Is my cpu bottlenecking my system?

TheViking0086 · Oct 9, 2015

I noticed while playing AAA games (like gta v, mad max and far cry 4) and cpu intensive games,I was getting sub optimal performance and some pretty good frame drops. I plan on upgrading my rig in a couple of months. Is my cpu bottlenecking my system? If not, what should I upgrade to fix
it?

I was going to upgrade to a Amd fx 8320 and overclock the hell out of it (around 4.8ghz), get an Asus crosshair formula-z mobo and a corsair h110i gtx cpu cooler, but i still want input to make sure i'm not looking in the wrong place.

Thank you!

Current Specs:
Gpu: Amd r9 295x2 (8gb)
Cpu: Amd FX 6300 (@4ghz, soon to be 4.2ghz)
Mobo: Gigabyte 78lmt-usb3
Ram: 4x4gb crucial ballistixs sport
Cpu cooler: coolermaster hyper 212 evo
Psu: Evga supernova g2 1000w
Case: Corsair obsidian 750d
Storage: (1x) samsung ssd 120g for os, (2x) wd 1tb hdds

photonboy · Oct 9, 2015

Yes.
It will however VARY significantly by the game from almost NOTHING to over 40% bottleneck.

In Tomb Raider for example there's little benefit getting a better CPU but other games (some MMO's with large maps included) can see for example 40FPS average where you'd get closer to 60FPS.

In future DX12 games your CPU bottleneck is likely going to be minimal but we'll see.

*Recommended upgrade path:
1) i5/i7 4th gen or newer
(replacing the FX-6300 with FX-8320/8350 is a minimal upgrade... less costly than swapping for i5 plus motherboard and Windows but also not nearly the benefit.)

2) New GPU (preferably single GPU with 6GB or more such as a future NVidia Pascal with better than 980Ti performance)

*To be CLEAR you have two issues:
#1 - CPU bottleneck (varies by game), and
#2 - Crossfire issues (possible stutter/smoothness issues)

Summary:
That's the ORDER I'd go with. Replace the guts of your system, and then the GPU (unless all done at once).

Other:
Try running some games with CROSSFIRE DISABLED and see how it compares. Sometimes it's better to have a SMOOTHER experience (possibly dropping a few quality settings) rather than have a higher frame rate with stuttering.

ShadyHamster · Oct 9, 2015

You are better off upgrading to an i5/i7 if you plan on buying a new motherboard anyway.
As tea urchin said, any AMD cpu is going to bottleneck that card regardless of the overclock.

photonboy · Oct 9, 2015

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/57615-amd-vishera-fx-6300-fx-4300-review-12.html

This is only a couple games, but it's informative. Note that for Skyrim/DX9/1080p:

FX-6300 is 49.7FPS
FX-8350 is 55.5FPS
i5-3570K is 71.4FPS

I've seen a lot of games that looked like that. In Deus Ex HR it's similar. In Dirt 3 which is more GPU intensive there's much less CPU bottlenecking.

Other:
AMD DX11 drivers really SUCK. They use a lot of CPU power. So when you are trying to run CROSSFIRE it only gets worse.

The above isn't always obvious in benchmarks because we usually use a high-end Intel CPU. So upgrading to an Intel CPU would make a LARGER DIFFERENCE than some benchmarks might indicate (because the much more powerful Intel CPU might not bottleneck things even with the added processing time of the AMD drivers compared to NVidia drivers).

Some games have shown a 20% loss caused by the AMD drivers alone (analysis of bottleneck points, total CPU usage of driver etc, and/or comparison to NVidia relative performance... it's not hard to figure out... also comparing DX12 to DX11 performance for the AoS benchmark is informative... DX12 looks great because DX11 drivers sucked not because DX12 was so much better.)

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