I'm experiencing surprisingly low GPU and CPU usage while playing games like Fortnite and Battlefield, with my GPU only hitting around 40-50%. When I play single-player games, however, the GPU usage jumps to about 70-97%, with the CPU usage ranging from 50-60%. All temperatures seem normal, and my GPU is drawing low power. I recently upgraded from a 4060ti to a 5070. Here's my setup: Ryzen 7 5700x at 3.4GHz, RTX 5070 12GB, MSI B550M motherboard, and 32GB DDR4 RAM at 3200MHz—all while gaming at 1440p. Any ideas on what might be causing this?
4 Answers
It might be a RAM issue. Have you enabled XMP in your BIOS? It can help improve performance by optimizing memory speed.
I keep forgetting to turn that on too. I think it goes by a different name for AMD, though.
Generic CPU usage numbers don't tell the full story. Have you checked the per-core utilization? That can reveal more about what's happening with your CPU.
I haven’t checked that yet, sorry.
I just looked at the per-core usage in MSI Afterburner, and it shows a mix! Some threads are over 80%, while others hang around 30-50%. Not sure if that’s what you were looking for, though. I'm still trying to learn more about all this.
What are your in-game settings? Sometimes graphics settings can affect how well the GPU and CPU perform together.
There’s hardly any difference in frame rates for me, whether I'm on the lowest or highest settings. For instance, in Indiana Jones, I get around 70-80 fps on max and 80-90 fps on low at 1440p.
It could also be that your CPU is bottlenecking. Games like Fortnite can be more CPU intensive, even at 1440p. You should check if your frame rate is capped, but with a Ryzen 7 5700x, it's likely just how those multiplayer games utilize CPU resources.
True, but the CPU usage isn’t even high either in my case.
Yes, I have XMP turned on.