What Bottleneck happen to me?!
What Bottleneck happen to me?!
I don’t know how to make my question but let’s begin.
I look at various things but the issue still confuses me. Is it the graphics card being the limiting factor when certain games raise CPU usage? Or is it a CPU bottleneck?
Recently, I notice very high CPU usage on my processor during some new games. I have a Ryzen 1600 and a GTX 1060 with 3GB of memory.
I understand that the Ryzen 1600 should work well with that graphics card, which is a good setup for gaming. However, I’m puzzled about why CPU usage spikes so much—like in Assassins Creed Odyssey, my processor reaches 90%. This game is extremely demanding on the GPU, needing many cores, but the main demand is still the GPU. Can my processor keep up or is it being punished?
This isn’t just happening in Odyssey; I’ve seen similar high CPU usage in other games, not just at 90%.
The game is known to require a lot of processing power, which explains why your CPU is being used heavily. There shouldn't be any issues here; I use a GTX 780 (which matches your 1060) and a Ryzen 1600.
I understand it depends on the game or app, but I provide a clear example and question to explain why my CPU usage rises on Odyssey and new games. Is the graphics card causing this because it can't handle them? I'm planning to buy an RTX 2060 and want to know if it's a good purchase and whether high CPU usage will continue.
There is a link between CPU usage and bottlenecks, as shown in the video. On an 8700k, using RTX 2080 and RTX 2080TI consumes slightly more than RTX 2060 and RTX 2070.
Technically it varies by game and your settings. But with your CPU, the graphics card is likely the cause unless you're aiming for over 120 FPS or using Ashes of the Benchmark.
A game must handle all its functions—player input, network management (if needed), physics (unless offloaded to the GPU), AI, and more—before graphics can be drawn on the screen. Graphics are the final step because they must reflect the current state of the game world. If the CPU takes longer than the desired frame time, graphics performance will fall short of expectations. For example, if the CPU spends an average of 20ms processing game logic, the expected minimum frame time is 20ms (or 50 FPS). Measuring this accurately usually requires debugging tools or direct reporting from the game.
Regarding CPU usage, it’s visible in tools like Task Manager, but determining it can be challenging. If the CPU is fully utilized while the GPU remains under 100%, identifying the issue becomes more complex. If the game doesn’t generate enough threads to keep the CPU busy, the CPU will never reach full capacity. At this stage, performance depends heavily on the efficiency of each individual core.
In the video, higher-end cards show slightly greater CPU usage, but the CPU still plays a crucial role in instructing the GPU what to do. The more frames the GPU produces, the more often the CPU must intervene.