How to determine if system is CPU or GPU limited?

[thismafiaguy]

What is a good way to determine if I'm lacking CPU or GPU power?

The scenario for me in GTA IV(bad port, I know) appears to be CPU limited. I benchmarked the game at lowest settings and it turned out avg. 66.12 FPS. While on the highest settings it turned out avg. 65.44 FPS. I understand that is telling me the GPU isn't really breaking a sweat.

Also, why does multiplayer games with higher amount of players tend to rob more performance? I could play BF3 at the highest settings smoothly with 32 players, but not with 64.

 

[compgenie]

what are your system specs ?
Larger maps with more players stress the cpu .

 

[spawnkiller]

Cause each players needs to be calculated by your computer so 1 players vs 32 player = 32 more character to move, fire, jump, etc...

If changing detail don't do anything, generally it's a cpu limited case... but at 55-65fps make sure Vsync is disabled as it will always be at +/- 60fps with this option enabled...

 

[thismafiaguy]

I have an 8350 with a 670 and 16gigs of RAM.

And I just did the GTA IV benchmark again. At max settings it's telling me 38% CPU usage, 25% system memory, and 24% video memory. Maybe it's down to the hard drive. Or the game is just living up to the console port stupidity.

And so more players increase the stress on CPU? Not the GPU?

 

[compgenie]

Yes , more players stress the CPU , ( physics )
As for GTA IV , hard drives dont affect fps .
And I think console games are frame locked at 60 fps .
It might be the console port.
Test other games and see if even their fps is lacking.

 

[thismafiaguy]

Best answer selected by thismafiaguy.