I'm having a frustrating time with my PC not being able to run games smoothly, even though the specs seem solid on paper. For example, in GTA Online, I'm only getting around 30-40 fps. In Half Sword, I experience 20-50 fps, which spikes when more than two players are involved. Even a simple game like My Summer Car runs at just 30-40 fps. My specs are as follows: GPU is a 5060 RTX Ti with 16GB, CPU is an Intel Core i9-10980XE running at 3.00 GHz, and I have 64GB of RAM along with an SSD. Interestingly, I'm also encountering stuttering issues in Plants vs. Zombies 1 when there are a lot of zombies on-screen. I suspect this might be a CPU problem, especially since lowering the graphics settings in Half Sword doesn't improve the fps.
4 Answers
Try downloading GPU-Z to check the current interface speed of your GPU. Sometimes that's a surprising factor affecting performance, and you don't want to miss it!
Have you checked how well your PC is cooling? Sometimes, if a CPU gets too hot, it can start throttling and lead to poor performance. Just because lowering the graphics doesn't help, that doesn't mean it's a CPU issue—perhaps the GPU isn't getting enough juice too. It’s worth running something like hwinfo to monitor your temps and speeds.
Yeah, if you don’t have a strong air cooler or a good AIO, that CPU's TDP might be causing thermal throttling.
It sounds like you might be facing a CPU bottleneck. The Intel Core i9-10980XE, while it has a lot of cores, isn't designed primarily for gaming. Its base clock of 3.0 GHz and older architecture really limit its performance with modern graphics cards like the RTX 5060 Ti.
I guess I'll have to look into replacing it and see if that helps!
But it does boost to 4.5 GHz! There could be something else wrong here because plenty of modern games run fine on lower clock speeds.
You might have missed some optimization steps. Check out this optimization guide and go through the troubleshooting section. If you’re using a controller, make sure to check that out first. There are tons of tips that could help boost your performance.
I think that does narrow it down to some potential CPU throttling which could definitely be an issue. You should definitely take a look at cooling.