Question Is this a cpu problem?

[jhuff247]

So about 3 years ago I built a budget pc build, originally with a Msi gtx 1060 6gb.

Other components:
-Ryzen 5 1600 6-core 3.2ghz (Currently overclocked to 3.9 ghz)
-Msi B350 Tomahawk motherboard
-WD Black 512 gb m.2 drive
-16 gb g.skill ddr4 ram running at 3200 mhz
-Seasonic 520W bronze EVO power modular power supply

Now recently I decided to upgrade to a 1080 ti since a lot of refurbished ones have flooded the market, so i picked one up.

I google'd, read a lot of forums and tried to research if a ryzen 5 1600 would bottleneck a 1080ti and the general consensus was no for both 1080p and 1440p gaming,

So i ordered the 1080 ti and it arrived, I installed it into my computer and figured id test 1080p before upgrading to 1440p.

Once installed i did some non-overclocked stress testing with MSI Kombustor just to make sure everything was good since it was refurbished, then i did some overclocking until i got a stable overclock at these figures:

https://imgur.com/a/CCfKqbd

(with MSI afterburner)
+100 core clock mhz
+150 memory clock mhz
power limit and temp limit maxed
core voltage untouched

With a game running im consistently running 1999-2012 mhz on the core and 5643 mhz on the mem clock. I also then did a user bench mark arriving at these figures.

https://imgur.com/a/uHcTvHO

https://imgur.com/a/w7poP7k

A 97% gaming result seems pretty good, both the cpu and memory, which i thought were potential problems are running above expectations. The 1080ti is below expectations but i figured its refurbished so its probably expected.

Now here's the problem, my fps and benchmark results were rather lack luster:

With my 1060 6gb:

GTA 5 - very high settings - 48-52 fps
assassins creed odyssey - very high settings - 47 avg. fps
Need for speed heat - very high settings - 48 or so fps
Minecraft - medium level shader - 80 fps avg.
Battlefield 1 - very high settings - 55 fps
Battle field 5 - very high settings - 45 fps avg
Ashes of creation - very high settings - 45 fps

Basically my games looked great but i hated hanging just under that 60 fps sweet spot.
So I upgraded and expected a huge jump, some games I did see that, some not as much was I was expecting.

With the 1080 ti:

GTA 5 - ultra - 57 avg fps
Assassins creed odyssey - ultra settings - 35-40 fps (very high still 47 fps avg)
Need for speed heat - ultra - 57-60 fps
Minecraft - extreme volumetric lighting shader - 180 fps
Battlefield 1 - ultra settings - 75 avg fps
Battlefield 5 - ultra settings - 45 fps avg
Ashes of Creation - ultra settings - 70 fps avg

So in the end, I was expecting a much bigger performance jump, especially for just 1080p gaming? I figured assassins creed would be 60+ didnt seem to gain any performance at all. I expected closer to 100 or even 100+ fps in gta 5 etc. The only thing that seemed to really give me a drastic jump is Minecraft, but that barely even counts...

When i run certain games like assassins creed etc, I run core temp and gpu temp to monitor performance, ive seen the cpu loads hit 100% but not often, they generally hover around 40-50s. The gpu core seems to hover around 90-95% on most high end games.

Whenever I look at forums people say 1080 ti is overkill for 1080p and wont struggle in the slightest, but mine seems to be struggling in some areas.

These fps numbers just seem low, and if I were to jump to a 1440p monitor my performance would take an even bigger hit?
So is this a cpu problem? am I actually being bottle necked? are the games where the is fps failing just poorly optimized?

 

[Eximo]

A little of both. Ryzen 5 1600 was favorably compared to 4th Gen Intel chips on release, so it is a little slower than the most recent processors.

1080Ti is a powerful card. At low resolution you can expect more burden on the CPU.

You are running high settings across the board, but some settings rely more on CPU than GPU. Might take a look at your game settings. Try reducing or disabling things like shadows, reflections, volumetric lighting, particle and smoke settings. CPU has a lot of input on those types of features before sending the job off to the GPU to render. Hogher resolutions, anti-aliasing, etc rely on the GPU more directly.

You might be able to gain a lot of FPS without sacrificing much detail.

Or start shopping for R7-2700 or something. Or, if it is compatible, 3600 or 3700...