Am I bottlenecking my cpu? Help me upgrade IF I should!

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camosoldier

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Apr 26, 2015
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Hello all, thank you for taking the time to read this and hopefully respond to help me out. I just upgrading my pc with a GTx 1080 evga superclocked card along with a 27inch 1440p Gsync IPS monitor. I haven't had a chance to install the card yet and see if the rest of my pc will be bottlenecked. (This pc is basically only used for gaming and web browsing) I'm using an older i5-3570k with a z77 board 8gb of ddr3 with a 650w psu. With the new upgrade to gpu+monitor should I finish the rest of the build off by upgrading to skylake i7-6700k? Will my gpu bottleneck the i5. And would upgrading the cpu help the performance greatly in games. (Witcher 3, rise of tomb raider, new MMOS, etc- basically future proof gaming) or should I potentially wait for a newer cpu to come out? Thanks you very much!
 
Solution
Hlsgsz
In 1440p you are definitely GPU bound. Run MSI afterburner in the background while doing said gaming/benchmarks then observe GPU and CPU usage.
If the GPU is not sitting above 95% all the time you are either indeed CPU limited(i don;t think so, but..) or theres some thermat throtteling involved.
The difference would be that, if you were CPU bound, in some scenes the GPU would not be fully utilized, but the CPU usaga would max out at the same time. If, on teh contrary, you see usage spiking down in both CPU and GPU, there is some thermal throtteling going on and you should check your temps(also in Afterburner) and report back.

EDIT: If G-Sync seems to not be helpin, are you sure it is working properly? You need to enable it first in...
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My i5 is not overclocked, no. I just installed the GPU and tested it on a few games. Games like the witcher 3 I was barely holding 60fps. Sometimes it would go above, and often times below. The 1440p gsync monitor doesn't seem to help a ton, as I do notice some screentearing and jittering. Batman arkham knight was a little better, roughly 70fps or so (both games on ultra). It seems to me like the cpu might actually be holding me back a bit.
 
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I also noticed after doing the benchmarking tool in rise of the tombraider, theres a huge gap between my min and max FPS. I can get anywhere from 13fps to 130! What would be the cause of this drastic jump?
 
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In 1440p you are definitely GPU bound. Run MSI afterburner in the background while doing said gaming/benchmarks then observe GPU and CPU usage.
If the GPU is not sitting above 95% all the time you are either indeed CPU limited(i don;t think so, but..) or theres some thermat throtteling involved.
The difference would be that, if you were CPU bound, in some scenes the GPU would not be fully utilized, but the CPU usaga would max out at the same time. If, on teh contrary, you see usage spiking down in both CPU and GPU, there is some thermal throtteling going on and you should check your temps(also in Afterburner) and report back.

EDIT: If G-Sync seems to not be helpin, are you sure it is working properly? You need to enable it first in your monitor's OSD, then in Nvidia COntrol Panel.
 
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Solution
Thank you Hlsgsz. That was very helpful. I did manage to take a look at my cpu usage during games. In witcher 3 on ultra I was using 90-99% of my cpu usage. When I turned it down to medium I was looking better, high 70s-80s and it was running smoother. Gta same thing, highest settings I was high 90s%. I'm sure if I overclock ill get better results, but that Mike3k24 said I may just end up upgrading anyway to futureproof. Games coming out next year I cant imagine how they'll run if im struggling now! Maybe the upgrade in Ram will help little things as well. Would the i7-6700k be the best choice for the 1080 you think in terms of gaming?
 
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Also, I did enable Gsync in the nvidia control panel as well as my OSD. I really don't notice it though, maybe I'm blind. Or maybe im just getting such a drastic dip from min fps to max
 
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Well, if there are no spikes, you are indeed CPU limited(those percentages you gave were of CPU usage, right?).
Get a 6700k. You will have no issue runnign any game whatsoever. I'm really surprised that the i5-3570k can't cope. I'm on 3770k and am having no issues. Then again, i don't have such a powerful GPU.
 
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Yeah those are CPU percentages. Again, this is at stock 3.4ghz right out of the box i haven't overclocked it at all. Technically it can hang, I mean if I lower my settings in witcher it can run fine. But with purchasing such a expensive GPU I dont wanna be bottlenecked as much as I am :) I will purchase a 6700k and post if it improves and by how much! Thanks again guys
 
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