[SOLVED] Problem with 8600K bottleneck

ludvig.adelroth

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Jul 7, 2018
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Hey!

My friend has an 8600K paired with a 1070 ti, and has had it for a few years now. Though he's always complained about performance, so today I decided to check it out. It turns out he's got a severe bottleneck from the cpu, which spikes at 99%, while the gpu at 20-40% depending on resolution. If I understand it correctly, a 8600K shouldn't bottleneck a 1070 ti? I can't figure out whats wrong...
 
Solution
Just because a CPU is at 99% usage whle gaming does not mean its causing troubles.

There could be a lot of issues that may lead to poor gameplay, bad/corrupt drivers, really old Windows 10 install with lots of crap on it, bad gaming optimization (there are lots of craps on the visual setting that usually don't add a single thing to the "visual" but it does a big penalty on performance), and lets not forget the dirt and dust that could be accumulated inside the PC.

I used to play Battle field 5 with everything on 1080p, with most detail settings on highest level(but for stuff like shadows, AA and a few more) with a Core i5 3570 + 8GB of RAM + GTX 1060 6GB, and the game pegged my CPU to 99% usuage every second, but that does not mean...
The 8600K has but 6 threads, so, in most games , it will indeed have high CPU usage relative to a GTX1070, especially at 1080P. As long as there are no low-frame frame rate issues in heavy action sequences (the 8600K might suffer from stutters if trying to live stream, chat, and watch Youtube videos, and record game play, obviously) , one should not simply declare 'bottleneck' based just on CPU usage.

Check that the CPU is at least all-core turboing to the correct clock speeds under load (~4400 MHz, but, if MCE is enabled, 4.7 GHz would be seen routinely if power budget and cooling allow)

As suggested above, a clean install with installation of all mainboard chipset drivers, GPU driver package, and all windows updates, might very well cure most common ailments related to frame rates)
 
In principle an 8600K would have to be totally sufficient to support a GTX 1070 TI.

I suggest the following checks first of all:

In idle enter the task manager and check the cpu load. If it exceeds 3% -5% you should check the background processes that use cpu.

Make sure with Hwmonitor or a similar program that all 6 cores are active and reaching the expected frequency.

Make sure the games are running with ultra settings (the maximum). This increases the load on the gpu and decreases the load on the cpu.

Tell us the resolution of the monitor you are using (and its maximum frequency).
 
My friend has an 8600K paired with a 1070 ti, and has had it for a few years now. Though he's always complained about performance, so today I decided to check it out. It turns out he's got a severe bottleneck from the cpu, which spikes at 99%, while the gpu at 20-40% depending on resolution. If I understand it correctly, a 8600K shouldn't bottleneck a 1070 ti? I can't figure out whats wrong...
In what games, and at what resolution and settings? Some games just happen to be more demanding on the CPU than the GPU, especially if graphics settings are turned down.
 

ludvig.adelroth

Prominent
Jul 7, 2018
28
0
530
In principle an 8600K would have to be totally sufficient to support a GTX 1070 TI.

I suggest the following checks first of all:

In idle enter the task manager and check the cpu load. If it exceeds 3% -5% you should check the background processes that use cpu.

Make sure with Hwmonitor or a similar program that all 6 cores are active and reaching the expected frequency.

Make sure the games are running with ultra settings (the maximum). This increases the load on the gpu and decreases the load on the cpu.

Tell us the resolution of the monitor you are using (and its maximum frequency).
Thanks for the response!
He is using a 1440p monitor, but usually games at 1080p because of the seemingly weird fps issues. I've asked him to switch to 1440p and to ultra settings in a few games, and he still says cpu is maxed at 99%, and gpu around 40% at best.
 

ludvig.adelroth

Prominent
Jul 7, 2018
28
0
530
In what games, and at what resolution and settings? Some games just happen to be more demanding on the CPU than the GPU, especially if graphics settings are turned down.
He is using a 1440p monitor, but usually games at 1080p because of the seemingly weird fps issues. I've asked him to switch to 1440p and to ultra settings in a few games, and he still says cpu is maxed at 99%, and gpu around 40% at best. He says task manager shows it around 4.3 GHz when he games. He's not into overklocking or anything at all; he just games. Still, it shouldn't bottleneck this hard I feel?
 
Just because a CPU is at 99% usage whle gaming does not mean its causing troubles.

There could be a lot of issues that may lead to poor gameplay, bad/corrupt drivers, really old Windows 10 install with lots of crap on it, bad gaming optimization (there are lots of craps on the visual setting that usually don't add a single thing to the "visual" but it does a big penalty on performance), and lets not forget the dirt and dust that could be accumulated inside the PC.

I used to play Battle field 5 with everything on 1080p, with most detail settings on highest level(but for stuff like shadows, AA and a few more) with a Core i5 3570 + 8GB of RAM + GTX 1060 6GB, and the game pegged my CPU to 99% usuage every second, but that does not mean the gameplay was crap. It has its small stuttering every now and then but it was very enjoyable.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider was very similar, but in this case I had everything on the max detail level and the game was runing pretty good, yeah it has it frame drops and it usually never went higher than AVG 55 FPS, but it was very, very playable.

The Core i5 8600K has 50% more cores than my old i5 3570 so Im guessing that theres another problem going on.

Another reason is play games while having 5 chrome tabs, discord and trying to stream at the same time (specially if you aren't streaming using the GPU, and instead using the CPU).
 
Solution