I upgraded from a 1080p monitor to a 1440p display and benchmarked Cyberpunk 2077 using the same PC. At 1080p, I averaged around 30 FPS with CPU usage near 100%. At 1440p, performance unexpectedly increased to about 60 FPS while CPU usage dropped to roughly 60%. My system has a Radeon 9060 XT, Ryzen 5 5600X, 16 GB of DDR4 memory, and a B550 Aorus Elite motherboard. What could explain the higher resolution producing better results?
3 Answers
That result is unusual. At 1080p, the graphics card can render more frames, so the CPU may become the limiting factor sooner. Increasing resolution shifts more of the workload to the GPU, which can reduce the CPU bottleneck. However, going from 30 to 60 FPS is too large to assume this is the only explanation. Check whether the two tests used identical settings, ray tracing, upscaling, frame generation, and crowd density. Also verify that the display or game was not locked to 30 Hz or 30 FPS during the first test.
At lower resolution, the GPU may be capable of very high frame rates, which places more work on the CPU. Cyberpunk's crowd and world simulation can be particularly CPU-heavy, so reducing crowd density or setting a frame limit may help. Try capping both resolutions at 60 FPS and compare again; if 1080p then behaves normally, the original test was probably being affected by a CPU bottleneck or an uncapped workload.
With this hardware, 30 FPS at 1080p on the highest settings deserves another check. Make sure the benchmark was actually running at the intended resolution and that no background process, thermal limit, low-power CPU mode, driver issue, or accidental 30-FPS lock was active. Compare average FPS with the 1% lows and confirm GPU utilization, clock speeds, temperatures, and power draw during both runs. Higher resolution normally lowers FPS, so the settings or test conditions were probably not identical.
I used the highest preset, but I will check the frame cap, power settings, and the other benchmark data to make sure both tests were comparable.
A CPU bottleneck can explain lower CPU headroom at 1080p, but it should not normally make 1440p twice as fast. A cap, power mode, or different graphics setting is more likely.