Question CPU possible bottleneck for 4070 Ti ?

[Kkkk1]

So i have bought a 4070Ti. I am currently playing Cyberpunk 2070 fully maxed with RT on at 1440P. It runs silky smooth for about 3-4 seconds and then does a quick stutter and it make a weird noise when it stutters, it then runs silky smooth for another 3-4 sec before a quick stutter and the same pattern repeats itself. My CPU is a Core i7 9700K OC @ 5 Ghz. As most of you know this is an 8 core CPU. Do you know if this could be bottle necking it? Weirdly though over the weekend it ran maxxed for two days running without any problems, then on Sunday it started the stuttering again. Does anyone have this issue.
Oh it does this on other games as well like Witcher 3 and then will run fine again another day.

 

[Nighthawk117]

I've tested Cyberpunk in various CPU configurations with a 3080. 8 cores without HT will be pushed to it's limit in the most demanding areas. If it's making a weird noise and stuttering, that would suggest to me the CPU has been maxed out.

What refresh rate are you running at? Do you have MSI Afterburner? That would give you an indication of the CPU usage at the time it runs into issues.

 

[Kkkk1]

I've tested Cyberpunk in various CPU configurations with a 3080. 8 cores without HT will be pushed to it's limit in the most demanding areas. If it's making a weird noise and stuttering, that would suggest to me the CPU has been maxed out.

What refresh rate are you running at? Do you have MSI Afterburner? That would give you an indication of the CPU usage at the time it runs into issues.

I'm running at 60hz but the video card is getting around 80 -90fps. But like i said it ran perfectly for two days over the weekend in the same part of the game. I'll have a look at Afterburner. Thanks for your suggestion.

 

[Nighthawk117]

I'm running at 60hz but the video card is getting around 80 -90fps. But like i said it ran perfectly for two days over the weekend in the same part of the game. I'll have a look at Afterburner. Thanks for your suggestion.

It's odd that it was ok before, is there anything different about the machine, anything new running? You say you are running at 60hz but the GPU is getting up to 90 FPS. That suggests to me your playing with an unlocked frame rate? It doesn't sound like your frame rate is locked to 60hz?

If you were running the game at above 60 FPS then the 9700K will likely be pegged at 100% constantly, it is a lot of the time at 60hz. In such a case stuttering or weird sound glitches as if the audio is freezing wouldn't surprise me.

 

[Kkkk1]

It's odd that it was ok before, is there anything different about the machine, anything new running? You say you are running at 60hz but the GPU is getting up to 90 FPS. That suggests to me your playing with an unlocked frame rate? It doesn't sound like your frame rate is locked to 60hz?

If you were running the game at above 60 FPS then the 9700K will likely be pegged at 100% constantly, it is a lot of the time at 60hz. In such a case stuttering or weird sound glitches as if the audio is freezing wouldn't surprise me.

No nothing has changed in my PC other than the video card. All drivers are up to date. I might try locking at 60hz and see if that helps..... Do you know where i would lock it at 60?

 

[Nighthawk117]

No nothing has changed in my PC other than the video card. All drivers are up to date. I might try locking at 60hz and see if that helps..... Do you know where i would lock it at 60?

When you ran it over the weekend and it was fine, were you using a different GPU?

In terms of locking it to 60hz I would just enable v-sync. If I remember correctly there was two tabs in the menu one for video which I think had v-sync and a frame limiter on it and then a graphics tab that has all the different settings in it. Don't quote me though, I havn't run the game for a while.

 

[boju]

There's an fps limiter included with NvidiaCP under manage 3d settings. Can either do it globally or specific to title.

Check cpu usage whilst trying different fps levels. Higher fps usually means increased cpu usage as it needs to draw more frames for graphics card to render. A maxed out cpu can cause stuttering, depending on title.

Geforce experience likes to up settings quite a bit so if you do use it check ray tracing settings, view distance and resolution enhances like dsr and antialiasing. Might want to search what graphic settings in games are typically cpu bound and look for those particular settings to play with.

Check task manager startup items as well for any recent installed program running in the background and investigate if there are any that may potentially add towards increased cpu usage. Malware scan etc afterwards. Just trying to cover the usuals since we don't really know the exact events during this period when performance was good till now.

