Variable frames per second at 1440p resolution
Variable frames per second at 1440p resolution
I have a Ryzen 5 1600 with a stock cooler and an MSI Titanium 1070ti. I was attempting to run CS:GO and Valorant at 1440p, but the FPS fluctuated wildly and made the games nearly unplayable at times. I thought I had enough FPS, but during actual matches it felt like performance dropped significantly. When I lowered the resolution to 1080p, it improved somewhat. My CPU was consistently near 80% usage while the GPU stayed between 48% and 60%. Also, only Discord, Spotify, and two Google Chrome tabs were open—no issues there before. Would a fresh graphics driver update or reinstalling both games help? Any suggestions?
Disable hardware acceleration in Chrome and Discord. Check if it improves performance.
CPU utilization hits 80% or higher while using an Nvidia GPU. This might stem from the driver overhead issue. Nvidia employs a multi-threaded scheduler on the CPU, which can cause problems when the GPU is pushed to its limits. The issue tends to affect older CPUs, even though models like the 1070 Ti and R5 1600 are similar. The R5 1600 is still relatively outdated and prone to this problem. Hardware Unboxed analyzed the situation and discovered that Nvidia GPUs can experience a 20% performance drop in CPU-limited conditions. This happens because the driver’s behavior under heavy CPU use isn’t fully resolved, even after reinstalling drivers. It’s largely a design limitation of modern cards.
Your options include lowering background tasks to free up CPU resources or boosting CPU headroom through overclocking. Trying a lower render resolution can also help, as it reduces draw calls and lessens CPU strain. If you’re seeing such high utilization, disabling HW acceleration might actually worsen the situation by forcing more GPU work onto the CPU. Since the GPU isn’t under heavy load, keeping HW acceleration on could be better. This advice is based on theory; it’s possible the real cause lies with the graphics card itself.