirely honest. 

 

Still, I would try overclocking it a bit to extract a bit more performance from it before considering swapping everything out. If the performance is still satisfactory to you, then there's really no need to replace it. So test it with the games you play, and go from there. 

But do you think my cpu is at the same level as a 4790k for gaming? Or is it actually better?

[PDifolco]

I don't think you'll have any real issue, the 9800X has 8 cores, and tho not as fast as more modern chips it should'nt bottleneck you unless at high framerate 1080p, if you play 1440p it won't

Problem is with the older 4 cores. 

[Coachdude]

1 hour ago, superfantastic said:

But do you think my cpu is at the same level as a 4790k for gaming? Or is it actually better?

It'll be a lot better than a 4790K in a lot of modern games. Like I said you have a decently capable 8 core processor there still, and although you'll be a bit down on performance vs newer processors it'll still provide good performance in pretty much everything. Good is relative though, and like I said in my original reply it'll entirely depend on how many frames, what resolution, and exactly which games we're talking about. As @PDifolco mentioned, at 1440P you'll probably be fine, but you may see some limitations trying to achieve high refresh rates in some games some of the time. If I were you, I'd honestly just hold onto it and enjoy what you've got. You have a nice system all things considered, and it'll run just about anything you'd want realistically. I'm still rocking a 3900X, and its been completely outclassed by Zen 3 and Alderlake in terms of IPC and single core performance, yet for the games I tend to play and the things I tend to do with the system, it's still more than fine for me. So I don't worry about what may or may not be faster, as it's still fast enough for everything I personally want to do with my system. And really that's all that matters. =)

[superfantastic]

2 minutes ago, Coachdude said:

It'll be a lot better than a 4790K in a lot of modern games. Like I said you have a decently capable 8 core processor there still, and although you'll be a bit down on performance vs newer processors it'll still provide good performance in pretty much everything. Good is relative though, and like I said in my original reply it'll entirely depend on how many frames, what resolution, and exactly which games we're talking about. As @PDifolco mentioned, at 1440P you'll probably be fine, but you may see some limitations trying to achieve high refresh rates in some games some of the time. If I were you, I'd honestly just hold onto it and enjoy what you've got. You have a nice system all things considered, and it'll run just about anything you'd want realistically. I'm still rocking a 3900X, and it's been completely outclassed by Zen 3 and Alderlake in terms of IPC and single core performance, yet for the games I tend to play and the things I tend to do with the system, it's still more than fine for me. So I don't worry about what may or may not be faster, as it's still fast enough for everything I personally want to do with my system. And really that's all that matters. =)

Yeah. So the reason higher resolutions hold a good gpu back less or not at all is because you are using more of the gpu's power in that case, right? framerates will go down and that means less work for the cpu?

 

Does it also work that way with the other graphical settings? If I play on ultra I get less fps than when I play on medium ofcourse. Does that also mean less work for the cpu?

[Coachdude]

@superfantastic

Higher resolutions tend to shift the load onto the gpu more yes, because it's literally having to render more pixels than vs. a lower resolution. Regarding graphics settings, turning them to Ultra will usually hit the gpu harder yes, but some can also burden the cpu more because they increase the number of draw calls and simulations the cpu has to work on, think crowd density in the Witcher 3 or Cyberpunk for example. It isn't always so cut and dry. But honestly I think you're overthinking things a bit. Your hardware is more than capable of pretty much maxing out a great majority of games that currently exist. I always set things a tick or two lower than Ultra just because the performance trade off is hardly worth it most of the time, and because my gpu isn't really all that powerful to begin with. But if I'm playing something like Battlefield 5 for instance, I don't really care that the grass looks more pretty on Ultra vs low, because that isn't going to help me acquire targets any easier. So I put that particular setting to low because it helps with visibility. It all depends on what you want out of the game. Is it a single player story focused game where you can afford to turn graphics up in exchange for framerate? Then by all means do so. Or is it a fast paced multiplayer shooter where being able to easily spot enemies at a distance will often times win you the engagement, then lower the settings necessary to achieve that. At the end of the day its all up to you, there's no right or wrong answer here. It's what makes the flexibility of PC gaming so great imo, you have all those options at your disposal. =)

 

Keep in mind I hardly claim to have all the answers regarding graphical settings in regards to gpu vs cpu loads. Different game engines perform differently, and there's just so many out there that whatever I say will just end up being anecdotal to my personal experience regarding games I have played, and that could be totally different from the ones you play. Personally, I just lower and disable things I don't like, like motion blur or chromatic aberration, or until I hit my monitor's target refresh rate, which for me is 144hz, and call it a day. Most of the time games still look amazing at lower settings anyway, so it isn't really a big concern for me. 

[superfantastic]

15 minutes ago, Coachdude said:

@superfantastic

Higher resolutions tend to shift the load onto the gpu more yes, because it's literally having to render more pixels than vs. a lower resolution. Regarding graphics settings, turning them to Ultra will usually hit the gpu harder yes, but some can also burden the cpu more because they increase the number of draw calls and simulations the cpu has to work on, think crowd density in the Witcher 3 or Cyberpunk for example. It isn't always so cut and dry. But honestly I think you're overthinking things a bit. Your hardware is more than capable of pretty much maxing out a great majority of games that currently exist. I always set things a tick or two lower than Ultra just because the performance trade off is hardly worth it most of the time, and because my gpu isn't really all that powerful to begin with. But if I'm playing something like Battlefield 5 for instance, I don't really care that the grass looks more pretty on Ultra vs low, because that isn't going to help me acquire targets any easier. So I put that particular setting to low because it helps with visibility. It all depends on what you want out of the game. Is it a single player story focused game where you can afford to turn graphics up in exchange for framerate? Then by all means do so. Or is it a fast paced multiplayer shooter where being able to easily spot enemies at a distance will often times win you the engagement, then lower the settings necessary to achieve that. At the end of the day it's all up to you, there's no right or wrong answer here. It's what makes the flexibility of PC gaming so great imo, you have all those options at your disposal. =)

 

Keep in mind I hardly claim to have all the answers regarding graphical settings in regards to gpu vs cpu loads. Different game engines perform differently, and there's just so many out there that whatever I say will just end up being anecdotal to my personal experience regarding games I have played, and that could be totally different from the ones you play. Personally, I just lower and disable things I don't like, like motion blur or chromatic aberration, or until I hit my monitor's target refresh rate, which for me is 144hz, and call it a day. Most of the time games still look amazing at lower settings anyway, so it isn't really a big concern for me. 

Thanks for the great comments man, I like that you put effort into them! You explained it well. I guess at the end of the day I am quite satisfied with the performance I get so I should stop worrying about it for now.

[Coachdude]

2 minutes ago, superfantastic said:

Thanks for the great comments man, I like that you put effort into them! You explained it well. I guess at the end of the day I am quite satisfied with the performance I get so I should stop worrying about it for now.

Happy to help friend. Take care, and have fun. =)