Why am I only getting 180–220 FPS with low CPU and GPU usage?

The game itself may be the limitation. Some engines have built-in frame-rate caps or struggle to process more than a certain number of frames per second, particularly at very high frame rates. Check the game’s settings, launch options, V-Sync, frame limiter, and any driver-level FPS cap.

More details are needed to identify the exact bottleneck, such as the game, CPU, GPU, resolution, settings, and whether the FPS is capped. Monitoring usage per CPU core rather than only total CPU usage should help show whether one core is being pushed to its limit.

GPU utilization percentages don’t always represent every part of the graphics chip. A particular rendering task can bottleneck one GPU component without showing near-100% overall usage. It’s also worth checking whether your RAM, VRAM, or storage is running out of capacity or bandwidth.

Overall CPU usage can be misleading. A game may rely heavily on one or a few CPU cores while leaving the others mostly idle, so total CPU usage might look low even though the game is CPU-limited. This is especially common with older or poorly multithreaded game engines.