CPU Bottlenecking GPU?

Question

At the moment I have these specs:

• BIOSTAR Group, A770E3 motherboard

• CPU: Processor AMD Athlon(tm) II X3 450 Processor, 3200 Mhz, 3 Core(s), 3 Logical Processor(s)

• RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 12GB (3 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600

• Video Card: MSI N660TI PE 2GD5/OC GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 (Overcharge version that can be overclocked a lot)

At some games, my FPS is way below what it should be (less than 50). Other people with the same video card have 60+ FPS. Is my CPU slowing down my FPS completely?

Answer 1

Framerate can be affected by a lot of things. Antivirus applications, screen size, network latency... according to Tom's that card has a low end framerate in Crysis 3 of around 30FPS and a high-end of 58FPS. If you're showing the framerate on screen that might also slow down the actual framerate (also depending on the game and the complexity of the shaders). The processor shouldn't have much of an impact since that's why these vid cards are so beefy (they do most of the processing).

Make sure the card and case have plenty of ventilation. Once they start to overheat they tend to slow down too.

Answer 2

some games are developed in a way which rely more on GPU and some which rely on CPU.

yes, I agree with the person above as there are several factors which might be running parallel along with the game. You should cross check all the programs and services running behind and make sure your Hard Disk Drive (HDD) is defragmented to make sure you get the optimum performance.

one more thing, as you said that you doubt that it might be a bottleneck for your GPU, then I would like to say that its quite hard to find out which hardware GPU or CPU is a bottleneck for the other. It runs on a global rule, more the power, more the performance

Bottleneck in these cases can only be stated when there is a mix of a low end with a high end configuration. for example, ATi HD 6670 with a Core i7. This is because the frequency at which i7 works is quite faster than of the 6670. The money could be wisely spent on a configuration like 7750 and i5, as this combination would churn out more power.

To stay out of the Bottleneck area, always buy equal level of CPU-GPU configuration.

You can check out www.tomshardware.com for a hierarchy chart which will be very helpful for you.

Answer 3

Yes, your CPU can't run most of newest games at high quality with high FPS.
Closing all the programs and services will NOT help you too (yes, you'll a little more FPS, but not all what you want). It's because new games require more powerful CPUs (especially they need it for game physics), and your Athlon is not so powerful for todays games.

Go and check your CPU and GPU in Futuremark's Game Requirements Checker.
I've checked it and your CPU can run 71% of games with "recommended quality".