Question Dead end upgrading gaming PC ?

[eesanchezr79]

I have a home office / gaming pc that has served me well for 5 years now, I already upgraded the gpu recently but I feel I`m at a dead end:

On Call of Duty Modern Warefare 2019 I get around 80-90 FPS at 1080P with mostly maxed out settings, at 1440P it drops to around 60 FPS

I feel I have a GPU or CPU problem as my response time feels slow, I get many kills not registered by the game when I´m pretty sure I shot a player or I get killed when I couldn´t see the other player shooting at me. I can see this problem specially when I watch other player´s gameplay (they move faster, way faster than me so I can see dropped frames).

I already logged the GPU and CPU perfermance and I can´t find any problem:

• GPU usage is around 95-100% most of the time
• FPS are around 80-90 most of the time (maybe high 70´s for few seconds)

-GPU temps are always below 70ºC, mostly at 65ºC

• CPU usage is usually 50-60% during gameplay with an ocassional spike to 75%
• VRAM is not maxed out, mostly uses 6.6 GB

My components are:

• Xeon E3-1245 v3 (similar to i7 4770 but not overclockable). CPU reaches mostly 3.7 Ghz at all four cores
• Mobo has a B85 intel chipset
• CPU cooler is CoolerMaster Hyper 212+ EVO
• CPU Case is very well ventilated, with several fans pushing/pulling air to and from the case, temperatures are OK.

16 GB DDR3 1600 Mhz
- SSD SATA 1 TB and 3 more HDD SATA drives for data (mixed capacities)
-The new gpu is a Radeon RX580 8GB (coming from a gtx 760 2GB this is around twice faster than the old one)
- Monitor is an old Dell 25" 1440P 60 Hz

So finally the question:

• Is my system bottlenecked by GPU or CPU is already maxed out at 60% (because of hypertreading or some other reason). I have seen this behavior in many applications during many years (like Autocad, wich runs slow despite of low CPU usage because it only uses one or two cores even in 2020)
• Should I look at a better GPU like an RTX 2070 Super or is it too much for this CPU ?
• Should I look at a faster CPU like an i7 9700K ?
• Final goal would be to replace the monitor for a gaming one with 1440P 144 Hz

I´ll really apreciate your comments.

 

[tennis2]

Your RTX2070 / i7-9700K upgrade paths are valid choices.

You said you're playing with maxed settings, but also complaining about frame rates. Have you tried lowering settings? Since your CPU usage is comparatively low, it would seem that reducing the GPU load by lowering some settings would still allow you to get higher FPS.

 

[sizzling]

You need to manage expectations, an RX580 is a nice middle range gpu but it’s not for pushing ultra settings at 100+ FPS at 1080p.

Im running a 2080 Super and at 1440p I run a mixture of ultra to high settings and average about 120fps depending on the map.

 

[eesanchezr79]

You need to manage expectations, an RX580 is a nice middle range gpu but it’s not for pushing ultra settings at 100+ FPS at 1080p.

Im running a 2080 Super and at 1440p I run a mixture of ultra to high settings and average about 120fps depending on the map.

I understand the RX 580 is mid range, it's just that last time I seriously played was back in 1998 Duke Nukem 3D and I didn't realize back then but I probably had +120 FPS and my CRT monitor was around 100 or 110 Hz ay the time....


Now when I play COD I can feel considerable lag input and some visual lag and I want to know if my problem is CPU, GPU or both. I. The process I also want to address the monitor to a 144 Hz one but I don't want to spend 1500 USD and then find out that the whole problem is that games are slower now (I can't tell, I really have 20 years since I last did some multiplayer FPS games)

 

[eesanchezr79]

Your RTX2070 / i7-9700K upgrade paths are valid choices.

You said you're playing with maxed settings, but also complaining about frame rates. Have you tried lowering settings? Since your CPU usage is comparatively low, it would seem that reducing the GPU load by lowering some settings would still allow you to get higher FPS.

I have lowered some Antialiasing, Motion Blur, Tessellation, Particles, etc. I would say I run 75% settings on Max and 25% settings on Mid. That's how I get 90FPS, but I still feel I need faster response not for Input and Display.


My question is:

Is my CPU Ok at 60% usage? I mean, with an Hyper treading CPU you don't see many process that can take full use of the whole processor, you usually see that on multitasking but most applications can't take advantage of all cores all the time, the HT cores are not real cores so....


My question would be:

Do I have to replace my CPU, my GPU or both?

Is it normal to feel I put a d display lag at 90 GPS ?

Is not like I have teenager reflexes now,but I do feel motion sickness at times and it actually improved after I lowered screen resolution to 1080p in order to achieve more FPS (whent from 60's to 90's)

 

[GarrettL]

A top end IPS 1440p 144Hz monitor is $600-$700. Good options in the $350-$450 range. Next issue on this for you is the transition from G-Sync to Freesync. Lots of info on that with a google search.

If you think your going to go this route then I would suggest a 2070S or 5700xt at a minimum. Along with a good monitor should help to smooth out your frame rates.

Then later this year update your pc. New CPU’s and gpu’s to be released usually drop pricing on existing hardware. Can get more out of the budget.

 

[eesanchezr79]

Perhaps I posted the wrong question: how do I know if the Lag I feel is because of CPU, GPU or both ? I'm getting around 90 fps and I still feel the game is not responding fast enough.

I don't have lots of stuttering on the screen so it's not like I have hardware or driver issues, but I can tell there is some lag

 

[GarrettL]

I know what you are saying. I’m 52 and just built a new pc after almost a 10 year break.

I have an Asus PG27Q 27” G-Sync monitor. When the FPS dips below 60FPS it’s still smooth. I thought this a bit of hype in reviews but it’s incredibly smooth in reality . The IPS has great color as well as viewing angles. I won’t use a TN again.

 

[eesanchezr79]

I know what you are saying. I’m 52 and just built a new pc after almost a 10 year break.

I have an Asus PG27Q 27” G-Sync monitor. When the FPS dips below 60FPS it’s still smooth. I thought this a bit of hype but it’s incredibly smooth. The IPS has great color as well as viewing angles. I won’t use a TN again.

So, would you recommend a high refresh rate monitor at first ?

How about the lag? Could it be because of the monitor? I'm using a very slow

Your RTX2070 / i7-9700K upgrade paths are valid choices.

You said you're playing with maxed settings, but also complaining about frame rates. Have you tried lowering settings? Since your CPU usage is comparatively low, it would seem that reducing the GPU load by lowering some settings would still allow you to get higher FPS.

After some thought, I decided to try MUCH lower resolutions, I figured my 1440p monitor wasn't happy displaying 1080p because of bad scaling, but 720p doesn't look so bad.

Now I have all maxed out, specially Antialiasing and I have 140-150 fps. The game feels a lot better and the inñjt lag disappeared.

Thanks a lot to everyone!

I never imagined I could be happy playing at 720p, go figure...

 

[tennis2]

That's because 720p to 1440p is a straight 2:1 ratio, so you're not splitting pixels in half in the scaling. 4 pixels = 1 pixel