Bottlenecking - My CPU Or GPU?

[iquick]

I currently have a 3770k I7 that is OC'd to 4.2ghz

My GPU is a 2 GB GTX 670

I'm wanting to know which would be limiting which. I can upgrade one or the other, my pc is about 2 years old. It used to be top of the line, but I seem to lose frames now when streaming pc games especially intensive games. I have fine frames normally when playing by itself.

I want to know which is limiting the other, but also I had a side question. I have always heard about capture cards and how they reduce the cpu load because they encode the information so your CPU doesn't have to do it. I also have been reading that it doesn't reduce it at all so it seems like a waste of money.. Also heard they aren't that awesome of streaming quality. I want to reduce frame droppage in game, but be able to stream. If I need a beefier CPU, or GPU, or a capture card then I can do that. I research the portable capture cards but it seems they weren't that great of quality.

Thank for the help, I wish there was just a test that said "Your CPU is bottlenecking your GPU" lol

 

[Gam3r01]

The 3770 is still a very capable processor, it will not hold you back.
You should look into a new graphics card if you feel your performance is lacking. Something like the 970 or better.

The best way to test is to ask someone who knows 😛

 

[herrwizo]

There IS a test. YOu monitor the usage of your CPU and GPU. The one that is always at 100% is your bottleneck.

In this case I cannot see how would anything on earth except rendering and simulation be able to max out your very powerful CPU.

If anything, your GPU or disk system is the limiting factor here. Maybe even lack of RAM, since you did not say how much do you have.

Also, using NVIDIA's Shadow Play technology can help a lot with your issue. Do you have latest drivers and are you using ShadowPlay?

 

[Brian1234132]

One of the easiest way to see which is bottlenecking your computer is keeping track of its load.

For instance, you can see the load on each of your cpu cores. In single to dual cpu applications you'll see those max out at 100% usage (with your GPU at less than 100% if its the bottleneck).

If anything, CPU's one of the biggest bottlenecks when streaming. Since it has to do all the encoding....try switching to a lower quality encode to make it easier on the CPU so you don't get low FPS.

 

[iquick]

I have an SSD but it is sort of getting limited on space. I have 8GB of ram, ram is never the issue. My CPU does run high sometimes (maybe like 1-2 cores run at 80-100%) and I haven't checked the GPU capacity when I'm running my programs. I'm running dual monitors, not sure if that matters.

 

[iquick]

There IS a test. YOu monitor the usage of your CPU and GPU. The one that is always at 100% is your bottleneck.

In this case I cannot see how would anything on earth except rendering and simulation be able to max out your very powerful CPU.

If anything, your GPU or disk system is the limiting factor here. Maybe even lack of RAM, since you did not say how much do you have.

Also, using NVIDIA's Shadow Play technology can help a lot with your issue. Do you have latest drivers and are you using ShadowPlay?

I had heard that my CPU could be partnered with my GPU to make things run better.. but I never knew how to do it. I updated the drivers when I put my GPU in, but that was like 2 years ago. I should probably update.

Edit: I looked it up and it looks like a recording software. That doesn't really help with streaming and usage.

 

[Brian1234132]

There IS a test. YOu monitor the usage of your CPU and GPU. The one that is always at 100% is your bottleneck.

In this case I cannot see how would anything on earth except rendering and simulation be able to max out your very powerful CPU.

If anything, your GPU or disk system is the limiting factor here. Maybe even lack of RAM, since you did not say how much do you have.

Also, using NVIDIA's Shadow Play technology can help a lot with your issue. Do you have latest drivers and are you using ShadowPlay?

I had heard that my CPU could be partnered with my GPU to make things run better.. but I never knew how to do it. I updated the drivers when I put my GPU in, but that was like 2 years ago. I should probably update.

Edit: I looked it up and it looks like a recording software. That doesn't really help with streaming and usage.

Just switch to a lower quality encoder. An I7-3770K may be strong but its not impossible to bottleneck when streaming higher end games. Sounds like your applications are only using 1-2 of your 4/8 cores/threads.

 

[herrwizo]

Maybe you could change the thread affinity for your game to use 3rd, 4th and subsequent cores, while leaving the 1st and 2nd only for the recording app?

 

[iquick]

There IS a test. YOu monitor the usage of your CPU and GPU. The one that is always at 100% is your bottleneck.

In this case I cannot see how would anything on earth except rendering and simulation be able to max out your very powerful CPU.

If anything, your GPU or disk system is the limiting factor here. Maybe even lack of RAM, since you did not say how much do you have.

Also, using NVIDIA's Shadow Play technology can help a lot with your issue. Do you have latest drivers and are you using ShadowPlay?

I had heard that my CPU could be partnered with my GPU to make things run better.. but I never knew how to do it. I updated the drivers when I put my GPU in, but that was like 2 years ago. I should probably update.

Edit: I looked it up and it looks like a recording software. That doesn't really help with streaming and usage.

Just switch to a lower quality encoder. An I7-3770K may be strong but its not impossible to bottleneck when streaming higher end games. Sounds like your applications are only using 1-2 of your 4/8 cores/threads.

It seems to even drop some frames when I start streaming just a normal game that isn't really intensive. I think you may be on to something with it using 1-2 cores a lot more than the others, but I'm not really sure how to adjust that.

 

[iquick]

Maybe you could change the thread affinity for your game to use 3rd, 4th and subsequent cores, while leaving the 1st and 2nd only for the recording app?

I have no idea how to change to that.

 

[herrwizo]

Use task manager (ctrl+shift+esc). Find the exact process you want to change, right click --> set affinity (if I recall correctly).

Note that some apps prefer 1st and 2nd core exclusively and don't like being assigned to other cores. If you feel like the situation got worse, just restart - this affinity thing does not get stored or remembered in any way. You need to set it each time you start an app.

 

[jollypirate]

I would say it is most likley the gpu since the i7 is still very capable

 

[iquick]

Well I went through a little stress on my cpu/gpu today. I went in the offline mode of the game I play and did a 10000kb recording on it. I can't stream the game yet due to it being early in the development, but I definitely felt it when I was recording from rather than just playing. I don't actually lose fps (cause I stay capped at 66 fps) but I feel a lot choppier/laggier. Now mind you, this is just offline which is a lot less intensive because I'm by myself and there's nothing going on, and my gpu still hit 72%, and my cpu jumped to 90 for a millisecond, but hovered 40-60% basically all of the time. All 4 cores worked around the same amount.

Seems disappointing. Sounds like I may need to upgrade my GPU. I was recording with OBS, and had skype, ts, two monitoring programs, one tab browser, and spotify up. Sounds like a lot but most of that is needed for a good quality stream.

 

[jollypirate]

Well I went through a little stress on my cpu/gpu today. I went in the offline mode of the game I play and did a 10000kb recording on it. I can't stream the game yet due to it being early in the development, but I definitely felt it when I was recording from rather than just playing. I don't actually lose fps (cause I stay capped at 66 fps) but I feel a lot choppier/laggier. Now mind you, this is just offline which is a lot less intensive because I'm by myself and there's nothing going on, and my gpu still hit 72%, and my cpu jumped to 90 for a millisecond, but hovered 40-60% basically all of the time. All 4 cores worked around the same amount.

Seems disappointing. Sounds like I may need to upgrade my GPU. I was recording with OBS, and had skype, ts, two monitoring programs, one tab browser, and spotify up. Sounds like a lot but most of that is needed for a good quality stream.

actually with all that multitasking it might be ram thats a bottleneck, what speed and amount do you have?

 

[iquick]

I have 8GB but can't remember the speed of it.