i5 4460 Bottleneck

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
D

Downies

Reputable
Dec 21, 2014
51
0
4,640
Well I guess that this CPU is pretty much through. I read through numerous threads that claim the i5 4460 does not bottleneck a single GTX 970 and from my experiences with GTA 5 and Battlefield 4 it does. I don't know if its something bad on my end or what but all I know is that my GPU is not being fully utilized and the reason as to why is because of my 4460. I never knew this CPU could bottleneck but apparently it can. If you guys need proof of this bottleneck I am more than happy enough to post it. I have even upgraded from windows 7 to 8.1 to see if that fixed much but nothing has changed. Let alone the first thing I did was unpark my cores as well and set everything to maximum performance.

Specs:
i5 4460
GTX 970
16gb DDR3 Ripjaws Ram 1600mhz
MSI z97 PC Mate Motherboard
Corsair CX750m
Windows 8.1 Pro
 
Solution
WhiteSnake91
Don't feel too bad about your performance, I got pretty high usage with my i5 3570k too in BF4 multiplayer, that game was a mess on pc tbh. I even overclocked it to 4.2ghz and it didn't help much. My hd 7950 always had bad fps dips, but when I used my stock i5 3570k, with an xfx hd 7870ghz, on 64player gulmon railway conquest 1080p ultra (no msaa) it stayed at 60fps constant basically. Multiplayer can be hard to benchmark and BF4 has been buggy as hell since its launch, I've scoured here and on battle log in the many months since the game's launch, and even people with i7s and sli gtx 780s were having bad fps dips. Ever since a july 8th patch last year iirc, BF4 performance was crippled for many people.



I do agree with you guys in...
Sort by date Sort by votes


Yep. I use MSI afterburner's graphs in on screen display. Almost all my cores are maxed out and my GPU usage is not consistent.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


Ultra preset on siege of shanghai with only say 12 people I pull 60-70 FPS average with my GPU usage all over the place and not constant. Other maps like parcel storm on simply TDM I get about the same framerate. I can post some graphs if you guys want.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Yea it CPU crate some bottleneck.Many ppl say ah just trow any GPU at i5 4th gen and it will run without any problems but actually there is bottleneck in some CPU demanding games.In BF4 you will need Mild OC on i5 to keep up with GTX 970 and same for GTA 5.If you want to reduce bottleneck you can stress GPU with some more graphic intensive settings but that will also probably reduce your FPS.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
1080p screen right? If so, then those numbers look about right. The GTX 970 is a little overkill for 1080p in most games. You could try raising AA or something and it should increase GPU utilization without hurting frame rate much if you don't overdo it.

Like st3v30, a lot of people will say something like jsut throw a modern i5 at it and no problem, but overclocking is often done for a reason in some of the more CPU intensive games and that reason is that stock clocks just don't always get you where you want to be. Unfortunately, many people ignore this, especially in situations that are difficult to benchmark accurately, such as multiplayer BF3/BF4.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


Eh it just seems like that a lot of people get a constant usage at 1080p (90%+) and their framerate is always constant. It is just there are hundreds of threads saying that it is hard for most i5's to bottleneck a gtx 970.

For instance look at all these misleading threads:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2525128/intel-core-4590-bottleneck-gtx-970.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2391887/4460-gtx-970.html
http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/252133-i5-4460-bottleneck-a-gtx-970/
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2304499/cpu-wont-bottleneck-gtx-970.html
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
One problem is that different people might define when something is bottlenecked a little differently. For example, if the GPU utilization is only like 30%, but the frame rate is still above 60fps, many people will not care that they're wasting the capabilities of their graphics card because the frame rate is still good. Also, many people's recommendations as for what CPU will cause a bottleneck do not take into account unusually CPU intensive games like BF3/BF4 multiplayer.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


I know it is just very misleading because nobody stops to think of that. If many people say the CPU does not bottleneck it shouldn't matter what game it is on or preference. Sure there are games that have terrible engines but the whole reason as to why I bought this CPU a while ago was because I thought it would be fine in Battlefield 4 because of the better architecture and better single core performance.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Don't feel too bad about your performance, I got pretty high usage with my i5 3570k too in BF4 multiplayer, that game was a mess on pc tbh. I even overclocked it to 4.2ghz and it didn't help much. My hd 7950 always had bad fps dips, but when I used my stock i5 3570k, with an xfx hd 7870ghz, on 64player gulmon railway conquest 1080p ultra (no msaa) it stayed at 60fps constant basically. Multiplayer can be hard to benchmark and BF4 has been buggy as hell since its launch, I've scoured here and on battle log in the many months since the game's launch, and even people with i7s and sli gtx 780s were having bad fps dips. Ever since a july 8th patch last year iirc, BF4 performance was crippled for many people.



I do agree with you guys in this topic though, so many people here will just say a cookie cutter response of a low clocked locked i5 and claim it'll run anything demanding perfectly fine, the person above was right, overclocking is there for a reason when something is really cpu demanding so performance wouldn't suffer.


