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Does CPU matter when gaming at 4K? There has been common wisdom floating around the PC gaming space that CPUs don't matter much when gaming at higher resolutions. And while from a certain perspective this is true, I think that in realistic use cases it is much less true.
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never sekk in java, prices is joke, like you give it for free.
I like your videos but this is complete miss without DLSS results to compare. You just make an educated assumption. But DLSS is not free performance. It still impacts GPU's performance. I am not saying you are wrong, I just can't say you are right. And I can't test it myself as I don't have 2 CPUs. It would be nice for you, if you have 2 CPUs to make a follow-up video where you get same PC, different GPU and test one scene for native/upscalled. Than we could clearly see proportional impact of using DLSS.
@@ingamgoduka57 Late April Fools comment? UE and Unity are literally the two most CPU-limited engines out there, with tons of other issues like #stutterstruggle. 😄
But GPUs are miles better in running Physics just use Nvidia PhysX which is awesome & cross platform. But modern game developers are not using PhysX which is a missed opportunity. Rockstar games have their own GPU based Physic Engine called Euphoria its been used from GTA4 to their latest games. You can also use compute shaders for some physics but modern game developers are lazy. The only thing that kills CPUs is highpoly animated characters, too many different materials & shaders. But modern good game developers use shader vertex animation for NPCs which only uses GPU & change into skinned mesh when you start interacting with the NPCs GTA to Spiderman NPC. Cyberpunk implement same thing in their updates which drastically improved performance. Capcom must fix or ditch their game engine.
CPU handle your 1. Render targets 2. Physic related 3. NPC AI related 4. Date streaming related CPU definitely matters even at 4K gaming. you will get stutter or worse 1% low if CPU can't handle those things well.
CPU = Handles the gameplay or game feel. GPU = How pretty your game looks. I take gameplay over graphics any day, so i always overspend on CPUs.
But GPUs are miles better in running Physics just use Nvidia PhysX which is awesome & cross platform. But modern game developers are not using PhysX which is a missed opportunity. Rockstar games have their own GPU based Physic Engine called Euphoria its been used from GTA4 to their latest games. You can also use compute shaders for some physics but modern game developers are lazy. The only thing that kills CPUs is highpoly animated characters, too many different materials & shaders. But modern good game developers use shader vertex animation for NPCs which only uses GPU & change into skinned mesh when you start interacting with the NPCs GTA to Spiderman NPC. Cyberpunk implement same thing in their updates which drastically improved performance.
@@ingamgoduka57 Nvidia PhysX, even on Nvidia, do not run everything on the GPU. I know this is hard to believe for many but is the truth, I know this for two reasons, one I was a old Ageia PhysX user, before Nvidia bought it (meaning I add a Ageia PPU...) and I'm a game developer (a modder to be exact) my self for more than 20 years now and I have worked with PhysX (and other physics engines). Nvidia passed this wrong idea about what PhysX can really do, on purpose, just to sell you more GPU's and they won, because the majority of people/gamers, are totally mistaken about what GPU PhysX acceleration really does in games. In reality the only physics a GPU can accelerate, in real games, is the non gameplay impacting physics. Meaning soft body physics like, cloth movement and destruction, liquids, dynamic fog effects, particle based physics, ex. glass breaking peace's or similar effects and rigid body objects, that can't affect the AI or the player, in any meaningful way. Physics that can affect the AI or the player, meaning those that can kill/block the AI or the Player, is always run on the CPU, no matter what. For example, rigid body objects that you can pickup, with a gravity gun like in HL2 and shoot at NPC's to kill them, that is always run on CPU. Bullet detection/collision for shooters, is always run on the CPU. Collision detection for AI navigation, is run on the CPU. Collision detection for audio, is run on CPU. Ray tracing for gameplay, is run on CPU, etc. There's plenty of physics, in real games that exclusively run on CPU's, even on Nvidia, because there's no other way. Yes Nvidia has demos, where they have GPU's, running a bunch of rigid body objects around that look just like those moving around in games, but those demos, have zero AI, is all visual flare, the minute you put AI in the scene and the physics objects need to hurt the AI the physics have to switch to the CPU. And just for those that may wonder, this was true with the Ageia PPU as well, in reality the PPU was just a low power ASIC, with a custom processor with a bunch of tiny cores, very similar to a GPU.
Also the more amount of unique NPCs in a game, the higher the CPU load
Analogy to understand the relation between CPU and GPU: - GPU = orange - CPU = orange juicer - Objective: get quickly the highest amount of juice from the orange (highest possible FPS) = get the biggest possible orange (higher GPU) but don't forget that the best orange juicers (better CPUs) are the ones that get more juice from the same orange and avoid the worst orange juicers that can't even penetrate the orange (very low CPUs).
Let me just pair a Pentium with a 4090. It will be awesome.
I just checked up the prices of them... oh boy, they arent even cheaper than a 12400F and have lower clockspeeds to boot xD
Amen brother
As one wise Al Yankovich once said, "it's all about the Pentiums!"
glorious 4K at 1 FPS
😂
Yup, just upgraded from a 2070 Super to a 4070 Super with the intention of playing at 4K and after booting up Cyberpunk I realized that my Ryzen 3600 was clearly holding back my GPU. I decided to do a full upgrade to a 7600 system and now everything's alright. Turns out ray tracing takes a big hit on the CPU, even if you're playing at 4K
I agree. I had 3600 as well and it's not a very good CPU to play with ray tracing effects. I'm still using 2070super and even it was getting bottlenecked by 3600 for raytracing. Now I'm using 13900K and it's buttery smooth.
How is 4070 super holding in 1440p IAM planing to buy one but kind of nervous
@@EliteGamingG786 You can just... look up benchmarks online...
LOL even a 7600 isn't good enough
Yes but the good news is that a 7600 can max out GPU at 4k. While at 1440p or 1080p, a 7800x3d will do a better job.
