Is my CPU bottlenecking my GPU?

[raventhegod123]

I have an i7 920 OCd to 3.87GHz and a GTX 970 SSC. In games like PUBG the GPU usage changes constantly, never stays at 90%+ constantly, it goes from 95-99% down to 70-80% and even lower depending on what is happening in the game. Should I upgrade to coffee lake? Would upgrading give me an improvement in gaming?

 

[Dunlop0078]

Well PUBG is quite cpu heavy and it not optimized well at all on top of it. So yes upgrading your CPU will help performance. The i7 920 is almost a decade old at this point, it likely does not have the single core performance or multithreaded performance to fully utilize a 970 in PUBG and likely many other games.

Is VSYNC on? That will cause GPU usage to drop whenever your framerate reaches the refresh rate of your monitor.

 

[spdragoo]

It's going to depend on your CPU utilization. Generally, however, when your GPU is hitting 90+ utilization, it means it's having trouble keeping up with the CPU.

Remember the bottleneck guidelines:
-- low CPU utilization/high GPU utilization = CPU is sending data to the GPU faster than the GPU can render it = GPU can't keep up with the CPU = GPU is the bottleneck (fix is either turn down the resolution/quality settings or get a more powerful GPU)
-- high CPU utilization/low GPU utilization = GPU is idling in between frame rendering waiting for the CPU to send it new data = CPU can't keep up with the GPU = CPU is the bottleneck (fix is either turn up the resolution/quality settings or get a more powerful CPU)
-- hihg CPU utilization/high GPU utilization = the GPU is struggling to render the data as quickly as the CPU can feed it, but the CPU is having trouble processing all of that data quickly = no bottleneck (actual reasons can vary from poor coding/optimization in the game itself, to the CPU/GPU barely meeting the minimum requirements, or some other reason)

 

[raventhegod123]

It's going to depend on your CPU utilization. Generally, however, when your GPU is hitting 90+ utilization, it means it's having trouble keeping up with the CPU.

Remember the bottleneck guidelines:
-- low CPU utilization/high GPU utilization = CPU is sending data to the GPU faster than the GPU can render it = GPU can't keep up with the CPU = GPU is the bottleneck (fix is either turn down the resolution/quality settings or get a more powerful GPU)
-- high CPU utilization/low GPU utilization = GPU is idling in between frame rendering waiting for the CPU to send it new data = CPU can't keep up with the GPU = CPU is the bottleneck (fix is either turn up the resolution/quality settings or get a more powerful CPU)
-- hihg CPU utilization/high GPU utilization = the GPU is struggling to render the data as quickly as the CPU can feed it, but the CPU is having trouble processing all of that data quickly = no bottleneck (actual reasons can vary from poor coding/optimization in the game itself, to the CPU/GPU barely meeting the minimum requirements, or some other reason)

My CPU stays at around 50-60% usage, while the GPU fluctuates from 95% to 70-80 and even lower. From my understanding, having you're gpu usage at 99% is normal as you're GPU is being used like its supposed to. But the constant change in usage tells me that the CPU is bottlenecking the GPU because the CPU can't send the data fast enough for the GPU to keep up. So, the big question is upgrading from this i7 920 OCd at 3.87GHz to a i5 8600k would that provide a good improvement in gaming?

 

[sczvanguard]

In a word yes, you will need a new motherboard Z370 series, Msi do some good ones, I would also go for a 8700k which will fly, however the 8600k is very fast also, you will have no problems, infact if you can still get another 970 you could sli them tho it may be hard to find the same model.

 

[raventhegod123]

In a word yes, you will need a new motherboard Z370 series, Msi do some good ones, I would also go for a 8700k which will fly, however the 8600k is very fast also, you will have no problems, infact if you can still get another 970 you could sli them tho it may be hard to find the same model.

You can SLI pretty much any 970 I believe even if they are running at different clock speeds, But I am thinking of selling this 970 and I also have an old r9 270x laying around that I could sell and just grab a 1070ti since I am going through the trouble of upgrading everything else anyways.

 

[mcmahoon12]

It's going to depend on your CPU utilization. Generally, however, when your GPU is hitting 90+ utilization, it means it's having trouble keeping up with the CPU.

Remember the bottleneck guidelines:
-- low CPU utilization/high GPU utilization = CPU is sending data to the GPU faster than the GPU can render it = GPU can't keep up with the CPU = GPU is the bottleneck (fix is either turn down the resolution/quality settings or get a more powerful GPU)
-- high CPU utilization/low GPU utilization = GPU is idling in between frame rendering waiting for the CPU to send it new data = CPU can't keep up with the GPU = CPU is the bottleneck (fix is either turn up the resolution/quality settings or get a more powerful CPU)
-- hihg CPU utilization/high GPU utilization = the GPU is struggling to render the data as quickly as the CPU can feed it, but the CPU is having trouble processing all of that data quickly = no bottleneck (actual reasons can vary from poor coding/optimization in the game itself, to the CPU/GPU barely meeting the minimum requirements, or some other reason)

Thanks for the great advice!

 

[raventhegod123]

It's going to depend on your CPU utilization. Generally, however, when your GPU is hitting 90+ utilization, it means it's having trouble keeping up with the CPU.