You should be getting MUCH better FPS with a gtx 970, it's overkill for 1080p gaming. I don't remember the forum topic off hand from battlelog, but a guy was having bad fps with an r9 290 and he upgraded to a gtx 970 and it fixed all his problems, and I think he said he got..maybe... ~100fps. Don't quote me on that, but it was a high number and it's been months ago, but it was certainly better than 60


with the performance you're wanting, you're going to want an overclocked i7 tbh, that's the top CPU for gaming, and with the consoles using 8 core cpu and many new games recommending an i7 cpu, if you really want the best I'd go i7 for the 8 threads. I honestly see i5s getting more and more bogged down as time goes on, due to sloppy console ports. It's sad we as pc gamers have to do this. Myself personally, I'm not going to spend the money on that, and either I wait for benchmarks to see how games perform on my hardware, or I'll get bad ports on console to avoid the headache. I've had nothing but problems out of BF4 on pc. But you know what? Even though it has obviously worse graphics, the old Xbox 360 version was more fun to me.


in short, BF4 and GTA 5 aren't exactly the best pc ports tbh, and others with stronger PC's even have issues. If my hd 7870ghz could match your gtx 970s fps, something is definitely wrong.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
I have a similar setup to you (I5 4460 + 970) and I do as well have low usage in SOME maps on BF4. It honestly depends. In maps like Zavod, Rogue Transmission, and operation locker I get a consistent usage and 100+ fps most of the times. On maps like siege and parcel storm I get the lower fps 70-80fps but I mean hey it is playable and over 60fps so in other means you should be fine as long as you have a 60hz monitor... On GTA 5 my usage is about consistent online (about 70-90%) and I do seem to get some drops while driving and flying to about 40fps. I also use the nvidia optimal settings in geforce experience.

All in all there is not much problems with this CPU it is just dependent on what game you play. Just relax because for all it is worth you could upgrade to a i5 devils canyon and only get about 10 fps at the most more. :)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Just wanted to add my $0.02 here. It seems people are under the impression that there is some kind of bottleneck cutoff based on model of CPU and GPU and many responses perpetuate this myth. The phenomenon occurs when the CPU processing required by a certain game cannot keep up with the effect rendering capacity of the GPU (and v.v.). You could get a hard bottleneck if you have a DRASTICALLY underpowered CPU and DRASTICALLY overpowered GPU (and v.v.) but the phenomenon can occur with any configuration in the right circumstances.

I am playing GTA V with an i5 4460 and GTX 970. High speed driving causes CPU usage to sometimes climb to and sustain 90-95%, GPU usage to drop under 50% and framerate to drop as well. No matter how low I turn graphical effects down, theses assets must be loaded; this is a CPU task. In this situation, the CPU could be "bottlenecking" even a substantially weaker GPU than the one I have. My opinion is that it isn't so much "bottlenecking" as just not having an adequate CPU/GPU for the particular game and/or settings. I do realize that both units play a part in scaling graphical settings but if you're asking whether a certain part could bottleneck another part, the answer is always yes in the right circumstances.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
My computer specs:
-i5 4460 3.20GHz
-MSI GTX 970 4GB
-Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600Mhz 2x4GB Dual Channel 8GB kit
-1920x1080 LG monitor
-500w Corsair CX Bronze
-1TB WCD Hard drive
-ASRock Z97 Anniversary Motherboard
-Windows 7 Ultimate

Hi I was reading this post as I am slightly worried that the i5 I installed about 3 months ago is still not good enough for the new new games.

I currently play Killing Floor 2, Phantom Pain, Skyrim and try to play Fallout 4.
The first 3 games I can play ultra no problems with not CPU or GPU problems but when it comes to Fallout 4 I get near enough 100% CPU usage in the main city which is horrible. This also happens when I play Assassins Creed Syndicate which I got free a pre-order for when I got my graphics card.

I'm still trying to find out if this Usage problems is the hardware or game fault.
I'd be ticked off if I need an i7 to play Fallout 4 and other new games...

Regards
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thing is those games can use more than 4 cores and are heavy on CPU.
There is nothing wrong with your hardware, it is just some games in order to run fine need both CPU and GPU.
i5 4460 is rly nice gaming CPU but only flaw he have is low clock frequency.
I have FX 6300 and i can see sometimes load on all 6 threads in 90+ usage and it is for my R7 260x who is much weaker card than yours GTX 970.
That means game can use more threads/cores and will benefit if you have i7 or Xeon or 58xxK from intel or FX 8xxx from AMD.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
So what your saying is that in the future I should get a high cored CPU.

Is there a downside to higher core CPU's though? As in single core performance because you could have a powerful CPU but play a 2 core only game like Skyrim, Fallout 3 and still get FPS drop in combat. I got drops to 45fp in the attach on the purify in fallout 3 which such due to me having to force 2 core otherwise it would crash.

Its hard as you can't play all games with just one build, every setup can play different things then suck at running others.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Well Xeon and i7 are still 4 core cpu with HT.In some games it will help in some not.
You cant always blame hardware for bad performance.
As you can see some new games are rly bad optimized and need like 1 year after release to work fine and some will stay broken.
Gaming industry is growing every year and so is demand for new better and stronger parts.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
This is a very rare occurance. Gurantee for the next 3 years there will only be a handful of games that come out that this will happen in. And honestly if you sell the 4460 you can literally get a new gen i5 fo real easy if you save the remaining money.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I just installed an i7 4790k yesterday.

I'm now able to play Fallout 4 and Witcher 3 near Ultra (GPU limited) at silky smooth 60fps 1080p with the i7 just sitting back at 40-50% 50-63C across all cores and threads.

Looking forward to continuing my adventures tonight.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


Well I just took an i5 4460 out of my system and put an i7 4790k in, going to find out what socket my dads i3 is and if its 1150 then he can have my i5.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


I can say the same for myself. Over the holidays I upgraded to a 4790k and, even if some believe it is overkill for gaming, it was a great investment.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom