I'm playing Red Dead Redemption 2 with a GTX 1660 Ti and a Ryzen 5 3400G. Even with most settings on Ultra, the GPU is only being used at around 30%, while the CPU reaches roughly 88% load. It seems the CPU is bottlenecking the graphics card. Are there any settings or system changes I can make to reduce CPU usage and get better performance until my replacement CPU arrives?
4 Answers
Check your CPU temperatures and power settings. Around 80°C under load doesn’t automatically indicate thermal throttling, but make sure the processor isn’t hitting its temperature limit and that Windows is using a normal or high-performance power plan. Updating the BIOS can help with compatibility, but it usually won’t overcome a CPU limitation by itself.
Use a hardware monitor such as HWiNFO64 to check CPU and GPU clocks, temperatures, power limits, and whether the CPU is throttling. If one or two CPU cores are maxed out while overall usage looks lower, that can still explain the low GPU utilization. Lowering CPU-intensive graphics options is the practical short-term solution.
There isn’t really a way to transfer CPU work directly to the GPU. You can try increasing the resolution or GPU-heavy settings to raise GPU utilization, but that won’t improve CPU-limited frame rates. The 3400G is an older budget processor, so replacing it should make the biggest difference.
I have a newer CPU on order, so I’m hoping that fixes most of the bottleneck. I was mainly looking for temporary improvements until it arrives.
Try lowering the water quality setting. It affects water physics and can add CPU load, while reducing it usually has only a small visual impact. You can also lower other CPU-heavy options rather than GPU-focused settings.
I already updated the BIOS and the CPU was around 80°C under load the last time I checked. The replacement processor should arrive within a week or two, so I’ll monitor temperatures and settings in the meantime.