 

[Kkkk1]

When you ran it over the weekend and it was fine, were you using a different GPU?

In terms of locking it to 60hz I would just enable v-sync. If I remember correctly there was two tabs in the menu one for video which I think had v-sync and a frame limiter on it and then a graphics tab that has all the different settings in it. Don't quote me though, I havn't run the game for a while.

No it is exactly the same GPU, this is why i'm confused. I made no changes to the settings and it was fine then two days later i got the stuttering again. Someone has suggesated to alter my CPU overclock settings? Really difficult to pin point the problem.

 

[Kkkk1]

There's an fps limiter included with NvidiaCP under manage 3d settings. Can either do it globally or specific to title.

Check cpu usage whilst trying different fps levels. Higher fps usually means increased cpu usage as it needs to draw more frames for graphics card to render. A maxed out cpu can cause stuttering, depending on title.

Geforce experience likes to up settings quite a bit so if you do use it check ray tracing settings, view distance and resolution enhances like dsr and antialiasing. Might want to search what graphic settings in games are typically cpu bound and look for those particular settings to play with.

Check task manager startup items as well for any recent installed program running in the background and investigate if there are any that may potentially add towards increased cpu usage. Malware scan etc afterwards. Just trying to cover the usuals since we don't really know the exact events during this period when performance was good till now.

There's some good suggestions there thank you for those i'll try tonight

 

[Nighthawk117]

No it is exactly the same GPU, this is why i'm confused. I made no changes to the settings and it was fine then two days later i got the stuttering again. Someone has suggesated to alter my CPU overclock settings? Really difficult to pin point the problem.

Fair enough, I find that odd. I have played the game with a similar CPU configuration and 60 FPS is difficult to constantly maintain when you have the ray tracing jacked up. However I didn't encounter severe stuttering but I was capped at only 60hz. I think you need to test it again just to confirm it's not the CPU being overwhelmed. That still seems more likely than anything else.

 

[Kkkk1]

Fair enough, I find that odd. I have played the game with a similar CPU configuration and 60 FPS is difficult to constantly maintain when you have the ray tracing jacked up. However I didn't encounter severe stuttering but I was capped at only 60hz. I think you need to test it again just to confirm it's not the CPU being overwhelmed. That still seems more likely than anything else.

Will do. It's not severe stuttering just a very brief pause but just enough to ruin the flow of gameplay. I'll test again tonight. Thanks for your help

 

[Nighthawk117]

Will do. It's not severe stuttering just a very brief pause but just enough to ruin the flow of gameplay. I'll test again tonight. Thanks for your help

Yeah I know what you mean. If it was doing that at a locked 60hz I would be surprised, less so if the frame rate is unlocked.

 

[boju]

Also maxing out Cyberpunk is gonna use quite a lot of vram. That data from vram is going to flow in and around system ram and storage quite a bit. How much ram have you got? For maxed out settings it would be advisable to have at least 16GB ram and an ssd to backup that 16GB of ram if in case it might not be enough where pagefile can be used. An ssd would be a much better help at buffering than a mechanic drive but 32GB of ram would be preferable.

 

[Kkkk1]

Also maxing out Cyberpunk is gonna use quite a lot of vram. That data from vram is going to flow in and around system ram and storage quite a bit. How much ram have you got? For maxed out settings it would be advisable to have at least 16GB ram and an ssd to backup that 16GB of ram if in case it might not be enough where pagefile can be used. An ssd would be a much better help at buffering than a mechanic drive but 32GB of ram would be preferable.

Yep so basically i have 32Gb DDR4, ALL of my HD's are SSD's with plenty of space and my GPU has 12Gb VRAM and is using roughly 8Gb when running Cyberpunk

 

[boju]

Specs are good, what about power supply?

What's does the weird noise sound like and where does it originate from?

 

[Kkkk1]

Specs are good, what about power supply?

What's does the weird noise sound like and where does it originate from?

