I built this PC about a year ago with an RTX 4070 Ti, i5-12600K, 16GB of DDR4-3200 CL14 memory, and a 1440p 185Hz monitor. Everything worked normally until roughly a month ago, when several games started stuttering badly and dropping frames in specific areas. In games such as Minecraft, Dead Island 2, and modded Skyrim, GPU usage often stays around 50–75% while total CPU usage is only around 40–50%. During the drops, frame rates can fall into the 60s or 70s. XMP is enabled, and I have already set NVIDIA and Windows power settings to prefer maximum performance. I am trying to figure out whether this is a CPU bottleneck, a hardware or software issue, or simply normal behavior for these games.
3 Answers
Some of those games, especially modded Skyrim and Minecraft, may not be demanding enough to fully load a 4070 Ti, particularly with an unlocked frame rate. Low GPU usage by itself is not a fault. Dead Island 2 being newer makes the issue worth investigating, but the first step should be checking frame pacing, CPU usage per core, background programs, RAM usage, and storage activity. Also avoid UserBenchmark; its reputation and methodology are widely questioned. Use a reputable benchmark such as 3DMark or Cinebench and compare the result with systems using similar hardware.
Total CPU usage can be misleading because games often depend heavily on one or two CPU cores. A processor can show 40–50% overall usage while a key core is effectively maxed out, which can prevent the GPU from being fully utilized. However, an i5-12600K should generally pair well with a 4070 Ti at 1440p, so I would not rush to buy a new CPU based on GPU usage alone.
Would upgrading to something like an i5-14600K or i7-13700K make sense, or should I investigate the cause first?
Use MSI Afterburner with RivaTuner Statistics Server to monitor the system while the stutter happens. Track per-core CPU usage and clocks, CPU and GPU temperatures, GPU utilization and clock speed, RAM and VRAM usage, storage activity, plus average FPS and 1% lows. The important clue is what changes at the exact moment performance drops. For example, a single CPU core may be saturated, CPU clocks may fall from thermal or power throttling, memory could be nearly full, or the game could be waiting on the storage drive. Your reported readings—about 58% GPU usage, 56°C GPU temperature, 2.8 GHz GPU clock, 59% CPU usage, 60°C CPU temperature, and roughly 4.7 GHz CPU speed—do not immediately suggest overheating or obvious throttling, so more detailed per-core and frametime data would help.
I captured readings during a drop: about 79 FPS with a 64 FPS 1% low, 58% GPU utilization, 56°C GPU temperature, 2.835 GHz GPU clock, 59% CPU utilization, 60°C CPU temperature, and a CPU clock around 4.69 GHz.
For the overlay, Afterburner handles the hardware monitoring and RivaTuner displays it in-game. A reputable benchmark can then show whether the CPU and GPU perform normally outside the affected games.