Question Is my CPU holding back my GPU?

May 30, 2022
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UPDATE I upgraded to a R5 6500X and now everything is smooth and running as expected, i have no stuttering problems now and way more FPS on all games in general
i put the update just in case someone haves a similar problem with a similar setup
I'm using a 1080p monitor

Hi, This year i upgraded to a RX 6600 XT coming from a GTX 1060 3GB
I have a A320M-K Motherboard, 16 GB Ram 3200Mhz, Ryzen 5 2600 CPU and a RM850 Corsair 80+Gold PSU

Games do run better and all, but i noticed that there is some ocassional micro stuttering in some games, specially in low-resource demanding games like league of legends and also that my card was not giving the same FPS as other benchmarks in those kinds of games

For example; In the Benchmark i saw about league of legends i saw that the card should be giving around 250 - 300 fps in average (If unlocked), while mine only gives out around 100 - 160
On Overwatch the average of the benchmark was around 210 FPS , while i got around 117 average on teamfights
The difference of the benchmarks i saw compared to my build is that their processor was a better one

Then i've seen commentaries of people saying that upgrading their processor solved the stuttering issues and gave more fps in those kinds of games
I wanted to confirm if thats correct
And if it is

What should i upgrade first?
My processor? (From a R5 2600 to a R5 5600x)
Or my Motherboard? (From an Asus A320M-K with the latest BIOS verison to a newer one that supports PCIE 4.0)
 
Last edited:
May 30, 2022
9
0
10
Seems pointless to upgrade the motherboard.

I would just upgrade to the 5600x, Make sure you flash your bios to the newest one before you get rid of your old CPU.

That being said I really doubt a 2600 is bottlenecking a 6600xt too badly. Nvm you must be using 1080p Ignore that part

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXWK1WlqoBU&ab_channel=AncientGameplays

Yeah, my monitor is currently 1080p
The processor would make more difference in this case, right?
 
Hi, This year i upgraded to a RX 6600 XT coming from a GTX 1060 3GB
I have 16 GB Ram 3200Mhz and a Ryzen 5 2600 CPU

Games do run better and all, but i noticed that there is some ocassional micro stuttering in some games, specially in low-resource demanding games like league of legends and also that my card was not giving the same FPS as other benchmarks in those kinds of games

For example; In the Benchmark i saw about league of legends i saw that the card should be giving around 250 - 300 fps in average (If unlocked), while mine only gives out around 100 - 160
On Overwatch the average of the benchmark was around 210 FPS , while i got around 117 average on teamfights
The difference of the benchmarks i saw compared to my build is that their processor was a better one

Then i've seen commentaries of people saying that upgrading their processor solved the stuttering issues and gave more fps in those kinds of games
I wanted to confirm if thats correct
And if it is

What should i upgrade first?
My processor? (From a R5 2600 to a R5 5600x)
Or my Motherboard? (From an Asus A320M-K with the latest BIOS verison to a newer one that supports PCIE 4.0)
Your 6600 XT will run faster on a B550 or X570 motherboard with PCIE 4.0 on a Ryzen 5000 CPU and the CPU upgrade itself would help improve fps even more. However, I would wait for Zen4 to release in the next few months and then buy a discounted B550 motherboard and Ryzen 5 5600 or Intel B660 DDR4 (to reuse your current ram) or DDR5 motherboard and a 12400 to a 12600k.

If you're on a tight budget and don't want to upgrade the motherboard, you could even get a 5700X and use about the same amount of power as a 5600X when gaming. You wont gain the benefits of PCIe 4.0 since the a320 chpset does not support it, but you would still gain a pretty big improvement at 1080p resolution.

What ever you do though, I'd just skip the 5600X, because it's just extra cost for the X without a big performance improvement.
 
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Hi, This year i upgraded to a RX 6600 XT coming from a GTX 1060 3GB
I have 16 GB Ram 3200Mhz and a Ryzen 5 2600 CPU

Games do run better and all, but i noticed that there is some ocassional micro stuttering in some games, specially in low-resource demanding games like league of legends and also that my card was not giving the same FPS as other benchmarks in those kinds of games

For example; In the Benchmark i saw about league of legends i saw that the card should be giving around 250 - 300 fps in average (If unlocked), while mine only gives out around 100 - 160
On Overwatch the average of the benchmark was around 210 FPS , while i got around 117 average on teamfights
The difference of the benchmarks i saw compared to my build is that their processor was a better one

Then i've seen commentaries of people saying that upgrading their processor solved the stuttering issues and gave more fps in those kinds of games
I wanted to confirm if thats correct
And if it is

What should i upgrade first?
My processor? (From a R5 2600 to a R5 5600x)
Or my Motherboard? (From an Asus A320M-K with the latest BIOS verison to a newer one that supports PCIE 4.0)
Before you start spending bucks skinny down unneeded background stuff.

