How to Identify a Bottleneck in-gaming?
How to Identify a Bottleneck in-gaming?
Consider purchasing a card with 16 or 24GB of VRAM, which will be expensive. However, running any browser with videos or high VRAM needs in the background isn't advisable. A YouTube video and a few open tabs can quickly consume all your VRAM faster than you expect. This constant use of VRAM is the main reason for stutters in games that don't handle them well on their own. There are alternative ways to watch YouTube on a second monitor without affecting your game performance.
During testing and observation, the stuttering happens when the CPU reaches 100%. The GPU stays below 95% utilization, and VRAM usage remains under 2.2GB. I plan to upgrade to the i7-4770 and check if it improves performance before looking into a newer system. Thanks!
What? My 2070 Super has 8GB of VRAM and I can play games at 1080p with YouTube on a second screen while other tabs are open, experiencing only minor issues. Keeping many tabs open in one browser can consume more RAM than your VRAM, but that’s manageable with 16GB. Now with just 3.5GB of GTX 970 VRAM, running YouTube alongside an esport game like Rocket League will definitely cause trouble, but it won’t solve the problem by upgrading your card. A CPU upgrade, such as an i7-4770 like OP suggested, plus possibly moving to a GTX 1070, would make a big difference. Games might also lag for reasons beyond VRAM, like memory bottlenecks or other system issues.
One technique to tell if there's a bottleneck is to see what fps your GPU should get. Then have task manager open. If you get less frames check: Is my CPU at 100%? Is my GPU less than 100%? Okay I am CPU limited. Is your fps stable? Okay let's check usage. GPU 100%? Great perfect use. CPU is less than 100%? Okay your cpu can maybe handle a better GPU. This is a rough technique. It's not definitive. There could be more to it. Also I think it's impossible to get 100% out of CPU and GPU. It really depends on how the game code was written. Minecraft realistically won't ever use 100% of a modern GPU. Arma 2 or 3 also couldn't use a lot of a GPU.
simple verification using MSI afterburner overlay shows a CPU bottleneck when utilization hits 100% across any core. It’s unclear what method you’re using to stream CPU or GPU—some systems may support NVENC on certain models. Yes, performance is often near maximum in games like Tomb Raider when pushed to limits, with stable frame rates achieved by locking framerates. This is uncommon but demonstrates effective optimization.
Hello everyone, appreciate all your responses. I haven’t upgraded my CPU yet—it seems to be the main limitation. However, a change that has made a big difference for me and others is to avoid running the web browser and video on the second monitor. Playing the video in picture-in-picture mode (by right-clicking twice on a YouTube video) and then closing the browser helps my system perform better. You can also adjust the size of the picture-in-picture video. After this setup, my CPU usage rarely reaches 100% while watching Rocket League and videos.