I've recently built a gaming PC with an RTX 5070 12GB and an i7-14700F processor, but I'm noticing that my CPU usage hits 100% while my GPU only reaches about 50% when playing demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077. This leads to a noticeable drop in performance. I've seen others with the same setup achieve much higher GPU utilization without facing these issues. The only time my GPU fully ramps up is when I activate ray tracing, but strangely my FPS remains similar with or without it. I have 32GB of RAM and my motherboard is the B760M MAX GAMING WIFI, and I'm gaming at 1080p. I'm confused about what could be causing this bottleneck. Is it possible that my motherboard is the issue, or could it be something else? I'd really appreciate any insights or suggestions.
4 Answers
To tackle this, you could also look at ensuring all your drivers are updated and that your RAM is set up correctly in dual-channel with XMP enabled. Also, consider checking your BIOS settings and updating it if it’s out of date. Sometimes, efficiency cores on your CPU can cause issues when gaming, so you might want to assign your performance cores to your games using a tool like Process Lasso.
I’ll give that a shot! Thanks!
Playing at 1080p with your RTX 5070 is likely the reason for the CPU hitting 100% usage. This card is quite capable, and running games at lower resolutions can lead to CPU bottlenecking. If you’re seeing around 75-85 FPS, that’s expected behavior, but upgrading to 1440p could really help balance the load between your CPU and GPU.
Exactly! The 5070 is designed for higher resolutions like 1440p or even 4K, so it's pretty bored at 1080p.
That makes sense. I've noticed the same with my setup; once I switched to 1440p, my GPU got to stretch its legs a bit!
You should check out benchmark videos for the RTX 5070 at 1080p on YouTube. While it’s true this card might be overkill for that resolution, the fact that your i7-14700F is hitting 100% usage is unexpected. Maybe it’s stuck on just a few cores? Also, make sure to check your CPU temperatures and clock speeds to see if everything's running as it should be.
Yeah, if you can only see one core at 100%, then something's definitely off, could be a background process eating up resources. Did you check for malware?
It’s been super stable temp-wise, but I’ll double-check my core usage.
It sounds normal for your setup. Since you're at 1080p, the GPU is just too powerful for the task at hand, which is why you see such low GPU usage. When you switch to ray tracing, the GPU finally has something demanding to do, but it doesn't make a huge difference in FPS because your system is still limited by the CPU performance.
Totally! Games like Cyberpunk are super CPU-intensive, so even with a solid GPU, the CPU can still cap your performance.
Yeah, I noticed a similar thing in my setup with Cyberpunk.
Great suggestions! Ensuring everything is optimized in BIOS makes a good difference.