This might give a clue if something is out of wack.
UBM
 
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May 30, 2022
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Your 6600 XT will run faster on a B550 or X570 motherboard with PCIE 4.0 on a Ryzen 5000 CPU and the CPU upgrade itself would help improve fps even more. However, I would wait for Zen4 to release in the next few months and then buy a discounted B550 motherboard and Ryzen 5 5600 or Intel B660 DDR4 (to reuse your current ram) or DDR5 motherboard and a 12400 to a 12600k.

If you're on a tight budget and don't want to upgrade the motherboard, you could even get a 5700X and use about the same amount of power as a 5600X when gaming. You wont gain the benefits of PCIe 4.0 since the a320 chpset does not support it, but you would still gain a pretty big improvement at 1080p resolution.

What ever you do though, I'd just skip the 5600X, because it's just extra cost for the X without a big performance improvement.

So Ryzen 5 5600 is similar to 5600X?
The price gap here where i live between those 2 is around 10-15 USD, but if the difference is noticeable then it may be worth spending extra 10 usd
 
D

Deleted member 362816

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Your 6600 XT will run faster on a B550 or X570 motherboard with PCIE 4.0 on a Ryzen 5000 CPU and the CPU upgrade itself would help improve fps even more. However, I would wait for Zen4 to release in the next few months and then buy a discounted B550 motherboard and Ryzen 5 5600 or Intel B660 DDR4 (to reuse your current ram) or DDR5 motherboard and a 12400 to a 12600k.

If you're on a tight budget and don't want to upgrade the motherboard, you could even get a 5700X and use about the same amount of power as a 5600X when gaming. You wont gain the benefits of PCIe 4.0 since the a320 chpset does not support it, but you would still gain a pretty big improvement at 1080p resolution.

What ever you do though, I'd just skip the 5600X, because it's just extra cost for the X without a big performance improvement.

Did you not watch the video I posted. 3.0 - 4.0 on a 6600xt is pretty much null.

He has a 2xxx chip better off buying a b450 discounted and flashing the bios with his old chip, then going to a 5600/5600x moneywise.
 
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Did you not watch the video I posted. 3.0 - 4.0 on a 6600xt is pretty much null.

He has a 2xxx chip better off buying a b450 discounted and flashing the bios with his old chip, then going to a 5600/5600x moneywise.
Not all games have similar fps with the 6600 XT on PCIe 3.0 vs 4.0. I get what you're saying and yeah, I would agree with you to a point that it's a negligible performance difference. It still comes down to what games do or don't gain a benefit and what games the OP is running.

Regardless of that, a CPU upgrade is going to give a big uplift in performance, but I would still pick a B550 motherboard for a faster nvme drive that could potentially help future games using DirectStorage. The price difference on B450 vs 550 is probably not gonna be all that huge if the price difference is only $10-15 for 5600 vs 5600X.
 
Just ran the test
According to the page, the 2TB HDD is the only thing perfoming below average (I only use it to store images, some games and non-important stuff)

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/53237559
Nothing there looks real bad.
Now look close at your background stuff.
Anything you can stop might bump things along a little.

The other option is to spend some bucks and upgrade.
 
Hi, This year i upgraded to a RX 6600 XT coming from a GTX 1060 3GB
I have 16 GB Ram 3200Mhz and a Ryzen 5 2600 CPU

Games do run better and all, but i noticed that there is some ocassional micro stuttering in some games, specially in low-resource demanding games like league of legends and also that my card was not giving the same FPS as other benchmarks in those kinds of games

For example; In the Benchmark i saw about league of legends i saw that the card should be giving around 250 - 300 fps in average (If unlocked), while mine only gives out around 100 - 160
On Overwatch the average of the benchmark was around 210 FPS , while i got around 117 average on teamfights
The difference of the benchmarks i saw compared to my build is that their processor was a better one

Then i've seen commentaries of people saying that upgrading their processor solved the stuttering issues and gave more fps in those kinds of games
I wanted to confirm if thats correct
And if it is

What should i upgrade first?
My processor? (From a R5 2600 to a R5 5600x)
Or my Motherboard? (From an Asus A320M-K with the latest BIOS verison to a newer one that supports PCIE 4.0)

Try apples for apples as much as you can. Check your ram speed. Check every last graphics settings to see if it matches including texture quality in the benchmark. Resolution texture reflection quality etc.