Very well explained. Thank you very much for helping me understand this issue better. It's why I'm a member of your channel. I'm happy and proud to support such stellar work. I appreciate you🙂.
Especially the false narrative from NVIDIA that when you set resolution to 4K and enable DLSS you still play at 4K.
@@zzavatski Well.... yeah, but this is the fiction *everybody* is supporting, because (apparently) it is impossible to make hardware that will display games with any kind of effects in 4k at a decent speed for a reasonable price. If a 4090 -- agreed by all to be the most powerful hardware currently available, the "best of the best" -- can barely hit 60 fps at 4k Ultra in Alan Wake 2; can't even make 30 fps with RT on; if the only way to get decent framerates is through software 'hacks', *yet* Nvidia _still_ charges €1800 - €2100 for the hardware.... then we have to recognize that for whatever reason, the hardware is beyond its limit and everyone is lying and saying it isn't to get as much money as possible out of the users. Because it's ridiculous to think that I would spend €2000 on hardware that literally cannot do what I'm paying for unless you lied to me *like a **_boss_* .
Again they do it on purpose because in reality you don't need a super high end GPU to play 4k with high frames actually because it's about game optimization so if you optimize a game well enough you don't need a latest and greatest but they do it on purpose to make you buy the latest GPU so in a sense they work together because if games was so good optimize to run 4k 144 on a 1080ti for example people wouldn't have a reason to upgrade for does that mainly game it's sad but it's the truth@@hollisbostick2872
Well i have a 4090 and went from a 5800x3D to a 7800x3D, my average fps stayed the same at 4k pretty much, but it was MUCH more stable.
Good 3 steps to use when building a *gaming* PC: 1. Pick a GPU according to the fps and resolution you like to play at in your games of choice. 2. Pick a CPU that achieves *at least* that same framerate. 3. Scale both to your budget while also considering longevity.
Can you even explain what "cpu according to the framerate you like to play at" means? What would you recommend to a person who "likes" 60 fps? Or 144 fps?
2 steps when building a PC 1. Buy the fastest CPU in the market 2. Buy the fastest GPU in the market
@@aohjiiYou forgot the first step Step 1: Get a job
Respectfully disagree, the frames per second you might see on a chart will almost certainly not be your real world user experience. By the time you have a bunch of programs running in the system tray, a browser with 20 tabs open, discord and anything else you might have running in the background this will not be your experience, especially if you're like me and watching a 1080p or even 4k movie on a second screen while gaming. Typically I would recommend buying a CPU that is more powerful than you think you need, at the moment I'd say 8 cores minimum and scaling the GPU based upon your budget after that, temper your expectations and if you're not happy with your parts choice for your budget then wait and save more. It's always better to have a CPU that's more powerful than the GPU for so many reasons, the smoothness of operation is what you will notice day to day, gaming or not.
@@mertince2310basically he just means you have to balance your system. The gpu should almost always be your limiting factor in gaming. Hence why you spend 50% of your budget on the gpu. you choose the cpu that will not be the limiting factor. Obviously a 12400f and a 4090 is crazy. The cpu is the limit. Something like the 14700k is much more in line with the power of the 4090 and is a good balance.
I saw a person pair a ryzen 5 1600x with a RX 7900xtx and argue that there was no CPU bottleneck.
Oof, Zen 1 was really bad for gaming. Zen 2 was better, but I think Zen 3 is when AMD actually started competing with Intel in gaming CPUs.
I mean it's very possible in a few games at 4K Native like Doom Eternal or even RDR2, but the combo isn't very reliable😅.
@@atirta777 I don't think those two games are very good examples. Neither of them is GPU-intensive enough relative to their CPU usage, and I expect an RX 7900 XTX would still be significantly bottlenecked by a Ryzen 5 1600X. I'd pick a different example like Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing enabled, which is so GPU-intensive at 4K (especially for AMD GPUs, which aren't great at ray tracing) that an RX 7900 XTX actually _wouldn't_ be bottlenecked by a Ryzen 5 1600X.
@@nathangamble125 Doom and RDR2 are good examples don't you think? The R5 1600X drives nearly 200fps on Eternal and I doubt 7900XTX does better than that with maxed RT on. Same with RDR2, about 90fps and 7900XTX doesn't reliably hit that at 4K Max. Also, we're talking about playable experiences here, which isn't the case with Cyberpunk 4K Native + RT on the 7900XTX.
Tell that person that he can upgrade to a 5700X3D for the cheap.
If only you can feel the shiver that went down my spine when you mentioned DLSS. That realisation that kicked my brain to high gear and I was like...Holy timbers, he's right! If you're playing at 4k with DLSS quality, you're actually playing at 1440p.... You're more CPU bound than you thought.
What is an obvious thing to many to others it’s not 🎉
I've been saying this for years 😂.
Not to mention there is almost no reason to not run DLSS quality at 4K. It's where it shines the most
True, but youre good with a 4090 with even a 12600K or 5800X3D if you were gonna use upscaling. Its why with a 12700K im not really caring what new CPUs come out and havent cared about anything newer. Im more than fine with my 4070 Ti at 1440p, and id be fine with anything rivaling a 4090 in the future cause id realistically be moving to 4K in that case. Its complicating. If i were gonna buy a 4090 level GPU for 1440p in the future cause thats just how much harder it is to run 1440p max settings, id honestly just move to a used 14700K or 13700K, overclock and time the ram and be fine probably. Not planning on buying a new CPU+motherboard combo realistically till AM6 and whatever Intel has to over at the time.
Been pointing this out for a while especially to channels like Hardware Unboxed who have been at the forefront of 'CPU doesn't matter at 4K' nonsense because that reviewer personally doesn't like to use upscaling and only plays Fortnite.