PSU is Corsair HX1000w. It sounds a bit like just a very quick buzz noise from my speakers, then it carries on again smoothly then does it again. Weird how i had two days of it playing perfectly over the weekend, no settings changed, same part of the game then Sunday back to the stutter. Very frustrating

 

[Avro Arrow]

It could be that the maxxed-out RT is causing this because the i7-9700K is a great gaming CPU and you have it OC'ed to 5GHz. Having said that, it's really hard to guess what causes something that's only intermittent because, as you said, it was working fine at some point. I checked some CPU charts and found something interesting:

The i7-9700K averages 65.4FPS and that's at stock settings. Your overclocked 9700K should find this to be easy but using RT can significantly increase the CPU load. I don't think that it's your VRAM because you have 12GB and you're only at 1440p. The RTX 4070 Ti has been tested on this game several times by several different reviewers at the exact settings you're using without a VRAM issue showing its ugly head.

Honestly, it sounds like a driver glitch more than anything else but I would try running the game for an entire day with RT off and see if that solves the problem. If it doesn't, I would try updating/re-installing the drivers.

 

[Nighthawk117]

It sounds a bit like just a very quick buzz noise from my speakers, then it carries on again smoothly then does it again.

I've encountered that running Battlefield V 64 player multiplayer on a 4 core/4 thread CPU. It kind of stutters for a fraction of a second and the sound basicly gets frozen and makes a kind of buzz. It basicly didn't have enough threads. It doesn't mean it's your issue, but an overwhelmed CPU could be the cause. Cyberpunk with RT on max is an extremely demanding game and you have a very powerful GPU.

 

[Kkkk1]

I really think that the maxxed-out RT is causing this because the i7-9700K is a great gaming CPU and you have it OC'ed to 5GHz. Having said that, it's really hard to guess what causes something that's only intermittent because, as you said, it was working fine at some point. I checked some CPU charts and found something interesting:

The i7-9700K averages 65.4FPS and that's at stock settings. Your overclocked 9700K should find this to be easy but using RT can significantly increase the CPU load. I don't think that it's your VRAM because you have 12GB and you're only at 1440p. The RTX 4070 Ti has been tested on this game several times by several different reviewers at the exact settings you're using without a VRAM issue showing its ugly head.

Honestly, it sounds like a driver glitch more than anything else but I would try running the game for an entire day with RT off and see if that solves the problem. If it doesn't, I would try updating/re-installing the drivers.

Yeah thanks for the update, i'll try RT off as well, if that seems to fix it i can slowly ramp it up. Good suggestion.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Yeah thanks for the update, i'll try RT off as well, if that seems to fix it i can slowly ramp it up. Good suggestion.

I hope that it works. A lot of great suggestions had already been made and that was all I could think of that hadn't already been put forth. 😊

 

[Kkkk1]

Just watched this vid with an i 9700K and 4070ti in Cyberpunk maxed at 1440p with RT on. 76 fps cpu was at 70% usage and gpu at 56% usage. No stutter. This is the same part of the game i was on as well.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9ipOoJWqao
. WTF is wrong with my system then......

 

[boju]

Psu is fine. Which Windows are you running? Any updates to the OS since?

When stutters start to happen alt tab and look in tm > processes, sort cpu and memory usage highest to lowest. See what pops up.

It's not always reliable comparing to yt vids because don't really know which OS is used, how it's configured (ie pro version of Windows can disable automatic driver installation), driver versions etc and being 5 months old there would have been updates applied for both game and Windows.

If can't sort it out, after checking tm, looking at startup items and trying suggestions by others then quickest way to determine something with the OS is test a clean install. Disconnect all drives before installing Windows - to eliminate chances of new installation meddling with current drives.

 

[Kkkk1]

So i think I've found the problem. I've reset my BIOS but not turned the 5Ghz overclock on yet. I then re-installed the 4070Ti driver. However i chose to click on customise when installing the driver and selected a "Clean Install" it took well over 10 mins to install. I re-booted and everything was fine. Game runs no stutter. I've read there could be an issue with my old GTX drivers and the new RTX if the old GTX isn't uninstalled properly. I did uninstall it but only through device manager. The clean install definitely changed something hence why it took so long. I can't thank you guys enough for all of your help. So many good suggestions but i've chosen Avro Arrow as the best answer after suggesting driver issues. Thanks again.

 

[boju]

Oh ok, sweet as. Yeah new card from a different generation is best do a clean install like you did rather than just uninstall from device manager as that'll only remove driver leaving additional software and profiles behind.

 

[Nighthawk117]

Sounds like a good result, thanks for letting us know what the issue was.