Compare it against heaven benchmark and gpu mark.

Try the demo of gears of war benchmark. It will give you a cpu time and gpu time per frame. If the cpu time is greater than your gpu time then the problem is the cpu
 
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Yes, the Ryzen 5 2600 CPU will hold back the RX 6600 XT, on some games more or less than others as some are more CPU demanding. The RX 6600 XT only supports PCIe 3.0 so you will not benefit from PCIe 4.0. The Ryzen 5 5600 or 5600X is considerably faster than your 2600. Spending any extra money on a new motherboard is up to you. Personally I would get the 5600 and more RAM, 16GB is barely enough for some games these days, of course the games you play will dictate how much RAM you need. If games stutter it is possible that can be remedied with a new CPU if it has more cores and threads and faster computational power compared to what you have. Many, especially much older, games run fine with 4 cores and 8 threads, so the games you play will dictate what CPU is best. Also, sometimes a driver is an issue, sometimes the newest drivers are best and sometimes not, and this is for all drivers including for your motherboard. You don't want data traffic to slow down for any reason or address conflicts when doing something more demanding than surfing the internet, such as playing games. As to an HHD few games will give you problems versus an SSD, load times will be slower on the HHD. An SSD will make your overall computing experience much snappier though.

Also, what power supply do you have, make and model. You want enough clean power to your computer.

The big question is, are you comfortable with the gaming performance of your computer. You need a good reason to upgrade.
 
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Karadjgne

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Ambassador
That's a lot of money to spend to try and improve a benchmark score to the level of other users who logged their scores and use different equipment to what you have now.

Will you tomorrow go buy a Corvette because your neibour's Camero SS has better 0-60mph times than your Honda?

Cpu is all about fps. Gpu is all about graphics. Having a 6600xt means you can slap graphics settings (custom, not presets) to the max and not affect fps
 
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May 30, 2022
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Yes, the Ryzen 5 2600 CPU will hold back the RX 6600 XT, on some games more or less than others as some are more CPU demanding. The RX 6600 XT only supports PCIe 3.0 so you will not benefit from PCIe 4.0. The Ryzen 5 5600 or 5600X is considerably faster than your 2600. Spending any extra money on a new motherboard is up to you. Personally I would get the 5600 and more RAM, 16GB is barely enough for some games these days, of course the games you play will dictate how much RAM you need. If games stutter it is possible that can be remedied with a new CPU if it has more cores and threads and faster computational power compared to what you have. Many, especially much older, games run fine with 4 cores and 8 threads, so the games you play will dictate what CPU is best. Also, sometimes a driver is an issue, sometimes the newest drivers are best and sometimes not, and this is for all drivers including for your motherboard. You don't want data traffic to slow down for any reason or address conflicts when doing something more demanding than surfing the internet, such as playing games. As to an HHD few games will give you problems versus an SSD, load times will be slower on the HHD. An SSD will make your overall computing experience much snappier though.

Also, what power supply do you have, make and model. You want enough clean power to your computer.

The big question is, are you comfortable with the gaming performance of your computer. You need a good reason to upgrade.

I have a RM850x 80+ Gold PSU from Corsair

I want a smoother experience while playing without having to deal with the constant drops or stutters that's why i take in consideration the upgrade after i exhaust the possibilities that it can be a software - related issue
For now i've tried doing clean installation on windows, reinstalling different drivers version, moving the min clock settings on Wattman, and disabling all AMD settings for games / using different settings combinations but none have had any effect for now
 
The RX 6600 XT only supports PCIe 3.0 so you will not benefit from PCIe 4.0.
Just a correction on this. Every AMD GPU starting with the RX 5000 series has used PCIe 4.0 and all of the RX 6000 series are PCIe 4.0. You may be confusing something somewhere.

The 6600 XT uses an x8 PCIe bus width and that is why it can be, but not always noticeably slower on a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot compared to a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot.
 
May 30, 2022
9
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Hi!
I can confirm now that the stuttering issues and below-from expected framerates were caused by the CPU
I decided to upgrade to the R5 6500X , all games now run as expected and have 0 stuttering