(Failing?) CPU Causing GPU Bottleneck - Need Advice!

[PizzaChamp]

Hey, all!

I bought my mother a new GTX 1060 (3gb) for xmas. It was an upgrade from a 960. After switching out the GPUs, uninstalling old/installing new drivers and etc, FPS is still stuck between 10-40 fps in Destiny, etc @1080p. I know this should be much higher since my father's PC has a 1060 as well and it runs a smooth 60fps. 
Her CPU is an AMD A10 7850K APU.
450w PSU,
8gb RAM.
I was thinking there might be a bottleneck so I ran MSI Afterburner and it reports that her CPU runs at 90-100% while the GPU stays under 40% load when the game is running. 
This would be a very significant bottleneck - which leads me to believe that the issue might be a failing CPU. However, I've never come across this issue before so I may not know what the hell I'm talking about. I've never used Afterburner as a diagnostic tool so I'm not sure if I'm understanding this correctly.
 

What do you guys think?
Thanks for your help!
 

tl;dr: Afterburner reports: CPU load = 100% while GPU = ~35%, is this a failing CPU?

[Crunchy Dragon]

It's a CPU bottleneck.

 

Welcome to the forums!

[Kirah]

It's a cpu bottleneck MMO's such as Destiny relies heavily on single core performance where intel is still be best choice.

Although a Ryzen cpu would still be a decent step up from the A10 although you will most likely need a new motherboard and possibly new ram regardless.

As the fm2+ socket is pretty much dead socket

[PizzaChamp]

6 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

It's a CPU bottleneck.

 

Welcome to the forums!

Thanks for the quick reply!
Though I'm not sure how reliable my research is - I've read that a bottleneck with this setup shouldn't be more than 17%. But her performance is showing much, much worse than a 17% decrease in performance. Is it correct to assume that since Afterburner is reporting that the GPU won't go past 30-40% load that it's only performing less than half of its potential and the CPU is likely the cause since it's at 100%?
Just trying to make sure I know what I'm doing with all these numbers and etc, haha!

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, PizzaChamp said:

Thanks for the quick reply!
Though I'm not sure how reliable my research is - I've read that a bottleneck with this setup shouldn't be more than 17%. But her performance is showing much, much worse than a 17% decrease in performance. Is it correct to assume that since Afterburner is reporting that the GPU won't go past 30-40% load that it's only performing less than half of its potential and the CPU is likely the cause since it's at 100%?
Just trying to make sure I know what I'm doing with all these numbers and etc, haha!

The CPU is definitely the cause, you can tell which component is the bottleneck pretty easily, the bottleneck tends to run at 100% most of the time during tasks like this.

 

I would recommend moving off the FM2 platform to a newer Ryzen or Intel platform, if you can find a 3rd of 4th Gen Core i5 that will eliminate any bottlenecks. A Ryzen 3 1200 would also be sufficient, although that would require new memory which I would personally advise against as memory prices are really high at this point in time, especially DDR4.

 

 

[PizzaChamp]

Yeesh. If I'm going to need to replace her Mobo/CPU and potentially memory, I'm going to have to return this 1060, unfortunately. Money's tight - and it sounds like I need to prioritize upgrading to a new(er) CPU/MOBO. Perhaps I should run the same tests with her old GPU (960) and see if the same issue persists. 

[PizzaChamp]

Thanks for the info, guys. 
Does anyone have recommendations for an affordable mobo that will play well with a 3rd or 4th Gen Core i5 CPU?