I upgraded from a Ryzen 7 5800X with 32GB of DDR4-3200 to an Ultra 5 250K with 32GB of DDR5-6400. However, in Crimson Desert, Cyberpunk 2077, and Battlefield 6, I'm seeing essentially the same FPS range as before. My other hardware is an RTX 4070 Super, a Kingston 1TB NVMe SSD, a Gigabyte B860 motherboard, and an MSI MAG 750W power supply. I'm gaming at 1440p. Why didn't the newer CPU and faster memory improve performance?
5 Answers
Try a CPU-heavy game or scenario if you want to see where the upgrade helps. Simulation games, large strategy battles, crowded areas in some RPGs, and competitive games at low settings can expose CPU limits much more clearly than demanding 1440p titles. In your listed games, a substantial improvement would probably require a faster GPU, although the 4070 Super is still a strong 1440p card.
The fact that the new CPU is much newer doesn’t guarantee a noticeable gain in every game. The 5800X was already capable of keeping up with a 4070 Super at 1440p, and you kept the same GPU and memory capacity. Faster DDR5 mainly improves bandwidth and doesn’t automatically translate into large gaming gains, particularly in GPU-heavy titles.
You were most likely GPU-limited before the upgrade and still are now. At 1440p with a 4070 Super, especially in demanding games and higher graphics settings, the GPU is usually the part determining your FPS. Replacing the CPU won’t help much if the graphics card is already running near full utilization.
Check GPU and CPU utilization while playing the same scenes at the same settings. If the GPU is sitting around 95–100% while individual CPU cores aren’t fully loaded, you’re GPU-bound. If GPU usage is well below that and the CPU is limiting frame rates, then the processor upgrade should matter more. Also compare frame-time graphs rather than relying only on average FPS.
Memory timings matter too. DDR4-3200 with tight timings can have similar real-world latency to DDR5-6400 with looser timings, so the RAM change alone may be less significant than benchmark charts suggest. The new platform may be a good long-term upgrade, but it won’t necessarily increase FPS across the board.
I’m confused—if the old CPU was the bottleneck before, shouldn’t removing that limitation increase FPS?