Overclocking and details on CPU and GPU utilization
Overclocking and details on CPU and GPU utilization
I currently possess my DDR4 16GB of RAM at a stable overclock, paired with my Ryzen 5 2600x set to automatic. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider it has been observed that my CPU can reach 4250Mhz occasionally. Temperatures remain all good and consistent. I noticed that when I instructed my BIOS to use Auto mode instead of its default settings like 3.6 or 3600Mhz, my CPU usage dropped significantly. I mean, it went down quite a bit. I have been running ULTRA everything in Shadow of the Tomb Raider with ULTRA enabled for ray tracing, and my CPU hits around 33% MAX sometimes, only using 13% to 18% at the lowest. My RTX 2070 GPU stays steady at 98%. This seems healthy or not? Everything runs smoothly, but isn’t this technically a bottleneck or is it okay?
So the word 'bottleneck' is often used a lot and can cause concern, with many discussions here about things like "will X bottleneck Y." In reality, every build has a bottleneck somewhere. It’s not that there’s no limit—performance will always have a ceiling. For gaming setups, the usual rule is that your graphics card should be the limiting factor. You see this because your graphics card runs at full speed while your CPU stays idle, leaving little room for improvement. If you upgrade to a newer card like the RTX 4070 in a few years, your CPU should still have enough capacity to handle it (currently under 20% usage).
What might be confusing is understanding those percentage numbers, particularly for the CPU. This number shows how much of the total CPU is being used—on the 2600X, for example, there are 12 threads, each capable of 0 to 100%. An utilisation of 18% means all 12 threads are active at 18%, or one thread is at 100% and the rest at 5%. In older games, performance can drop because only a single core sends data to the GPU. You might see the CPU appear to have plenty of room (like 30% usage), but the GPU struggles at 50% usage. This happened with older 'FX' processors that had many cores but poor efficiency, making them less effective in games. Luckily, Ryzen handles this better, and your 2070 is nearly at its maximum, so you won’t lose much performance.
TL;DR: The main goal is to ensure the graphics card is fully utilized to achieve the best possible frame rate. When people mention a bottleneck, they usually mean the CPU reaching its limit—either overall or on one core—while the GPU usage remains low.
In short, I'm confident the issue is with the "good" part. Just checking if my equipment is having any problems.