If you wanna play any RPG games with open world NPCs like animals, townspeople, or strategy games with million units and calculations, CPU is almost always the bottleneck
True. Yesterday i tried Witcher 3 on both dx11 and dx12 on My i5 12600K, RTX 4070 different setting, resolutions and still have large frame drops on Novigrad.
@@grynadevilgearxd2442Witcher 3 next gen runs really badly because they hacked together a dx12 layer instead of making it run natively. If you try the Classic version you will have 0 framedrops in busy areas with your system.
@@Ravix0fFourHornWhat if we use Vulkan instead?
Yeah I know😀 because i'm playing on dx11. I just mean that Novigrad is more CPU bound with that many NPC.
@@grynadevilgearxd2442 nah witcher3 npc barely have any logic,they legit just block of texture that have 1 line and move around or never,witcher get high fps even on a 4core cpu xd,now rdr2 is a better test,days gone is also heavy cpu limited in town my 4core can barely output 30-40fps
i honestly love the way you do your videos. the moving dan to point at things is cute and humorous
real
Core 2 Duo should pair well with the 50 series.
The best CPU to pair with an RTX 5090 will obviously be an Intel 8080.
Joke aside, that CPU was the greatest I've had. It was a huge leap in terms of x86 architecture and not overly expensive.
Great video, as a hardware enthusiast I've known about this for many years but its really hard to articulate it as well as you did here. Going to bookmark this one for future use so I don't have to try and explain it.
Going from a 9400 to a 12700k doubled my fps in certain titles at 4k.
Is not a fair comparison, the 12700K kinda is a mistake by Intel, it is way too good.
@@saricubra2867 Well, whenever you make such a jump in CPU power and then add 'in certain titles', the response is automatically: no shit Sherlock. The 9400 doesn't even have multithreading. It's 6 cores and the same 6 threads. Plugging a Ryzen 1600 into those Starfield charts would probably show the 7800X3D to be miles ahead as well.
? Is not that amazing, the 12600k is way better in that regard since it almost matches the 12700k in games for way less, in fact he should've gone with that one instead since he wasted money. @@saricubra2867
In short: - The CPU can achieve a mostly fixed framerate across all resolutions - The framerate the GPU can achieve scales inversely with the resolution - This is not set in stone, but dependent on the game and the settings - The lowest between the two is the framerate you'll end up with, what causes generally a GPU bottleneck in higher resolutions and a CPU bottleneck in lower resolutions - This can easily be seen in GPU benchmarks, where you'll see the GPU achieve the same framerates between 1080p and 1440p in some games, or not scale proportionally to the drop in resolution - A third limiter is the game engine, which in some cases, mostly older engines, can't achieve higher framerates than a certain cap - Upscalers like DLSS, FSR and XeSS render at lower resolutions than the target resolution, providing close to the framerate of a lower resolution - This makes it more likely you'll hit a CPU bottleneck when using upscaling even at high monitor resolutions - BONUS: Geforce cards drop the driver overhead on the CPU, while Radeon cards keep them on the GPU. This means that with lower end CPU's, there is a significant difference in performance between Geforce GPU's and Radeon GPU's since the CPU bottleneck is more severe when paired with a Geforce card due to that driver overhead
TY bro
I heard that the NVIDIA GPU driver offloads all the work to only a single CPU core, while the AMD GPU driver can distribute the driver workload to multiple CPU cores. Thus, you especially need a high single core performance CPU when you use a NVIDIA GPU. Someone please confirm, what I said.
- Remember, if you have 60 hz DISPLAY, then DISPLAY is your 60 fps bottleneck, no matter how high fps your CPU and GPU can produce.
excellent post! 🎉
Very short 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Just think of it as two different pipelines: CPU instructions and GPU instructions. Depending on the rendering engine and how the game was programmed, the balance of instructions sent to the CPU and GPU varies. For most games, changing resolution will mostly impact GPU load.
it all depends on how much RGB you have
none, which means my 5800x3d is dogshit
@@brunoutechkaheeros1182 put RGB on your cooler.
Remember if you are gpu bottlenecked you can always just use upscalers and lower graphic settings. The same doesn't apply to a cpu bottleneck
I decrease the CPU render resolution to put more of the resolution on the GPU instead.
@@christophermullins7163 are you talking about draw distance? never heard of cpu render resolution before draw distance helps a lot for cpu and gpu but you will still get lag spikes a lot because of the pop in from draw distance
very informative and practical. I generally recommend to my friends that CPU doesn't have to be the best for their build, but I always ask them what their resolution is, their target "smoothness" (most people are not familiar with fps) and the games they wanna play. So most of the time I would recommend a mid-range CPU like a ryzen 5 or i5 + a decent midrange GPU for 1080/1440p. Sometimes I'd even sell them to the upscaling tech available for each side as well as show them that some games have beautiful raytracing BUT I always make sure to let them know that it's not always a good idea to crank up the settings and make them consider optimizing settings.
an outlier to the 4k argument is MMOs.... in MMOs, where a bunch of players are around each other, cpu definitely matters.... 3d chips really shine in those scenarios. my minimum fps in wow in valdrakken in 4k doubled when i switched from a 3700x to a 5800x3d. i get 80fps in 4k native max settings in city.
U should fine tune that even more with 14600k and a 7900xtx i get 150 to 180 fps in vald at 4k but the thing with vald is it artificialy limits gpu and cpu usage im always sitting at like 60% gpu and like 20% cpu usage in the emerald dream i get 90% + gpu usage and like 400+ fps at 4k
@@Billyshatner88Just get a 7800X3D which would blow both of them out of the water. Lol. In all seriousness, if the hardware you’re playing on is serving you well then no need to change it. The PC community STRUGGLES with this notion and continues to complain why they’re in debt.
Yeah, had a similar experience from the exact same upgrade in flight sim titles.
