[SOLVED] Can a slow CPU become more of a problem after a graphics card upgrade?

[Blackhawk3339]

My CPU is getting old (i5 4670k), and has been my bottleneck for years. I'm aware of that. I recently replaced my GTX 970 with an RTX 2060, and I'm getting rendering issues in games that never had them before.

It has been suggested to me that the CPU is the issue, and that upgrading the video card is overtaxing the CPU in a manner that the old card did not, causing performance issues.

Is this reasonable?

 

[stefanos50]

What are the games you have rendering issues? Game like pubg , gta v etc that you have to load the map? You have a k cpu is it overclocked? Do you have an ssd in the system?

 

[Ralston18]

Any system will be only as fast as or perform only at the rate of the slowest component.

Use Task Manager and Resource Monitor to observe system performance.

Identify the true bottleneck if you can.

Double check the overall system configuration and specs with respect to the newly installed RTX 2060.

Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS.

 

[boju]

CPUs prepare frames for the GPU to render so if a card can render more frames means the CPU needs to work harder to draw them up.

Quads CPUs have had their day and aren't really keeping up in CPU intensive games + dealing with frames.

May be able to help the quad by capping fps to a comfortable level, increase details to decrease fps output and possibly overclock cpu.

 

[Blackhawk3339]

What are the games you have rendering issues? Game like pubg , gta v etc that you have to load the map? You have a k cpu is it overclocked? Do you have an ssd in the system?

GTA V was a good guess. It is not overclocked. I try no to abuse elderly CPUs that I can't afford to replace. The game is running off of an SSD, as is the OS (and separate SSDs at that.)

Any system will be only as fast as or perform only at the rate of the slowest component.

Use Task Manager and Resource Monitor to observe system performance.

Identify the true bottleneck if you can.

There is no question that it's the CPU bottlenecking. It was bottlenecking the GTX 970 that I had in there previously, too, but I wasn't having issues in games like I am now, even on identical settings. Upgrade the card and bam, issues. Performance is increased, but geometry/texture pop in is terrible to the point of unplayable.

It's an ASUS Z87-Plus, 8gb RAM, Win 10. I don't have the rest of the specs with me.

 

[boju]

That sounds like a gpu driver problem. Did you reinstall Geforce drivers?

If not try that and run custom clean install in the Geforce driver.

If that doesn't work use Display Driver Uninstaller in safemode to uninstall Nvidia drivers and try again installing driver in normal Windows.

 

[oAnarchy]

An easy way to see if your cpu is bottlenecking your gpu would be to use CAM software and watch the load percentages in game. I have an i5-8400 and it bottlenecks my rtx 2080 super in certain situations but never causes any kind of performance issues. If your cpu is over 90% usage and the gpu is cruising at like 30-70% then the cpu is the bottleneck.