Question Is my 3950x bottlenecking my GPU?

[G3ox]

Hello all,

Last week I upgraded my 2080ti to a 6950xt to get better performance in Starfield. I know this game is poorly optimized but I expected to get a significant performance boost, instead I went from about 50FPS in demanding areas to just 60FPS (sometimes I even see dips below 50FPS). I am playing at my native resolution 3440x1440.

In demanding areas my GPU usage is 70-80% while in others it is 99%. Is this a sign of a CPU bottleneck?
My CPU is not overclocked but has PBO enabled.

One idea is to upgrade to a 5800x 3D but I don't know if it makes much sense.

My specs are:

Xiaomi Mi Monitor 34 - 3440x1440 144hz
Ryzen 3950X
Radeon 6950 XT
16GB Corsair 3600 Mhz DDR4
Noctua NH-U12S cooler
Corsair 450D case
Super Flower Leadex Gold 650w PSU

 

[hotaru.hino]

If you lower the resolution and quality settings the minimum and there's no real gains in performance, then yes, the CPU is the limiting factor here.

Don't bother looking at % Utilization, it's not a useful metric for determining this.

 

[Zerk2012]

In demanding areas my GPU usage is 70-80% while in others it is 99%. Is this a sign of a CPU bottleneck?

No I would say pretty good balance in that game. Your video card is hitting 99% in some areas.

 

[G3ox]

If you lower the resolution and quality settings the minimum and there's no real gains in performance, then yes, the CPU is the limiting factor here.

Don't bother looking at % Utilization, it's not a useful metric for determining this.

This looks to be the case, I get the same performance even when lowering the settings or resolution.

Do you think upgrading my CPU to a 5800x 3D will improve performance significantly?

 

[hotaru.hino]

This looks to be the case, I get the same performance even when lowering the settings or resolution.

Do you think upgrading my CPU to a 5800x 3D will improve performance significantly?

Considering it outright smacks a 5700X in 1080p tests, it should.

 

[G3ox]

Considering it outright smacks a 5700X in 1080p tests, it should.

That's the thing, I thought that at higher resolutions (like the one I'm using) the game should be GPU bound and the CPU should not matter that much. I know that the 3950x is a bit old, but I would not have expected it to limit my performance for many years because it was the best at that time.

 

[hotaru.hino]

That's the thing, I thought that at higher resolutions (like the one I'm using) the game should be GPU bound and the CPU should not matter that much. I know that the 3950x is a bit old, but I would not have expected it to limit my performance for many years because it was the best at that time.

Most games still rely on a smaller number of threads to do most of the work, making single core performance important.