Remember the bottleneck guidelines:
-- low CPU utilization/high GPU utilization = CPU is sending data to the GPU faster than the GPU can render it = GPU can't keep up with the CPU = GPU is the bottleneck (fix is either turn down the resolution/quality settings or get a more powerful GPU)
-- high CPU utilization/low GPU utilization = GPU is idling in between frame rendering waiting for the CPU to send it new data = CPU can't keep up with the GPU = CPU is the bottleneck (fix is either turn up the resolution/quality settings or get a more powerful CPU)
-- hihg CPU utilization/high GPU utilization = the GPU is struggling to render the data as quickly as the CPU can feed it, but the CPU is having trouble processing all of that data quickly = no bottleneck (actual reasons can vary from poor coding/optimization in the game itself, to the CPU/GPU barely meeting the minimum requirements, or some other reason)

Thanks for the great advice!

This doesn't really seem 100% accurate or at least in my situation. I have watched several youtube videos with people using the gtx 970 with a newer processor and the GPU usage is 96-99% the whole time. The CPU usage doesn't necessarily mean everything, especially if the game doesn't utilize all of you're cores or threads which would probably result in 50-75% usage or even lower.

 

[spdragoo]

Your situation is "D: None of the above".
-- Your GPU is spiking in its utilization, from the way you're describing it. Even the best GPU might hit the occasional situation where it can spike to a very high utilization level (which "96-99%" qualifies for), but the rest of time will be OK at a much lower utilization (& 70% is much lower than 96% in these situations).
-- You said your CPU is staying at 50-60% utilization consistently. That's middle-of-the-road. It's not "low" (which would be 30-40% or lower), & it's definitely not high (that would be 80% or higher).
-- Since you're neither high nor low on your CPU utilization, & your GPU is not consistently on high utilization, you're not really seeing a "bottleneck" in the traditional sense.

That doesn't mean there might not be something else going on, or that there's maybe not some sort of other "glitch". One of the issues (that I don't know has ever really been fixed, if it even can be) with the GTX 970 was the whole "3.5GB/0.5GB" fiasco: although technically equipped with 4GB of VRAM, nVidia manufactured them with 3.5GB of "high-speed" VRAM & the remaining 0.5GB on a "low-speed" bus (it runs about 7 times slower). So, any time the GPU has to use more than 3.5GB of VRAM, you start to see some performance issues.

What you should do is see if there's any particular pattern to the glitches you're seeing. For example, see if your monitoring software can tell how much VRAM is in use, & see if the VRAM exceeds 3.5GB whenever the utilization spikes up.

 

[mcmahoon12]

Your situation is "D: None of the above".
-- Your GPU is spiking in its utilization, from the way you're describing it. Even the best GPU might hit the occasional situation where it can spike to a very high utilization level (which "96-99%" qualifies for), but the rest of time will be OK at a much lower utilization (& 70% is much lower than 96% in these situations).
-- You said your CPU is staying at 50-60% utilization consistently. That's middle-of-the-road. It's not "low" (which would be 30-40% or lower), & it's definitely not high (that would be 80% or higher).
-- Since you're neither high nor low on your CPU utilization, & your GPU is not consistently on high utilization, you're not really seeing a "bottleneck" in the traditional sense.

That doesn't mean there might not be something else going on, or that there's maybe not some sort of other "glitch". One of the issues (that I don't know has ever really been fixed, if it even can be) with the GTX 970 was the whole "3.5GB/0.5GB" fiasco: although technically equipped with 4GB of VRAM, nVidia manufactured them with 3.5GB of "high-speed" VRAM & the remaining 0.5GB on a "low-speed" bus (it runs about 7 times slower). So, any time the GPU has to use more than 3.5GB of VRAM, you start to see some performance issues.

What you should do is see if there's any particular pattern to the glitches you're seeing. For example, see if your monitoring software can tell how much VRAM is in use, & see if the VRAM exceeds 3.5GB whenever the utilization spikes up.

This might have been a feasible design option back in 2014 when it dropped. But the way the it segmented out that last .5GB will only amplify issues going forward given the increasing specs required to run these more modern games. Pretty slimy on behalf of the company in my opinion!

 

[spdragoo]

Oh,yeah. They took a bit of a PR hit on it. I still don't know if we ever got a good explanation from them as to why they decided to do it this way (unless it's because they were overly ambitious about their ability to squeeze that particular performance out).

 

[raventhegod123]

Oh,yeah. They took a bit of a PR hit on it. I still don't know if we ever got a good explanation from them as to why they decided to do it this way (unless it's because they were overly ambitious about their ability to squeeze that particular performance out).

Nvidia had a law suit filed against them for basically false advertising if I remember correctly. Anyways back to the topic, no my VRAM doesn't go over about 3.3GB so the whole 3.5GB thing isn't whats causing it. I think its just the CPU, I mean this thing is 8 or 9 years old, there has been a lot of IPC improvements in that time frame and with the new release of coffee lake I think I should upgrade. It will also set me up for the future especially if I consider getting a 1070ti and a 1440p 144hz monitor later on this year. Which I know for a fact that the i7 920 even at 4+GHz would probably bottleneck to a large degree

 

[krzyimprt]

Oh,yeah. They took a bit of a PR hit on it. I still don't know if we ever got a good explanation from them as to why they decided to do it this way (unless it's because they were overly ambitious about their ability to squeeze that particular performance out).

Nvidia had a law suit filed against them for basically false advertising if I remember correctly. Anyways back to the topic, no my VRAM doesn't go over about 3.3GB so the whole 3.5GB thing isn't whats causing it. I think its just the CPU, I mean this thing is 8 or 9 years old, there has been a lot of IPC improvements in that time frame and with the new release of coffee lake I think I should upgrade. It will also set me up for the future especially if I consider getting a 1070ti and a 1440p 144hz monitor later on this year. Which I know for a fact that the i7 920 even at 4+GHz would probably bottleneck to a large degree

1st gen i7 is circa 2009. Perfect time to upgrade.