@@Billyshatner88 psst... You're CPU bound. That's what being CPU bound looks like. If your framerate isn't hitting max and your GPU utilisation isn't at 100% that means you're CPU bound.
Yes CPU performance is all about raw data. Especially in multiplayer where you have to calculate 15-20 players like in a WoW raid that tanks the CPU hard while in a singleplayer game everything is predetermined the CPU doesn't have to do anything there.
When a game is very CPU intensive, that's applies to any resolution. Higher resolutions have close to no impact on CPU performance. I said ''close to no impact'' because as the resolution increases, the framebuffer size increases, and that requires more memory bandwidth for transferring data between the CPU and VRAM. That increased data transfer can ''technically'' lead to slightly higher CPU usage. However, that increase is generally not significant compared to the overall workload of the GPU, which handles the bulk of the rendering process.
Applies more so to lower resolutions***
@@christophermullins7163not at all. There is no difference in resolution. If you are playing at 60 fps, vou requirement will be the same regardless of resolution. People just say stupid things like this because they think "lower res = more fps = more CPU demand", but they fail to realize the CPU requirement increases due to higher fps, not lower resolution. They are not the same thing
@@meurer13danielHigher FPS means that the CPU has to handle a shorter game cycle therefore processing more inputs and outputs more quickly.
@@saricubra2867 I said that "CPU matters less at 4k than lower resolutions" and after watching this video, Daniel confirmed that my statement is accurate. The title is clickbaity AF. The point of the video is to say that when we say "play at 4k" we are more likely upscaling but that does not invalidate the original statement at all. "Slower CPUs have less of a performance hit at 4k" "CPU performance matters less at higher resolution" are irrefutably factual statements and Daniel himself knowd that without any doubt in my mind. It is all about the way we word the question and assuming we are using upscaling and lower graphics settings etc. it cannot be argued that anything I said is wrong. You'd be greatly benefited from trying to understand why that is the case if you still haven't realized that it is true. Go ahead and argue something irrelevant like Daniels video.. no one said anything about upscaling guys.. it's called clickbait.
@@christophermullins7163 But you are making a completely different statement. He didn't confirm your statement. This entire video is digging into the nuance of why cpu performance *looks* (emphasis mine) like it doesn't matter at 4k but it actually does. The issue isn't that slower cpus doesn't matter at 4k but more so that you're gpu limited if you just slap on max setting and called it a day. It will matter if you adjust down the settings and use up-scaling to reach your potential max framerate which is determined by what cpu you have. Most people aren't playing at max setting on 4k. It's like you heard the phrase "you're kind of right" and just stopped watching after that. You can argue all you want about how you're right but you actually aren't because you're making a statement based on a faulty conclusion. The data from the video above us literally tells us that you can be cpu limited at 4k and it does matter what cpu you have especially if you're reducing your gpu bottleneck by paring down the settings and resolution. No one in their right mind would recommend pairing a 4080 with something like a 2600x "because cpu doesn't matter at 4k" because we all know that it does bottleneck.
It's great to see a selection of videos explaining the connection between CPU/GPU and framerate at different resolutions come out in the past few days. It works to test CPUs with nothing but a 4090 for comparison and likewise GPUs with a 7800X3D for consistent benchmarks, it doesn't help people trying to match components in an upgrade or on a strict budget when the midrange CPU wastes GPU power and vice versa.
Thank you for this explanation- I am one of many who struggle with settings and tweaks - more education is needed on topics like this.
Awesome content as always @Daniel Owen. I build alot of PCs and haven't considered this perspective, so thank you for bringing it to my attention!!
Nice video.. again. :) I can absolutely recommend the videos from Gamers Nexus regarding "GPU Busy", "Animation Error", "input lag" (Latency pipeline), "Optimization" and how GPU drivers work.. discussed with an engineers from Intel and Nvidia.
Thanks for the great explanation!
thank you for making this video, so annoying seeing so many people assume you can pair a 4090 with a 5600 and expect the same results as a 7800x3d at 1440p+ 🤣
I saw a person pair a zen 1 ryzen 5 1600x with a RX 7900xtx. They argued there is no bottleneck.
@@ZackSNetworkwow that is insane. I can understand a 5800x3d or something but a 1600 isn't even going to have a PCIE 4 unless you go get a new motherboard that costs 3x the CPU 💀
Why would you drop $1,000 on a gpu and not at least get a 5600 or something for $130 more lol. Even if there is "no bottleneck"
They are the people crying why their framerates are the same on both low and max settings in certain games, and then blame it on bad optimisation lmao
People think that?
Very important vid Daniel and well explained👍
I’m glad that this isn’t in response to my post on one of these videos! 😅 I did say that CPU doesn’t matter at 4K resolution but what I really meant was the difference between CPU’s of a particular segment. I was considering a 14900K at one point and there’s the 7800x3D, but I went with a 7950x3D. The graphs for those can show different frame rates but as you mentioned it’s highly dependent on the area that you’re in in the game. Also, I doubt that I would actually be able to appreciate any kind of uplift that’s less than 5 or 10%.
@theinsfrijonds Why not upgrade to a CPU that has more than dual channel memory? When I made the switch I noticed the difference in frame pacing, but I was also able to truly multi task. It amazes me that streamers don't use workstations to game with. Yes there's a limit of what a cpu can do at 4K, but no one has put the Quad, hex, and Oct memory channel systems to the test in a public video. The cool thing is you can work and GAME at the same time with a workstation. You have enough pci-e lanes that you can run two VM at the same time and use more than one GPU.. Gaming is limited to single GPU since SLI and Xfire bit the dust. if you have another GPU you can use VT-d and pass it through a VM to run rendering., professional workloads, or a streaming for youtube/twitch/whatever box on the same system. The use of unlocked threadripper and unlocked Xeon is not well know by those that focus only on gaming.
