I'm using an RTX 5070 Ti with a Ryzen 5 9600 and 6000 MT/s DDR5 with EXPO enabled. In games such as Space Marine 2 and Helldivers 2 at 1080p, GPU usage often stays below 50%, while overall CPU usage sits around 70–80%. My settings are already maxed out, there's no frame-rate cap, and temperatures look normal. Could the games be limited by the CPU or their engines even though total CPU usage isn't near 100%?
2 Answers
Since your graphics settings are maxed out and there’s no frame cap, check per-core CPU usage rather than only the overall percentage. Monitoring tools such as HWiNFO or your overlay can show whether a particular CPU thread is saturated. You can also try a higher resolution or resolution scale: if GPU usage rises and performance stays similar, the system was likely CPU- or engine-limited at 1080p. Normal temperatures suggest overheating isn’t the cause.
At 1080p, especially in CPU-heavy games, the GPU may simply be waiting on the processor or the game engine. Total CPU usage can look like 70–80% even when one or two important threads are fully loaded, so it doesn’t necessarily rule out a CPU-side limitation. Space Marine 2 also appears to have an engine or simulation limit in some scenarios, where much faster graphics cards produce nearly identical frame rates.
That makes sense for Space Marine 2, but I’m still wondering whether Helldivers 2 is being limited in the same way.