Processing load and frame rate are somewhat correlated.
Processing load and frame rate are somewhat correlated.
Hello and good afternoon, welcome to the forum. I’m new here, so if I post somewhere wrong, no worries—I’ll move it. To begin, I assumed I had a solid understanding of how clock speeds and CPU/GPU performance relate to gaming, but I accidentally came across something unexpected that really confused me.
I currently use an AMD build with a Ryzen 7 3800X and a 5700 XT. My CPU is mostly unoverclocked, staying in High Performance mode for power settings. On average, it reaches about 4.45GHz, which keeps everything running smoothly whether I’m gaming or working.
What’s puzzling me is this: last night while watching YouTube, I switched the CPU to power-saving mode to let it cool down to 2.18GHz. I expected a slight slowdown, but the monitor showed it running at around 2100MHz (overclocked). When I played a game—COD:Warfare at 1440P—I noticed everything ran smoothly, even with the refresh rate.
Now I’m checking temperatures and seeing some odd things. The CPU was at 2.18GHz, using about 28% load, and the GPU was pushing up to 2100MHz. The big question is: if I switch it back to High Performance, does it give a tiny boost in FPS? I’ve heard that faster cores mean more frames. But here, the speed only increased by a few frames, and I didn’t see any lag or drops.
In my experience, higher core speeds usually don’t translate directly into better performance. Why does it seem like running faster doesn’t always help? If I lose just a couple of frames without any noticeable impact, what’s the point? I’m testing other games now, like Battlefield, and they’re losing 15–20 FPS, which is still playable.
Could you help clarify this? I thought faster CPU speeds always mean better gaming, but in this case, it didn’t seem to matter much. Thanks!
CPU speeds can shift quickly, and the task manager doesn’t track past clock speed changes. Your processor was ramping up to a faster frequency while you played, then slowing down when you checked usage. It probably didn’t hit the higher speeds as much as it did in performance mode. With each increase in clock speed, power consumption grows exponentially, so it’s reasonable it didn’t get as hot.