@@michaelcarson8375You save a lot more money buying an X3D cheap instead of buying an overpriced platform with quad channel support. The extra cache is equivalent to a giant memory OC.
@@michaelcarson8375 Those processors were out of my budget. I mostly bought AMD because it's more power efficient. I do hate the fact that the memory controller in their processors is definitely worse than Intel (limited to 3000 mega transfers per channel.) Also I'm not sure that there is a motherboard where I could access the second PCI Express slot with my 4090 graphics card. It's just that huge (four physical slots taken up in space but three on the back of the case.) Good to know though that there are uses for quad channel and up. I can only imagine that channels haven't covered that due to the limited number of buyers plus the fact that it would be very expensive for them to review
@@michaelcarson8375 Because workstation cpu are focused more on doing a bunch of things well rather than having high clock speed which some games really need. You could potentially limit yourself on performance if you go for something like a threadripper or a xeon cpu. Also the price difference doesn't really make sense for a streamer when they could put that money into second pc that they use for capture and rendering, keeping a eye on chat, and so on. They cut out the overhead on streaming without sacrificing performance this way. *edit* also using a vm while gaming could potentially get you banned if you play online if you can even launch the game at all due to anti cheat detection. A lot of cheaters used to use vms to run their cheats.
@@Shadowninja1200 Excuses excuses. There are unlocked CPUs from both Intel and AMD Those systems are the true high end desktops. Dual channel cpus no matter the number of cores are not high end desktops.
Thanks for doing this I've seen way to many "CPU doesnt matter at 4K" comments over the past few years, even at 1080P I noticed a big improvement in 1% lows alone at 1080P when upgrading from an i7 8700K to 13600K (Carried over existing RTX 3070).
i'm still on a i7 8700k running at 4.8ghz with a 3060ti and i have people telling me all the time my cpu is still fine for gaming i play battlefield games all the time and helldivers 2 and it's always my cpu even when i play metro exodus this cpu is just to old now i cannot stay at 60 fps
Another great video my man. You remain one of the best KZheadrs in this space.
My favorite case of this is the original Crysis (and remastered) where on top of being super GPU heavy, it also increases more CPU-driven rendering budgets with an increase in resolution. On top of that it's also not very well multi-threaded so you basically need a 7800x3D to run a 2007 (right?) game at 4k60fps maxed out settings. I think it ends up pushing out the LOD more or something super weird the higher your resolution, so you get more CPU calls. Digital Foundry did a pretty good video on it and in the clip where they got Alex (their PC focused member) a 7800x3D to replace his 12900k they discuss Crysis specifically. But yeah, basically at 4k your CPU is less likely to be a bottleneck, but it still very much can be, and you want something at least pretty good to make sure you don't get slammed with crap frametime spikes, as CPU limited gameplay will almost always be a stuttery mess where GPU limited will be better.
Excellent video. Great insights.
This came exactly at the right time. Thank you!
@danielowentech breaks out the teacher side of him! Always great to hear your explanations! 👍🏻
I got to about 10:00 and you were going on and on, and maybe you made this point later? I tuned out. The bottom like for ANY resolution is what a person wants for fps. If I'm playing Starfield with a 4080, well, I have a 2K rig so it's great, or good enough. I prefer an avg. above 90 and a 1% low to be above 60 fps. I find that gives me a stutter free experience in open world games. But looking at a KZheadr benchmark it doesn't tell me much, because they will stick to certain settings just for consistency, but there's no way I'm playing Starfield at 4K with a 4080 UNLESS I scale down the quality to where once again my avg. fps is above 90 and my 1% is above 60, or I'm using DLSS, and using RT, DLSS is almost always going to be enabled. YES, because I'm pushing the fps back up, the CPU is going to matter. I'm not gaming at the settings HDWU had for 4K in Starfield. I'm not going to let a GPU struggle like that and give stutters from time to time. AND THIS is the point most people get wrong when they look at KZhead benchmarks and listen to a person say "at 4K they're the same". And frankly, part of this held belief has been SPREAD by different KZheadrs. And I don't need to get into what the CPU does and what the GPU does. What I can tell you is when you play a game at high fps at 4K the CPU is CERTAINLY going to matter. I do know the CPU has to pass data to the GPU before the GPU can render a different frame, otherwise it's painting the same frame, because the GPU doesn't know movement, so there is change data that the CPU has to send to the GPU to get a different frame. The CPU tracks the game. You also have to keep updating RAM. And if YOU personally like playing at 4K with 1% lows at 40 fps, well have fun with it.
Mainly game at 4k besides esports titles and just upgraded from the 5600x to the 5800x3d and it's been a big uplift. Average is only 10% to 20% higher but the 1%low is so much higher its great. Even if GPU is maxed out it still helps a lot!
Did the same change and got the same results as you, those better 1% lows make such a difference. Really wanted a 7800x3d, but factor in the price of the new ram and MB and it was 3-4 times the cost of just dropping in the 5800x3d. Shall stick with this for a while.
@@ChoppyChofYeah, the 1% lows matter just as much. Most people think average fps is all that matters.
0:01 the face you are making while pointing to what looking like a red dog rocket covering a name is priceless.
Great video...I actually changed my opinion on this a while back. In CP77 with a 5950x and a 4090 with rt max, dlss off in 4k I was getting about 40 fps, when I upgraded to a 7800x3d it uped to about 48 fps so there was a 20% increase. I was actually pretty shocked.
Awesome Video like always Hey one question should I upgrade from Rx 6750XT to 4070 Super? I have 1440 p monitor 144h 32 GB ddr5 Intel core i5 13400F 650w PSU
Of course it matters. Better cpu can provide smoother frame times
Will also handle background tasks better, plus more and more games can now take advantage of 12 or more cores, why hamstring yourself with 8?
@@mickieg1994 Because budget?
@@mickieg1994 only reason why I would go with 8 is if I’m hellbent on a x800x3D chip, but otherwise yeah the more cores the better
@@paul2609 I disagree, if the budget is that tight that you can't afford the extra £100 or so to go from 6 to 8-12, then you should seriously reconsider whether you can afford a pc at all.
@@teddyholiday8038It depends, for example, the 5900X has 12 big cores and the 12700K is hybrid. The only reason why i choose the 12700K besides the better IPC is the lack of CPU overhead (Intel thread director cleans interruptions for the main threads for any program). I wanted a X800X3D chip but they are 8 core only and they would feel like a slog when the scheduling isn't as good. Ryzen 9 5900X gets lower averages than these newer chips but 1% lows and frametimes are very, very smooth when the game is well optimized (like Cyberpunk 2077).
So basically as nearly everyone plays games at upscaled 4k instead of native, the CPU is just as important as playing at a native lower resolution.
This does make sense so I want to say thank you for sharing the knowledge! My biggest pc bottleneck currently is my checking balance
When would it be a good time to upgrade the cpu? I have a 13900k, just thinking ahead, I feel like I shouldn't have to upgrade until 16th gen intel. Still learning about PC and parts, love the videos! This one helped a lot!
One more aspect where the CPU is relevant for 4K / increasing frame-rates that Digital Foundry found (mentioned in passing in their Dragons Dogma 2 Tech Review - 19:00 - 19:27) : When CPU limited, the frame-rate in the same scene is still taking a (small) hit (~7FPS difference between 1080p and 4k as well as ~2 FPS between 1080p and 1440p) at higher resolutions. Though they didn't really test this in detail (as this was not relevant for this review) and just mentioned that they suspect this is due to this / some game(s) drawing more things in the distance while at higher resolution.
Great point on up scaling… 🎉
This is why I change GPU once every 2.5 years but CPU every 5-6 years. My monitor and the game I'm playing are actually the key reasons that cause me to upgrade my PC components. You have to find out what your CPU/GPU are actually doing before you upgrade. There are plenty of tools like MSI Afterburner, AMD Adrenaline Software monitoring, Intel PresentMon, Task Manager, etc.
you made it very clear
As someone with an 8700k and 4080 Super combo , CPU performance does absolutely matter. I'm even CPU bound in Time Spy of all things 😂 . Bit imbalanced but my old 2080ti GPU died recently , so put this GPU into my old build. Planning to upgrade to Zen 5 though soon enough ;)
The point in (my own) short words: for 4K gaming CPU performance is often not important, just because the framerates are lower, just because the gpu is maxed out. that's all. when the framerates raise, the cpu has to work again a lot more. to be futureproof, an unlimited fast CPU and GPU is needed %-). Nobody really knows, which new game will "waste" more power on the gpu or cpu. Too much just does not exist, but saving the money for a top level cpu but inserting a 4090 is just wrong. Especially with UE5engine using most of the time Raytracing on the CPU we all can find us in a state, where a faster cpu could be easily be needed. That all said with the need for intense AI npcs, just because ... why not?
would love to see someone do a video of CPU comparisons but at different DLSS/FSR presets to see the performance difference between internal resolutions upscaled by the GPU VS internal resolutions matched to displayed resolution. Most might think it's 1:1 but the extra processing done by the GPU may affect the overall performance in-game.
You're 100% on it man, I use a 7900xtx and a 5800x and play in 4k native, Ive noticed on Cyberpunk that my 5800x bottlenecks the 7900xtx when a lot is going on like in combat situations and what not. I noticed it just like how you are saying, my 1% lows tank down to the 30s while my regular fps is still in the 80s. I think the new AI for the police and NPC's has a lot to do with it, especially when you turn the crowd density to low. I usually have to play with crowd density on medium. But even watching benchmark videos of a 7800x3d with a 7900xtx the 1% lows are still just as bad, which has made me hesitant on upgrading my cpu
Great explanation
spider man remastered with ray tracing enabled is the perfect example of this. it's still very cpu influenced even at 4k.
Or to put it another way: when do you start to be GPU limited? One of the best tools for visualizing this is the Forza Horizon 5 benchmark because it shows what percentage of the time it’s limited by one vs. the other and how many FPS the CPU is managing in a given run vs. the GPU.
My last PC was put together around 2011 based around a Phenom II X6 1100T - 6 core CPU paired with a GTX 560 later upgraded to a 980. I could play something like Just Cause 3 at 1080p at decent settings at higher than console framerate between 40 and 60. Some time later, I ended up with a GTX 1080 but not that much improvement. By the end of 2018, I built a new machine based around an i7 8700K and with the same GTX 1080, Just Cause 3's framerate was much closer to solid 120fps at the same 1080p settings. So new platform new CPU I doubled / basically tripled the performance. As-of now I've replaced the GTX 1080 with a 4070 Super card and I can get that same 120fps but also running 2160P - also called 4K.
I just wanted to say thank you for the detailed and informative content. Now I don't mind watching 15+ min videos at all if it's informative. Besides that it's some content which is worth to give a try before going to bed 😂☝👍 Thanks for your effort! 🤝
Great topic.
Ive got a 4070 ti now but still have an 8700k, any cpu recommendations i play single player games like cyberpunk at 1440p with dlss.
depends how much money you are willing to spend the minimum cpu i would go for talking about intel only is i5 12400F it's much newer then the i7 8700k i also have the i7 8700k and it cannot keep up any more the i5 12400F has more instructions and newer architecture more cache the i5 12600KF is much better with 10 cores and 16 threads much higher boost clock and more cache
@@DarkSoul-pb6dv I want to keep windows 10 so I plan on avoiding newer Intel cuz the p and e cores but this does help still thx
Fly at low altitude in Microsoft Flight Simulator or DCS with a i9-12900K and an RTX 4090 and you will see your frames sink below 30fps in 4K. This also happens in Racing Sims when you have a full grid of cars. I find it hard enough to maintain just 72fps in a Pimax Crystal VR headset in DCS and MSFS2020.
I learned about this on my own tinkering with my PC like 6 years ago. A lot of people get it wrong. Heres a simple test you can do as well: if you want to know your highest FPS you can go in any game, first drop to the lowest resolution the game supports, then see what your FPS is uncapped. You can also add an upscale setting such as DLSS to further increase your FPS if you are somehow still GPU bound. 👌
Is DD2 really cpu limited? Or just badly optimized. The industry dropped the ball when the highest of the highest end cpus dip to 20-30s fps
This is very useful explanation I never quite understood what people mean when they say Cpu doesn't matter in 1440p or 4k but now I have a good idea. also a question I have a 12600k with ddr4 because I was able to get them for dirt cheap compared to 13/14th gen or am5 and I plan on buying a 4070 or 7800xt/7900gre is this Cpu enough for me at 1440p ( mostly single player games ) or should I just get a lower end gpu ? bcuz i specifically saved on the platform to get a better Gpu.
since you saved money on a cheaper platform i would go as high as possible for gpu assuming you have the power supply for it. that gpu may end up slightly limted in some games, but 12600k is still a respectable processor. later on down the line you dont want to be in a situation where you want a cpu upgrade but your gpu then cant keep up with the new cpu.
@@AliceAliveOfficial77 yeah thanks that's what I thought
Wow I never thought like this before. Very interesting.
Not to mention that the CPU has a major impact on system snappiness and load times even if you're 100% GPU bound while gaming. I have a TitanXp (1080 TI equivalent) paired with an R7 5800X and I'm itching for a CPU upgrade even though my GPU is 3 years older than my CPU. Additionally, the CPU can get interrupted by background tasks or if the game has to load in assets and that can come through as stuttering even in GPU bound scenarios.
Very nice explanation. Yeah a CPU can only make so many draw calls per second given its workload. Faster CPU means more draw calls per second. The GPU is always waiting on draw calls from the CPU, except for like with frame generation, or if it's under 100% load and has to queue or drop them.
How does it not with frame generation enabled? You still get "more frames" when you're completely GPU bound right before you enable frame generation.
@@pengu6335 Yes the extra frames are interpolated on the GPU. They are not based on draw calls from the CPU.
Thank you for addressing this! I would see so many comments just like the ones you were talking about. Hard to argue with misinformation
Good points! In many cases, you feel the difference between CPUs in 1% and.1% low. Also, most people don't play on a clean test bench, so in reality, the CPU is probably going to be hit with random request whie gaming. The better your CPU, the better it can cope with stuff like that.
Will Dragons Dogma 2 play better on a Ryzen 9 5900X or a Ryzen 7 5700X3D ?
once you factor in VR and simracing it's different. i have a reverb g2 , which in theory has 4K res, but having a better cpu would still improve framrate in games like ac competizione and ams2
Really interesting video, been waiting for one of these. I game at 4k with a 4070 super and a 5600x, always been in my mind to upgrade the cpu but I get such good performance I have not chosen to. My gpu is always around 98% ish and cpu mid 70%, I run DLLS quality in every game max settings and get 100-120 fps. I’m in heaven and just don’t see a 58003xd making my experience better, if I did I’d just buy one
Just paired a 4070Ti Super, with a 10 year old Xeon E5-2695 v3 ('all-core' turbo unlock bios mod) and a 7 year old 1440p G-sync Acer XB270HU and MW3 max setting is 130-140 so a perfectly balanced 'triad'. (*64GB ECC, 1TB NVMe & 1.2TB FusionIO) When the 5090 arrives in a few months, my 7800x3D & 4090 will go to the misses and her (*this) PC will go to my 11 year old mainly for Minecraft RTX :)
I have a Ryzen 7 5700G paired with an RX 7800xt will my gpu be help back trying to play games at 120fps ?
At 1080p? Yes. Probably in 90% of the games you play this system is cpu bottlenecked. But 120 fps is super game specific, can't talk about that in general. At 1440p, meh, probably not.
@@Chrissy717 so I’m just bottlenecked at 1080p ? I’ll be fine at 1440p and higher ?
this is exactly my case now, i have r5 3600 and rx 6800 combo, i play at 4k 60fps with fsr on quality most games, in very crowded places in many games like cities or forests i get cpu bottleneck, my gpu can run it but cpu cant hold on since i play at 1440p cause of fsr usage even at 4k, and its kinda sad, cause gpu cant handle native 4k in many games so its 40 50 fps, and with fsr cpu is too slow again getting 50 fps still below my playable 60fps. so im stuck now, need to upgrade to 5800x3d probably, but my psu cant handle that and i need to upgrade more and more parts to make it work ;\ so im balancing settings to achieve 60 fps at 4k + fsr
R5 5600 does not bottleneck 6800 on 1440p a very lil bit at 1080p
@@mrshinobigaming8447 they said r5 3600
@@mrshinobigaming8447 i have 3600 not 5600
Also graphic settings are well scalable in most of the games while CPU load settings are way more limited. And, most important to me - good CPU will usually provide better 1% and 0.1% lows which are the most important metrics perception-wise
Good job Daniel! I brute forced Dogma so no issues. I recorded it on my channel with 4 pawns in the city.
There are a of misunderstandings among gamers about how things works. I also came across some posts that suggest turning on ultra textures even on weak GPU just because you have high vram. According to them it does not affect the performance but it absolutely does. Mid range GPU come with limited memory bandwidth.
Well explained
Make a video about DLSS 3.7 please
Intel 4004 could pair well with rtx 4090 or 5090. The Intel 4004 is a 4-bit central processing unit (CPU) released by Intel Corporation in 1971. Sold for US$60 (equivalent to $450 in 2023), it was the first commercially produced microprocessor, and the first in a long line of Intel CPUs.
seems powerful... i will get one
This feels clickbaity. The statement "CPU matters less at 4k" is just as valid as it was before this video.
It’s not
@@od1sseas663 make an argument numb nuts..
@@od1sseas663 make an argument then numb nuts. It shows ignorance to think or say that higher resolution does not remove CPU bottleneck. It's irrefutable that it does.
I agree. He intentionally avoid putting an actual benchmark @4k cos the negligible difference wouldnt suit his narrative
@@Centrioless That’s the point. It’s not a cpu benchmark anymore when you’re testing 4K, it’s a GPU benchmark. 🤦🤦
Usually I look at 1% lows when judging a PC build, not the average frame rate. To an extent that’s personal preference, but anyway: I’ve noticed that a lot of higher end CPUs have better 1% lows even given the same average frame rate. Sometimes you also get a boost from faster memory, storage, and higher VRAM GPUs, and those tend to heavily influence my purchasing decisions.
Every day is a school day! A lot of people including me often think they know more than they actually do. Being wrong about something isn’t a bad thing as long as you learn from it. Great video
Driver overhead is an issue with Nvidia. In the 7600 vs 5600 video, the 4090 was barely ahead of a 6950xt on the 7600
I'm an i7-12700K owner, what is driver overhead? (a joke).
The rule of thumb assumes you're talking about CPUs of the same generation. You can see the rule of thumb even holds up decently well between CPU generations, and this is one of the few games known to abuse CPUs.
So after certain level of power of CPU (cores and speed to handle info) at 4k does not matter yf you put a better CPU the performance won’t go up but if you put a lower CPU you will get impacted due to bottleneck?
I got a 12700k paired with a 4080 and I am very happy playing at 4k. I get about 90 to 100 plus fps in certain games. It all depends on what type of frames you want and what type of cooling you will have.
it's all about understanding where (and what) the bottleneck is. Increasing gpu load either with resolution or higher settings to the point that the gpu becomes the slowest component of your system, at that point cpu does not matter. That point is obviously different on an 7800x3d vs an 5600, on an 3090 vs a 1060. And of course that point is not a global value, but depends on how a specific game utilizes cpu and gpu (or ram and vram or even drive speed). I usually find the opposite to be true, people seeing cpu gaming benchmarks (correctly done at the lower res with lowest graphic settings) and thinking that the x cpu is going to give them that much fps gains in 4k rt ultra, when they would gain a lot more with a gpu upgrade.
Waiting for new cpus to update my board ram and cpu. Playing 4k with a rtx4090 paired with a ryzen 5700x on AM4 definetely can feel some stuters often in some more heavier games! Still a pleasant experience but cpu upgrade will improve it for sure!
Great video
+1000! Lets play games like Cities Skyline or Microsoft Flight Simulator at any resolution : we willl see that CPU does matter.
With a 7900xtx and 7800x3d i was gpu limited at ultrawide 1440p, i cant speak to city skylines, but at least for mfs2020 youll be gpu limited at 4k
Its kinda infurating that there is no comprehensive comparison of cpu performance on 4x/simulation games. Its always AAA stuff, id like to know how much a 7800x3d would improve my ticks per second on vic 3.
I bought my i7-12700K for PS3 emulation (besides for work), those games that you mentioned aren't as demanding.
Im in this scenario. Currently have a ryzen 3700x paired with RTX2080 and planning to upgrade to Rx7900XT. Im playing sim games at 4k, 60hz monitor. Wondering if the CPU bottleneck will be a problem and if a 5800X3D upgrade is a smart move. What do you guys think ?
@@BlueSatt A nice match i guess but that gear lifespan will be a bit shorter
The easiest way to explain how "bottleneck" work's, it's just to understand, that you have two possible fps limiters it's CPU and GPU(if we aren't talking about RAM). They are fairly independent of each other. Both of them can reach a strict amount of frames they can call or draw, that's all. If your CPU can't call more than 60 fps, you simply can't go above that without upgrading CPU itself. The same situation appends GPU cases. I believe it's the best knowledge what I've got about 8 years ago that drove away confusion of building PC theory.
could say, it doesn't scale linearly. some things will be the same load on cpu regardless of resolution.
Well done, Sir!
Im planning on pairing a 7700x and a 4080 super at 1440p will i be fine?
95% of the time yes
@@thewakly i literally only play cod mw3
So my question is this: is 5700x3d better when upscaled from 1080p up Vs newer non-3D chips such as 7600x ?
I have an 11400F. Honestly are its days numbered? I’m trying to hold out for AM6 if possible.
So, 5600 + 4080 show trivial difference from 78x3d + 4080 at 4k, what you want to prove?
Using your face camera and finger as a cursor is funny and great. Please do it more often :D
Part of the miscomprehension may be due to the idea that the GPU handles ALL the graphics when this is not the case. Remember a GPU is still actually a Graphics Accelerator, i.e. it speeds up graphics by using dedicated memory and other hardware. The CPU is still doing a lot of work. Sadly some games still are heavily single thread coded, (they rely on a single thread for all the game logic.) only using other threads for light work at best. Although games are starting to use more threads. Ray Tracing is very CPU intensive work even with the help of the RT cores in modern GPUs, again more of this work is now being passed to the GPU but importantly not all of it. This is why it is better to have more cores, but the speed of the CPU also matters for the single thread stuff as well. There is a reason why less than 8 cores is cheaper than 8 cores or over and even a 200mhz difference in speed is reflected in price. This channel is great as Daniel tends to compare different GPUs and CPUs side by side so you can see the difference between similar systems and make an informed choice. Remember the marketing by all companies tends to emphasise the resolution while playing down the fact they are using DLSS or FSR. If you use those techs then remember you are effectively playing at lower resolutions and you should spec your next build accordingly.