Will my CPU bottleneck this gpu?
Posted by -robotdog@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 21 comments
Hi, I really only use my pc for gaming and have never touched the parts besides cleaning, adding a new stick of ram, and changing the storage. I have an AMD Ryzen 5 4600G CPU 3.7ghz and want to get a 5060Ti but I'm not sure if they'll work together nicely, will I be fine or should I get a new CPU as well?
WherePoetryGoesToDie@reddit
There will always be a bottleneck somewhere.
Bottlenecks don't really matter, it's not like they'll hurt your system.
No one can really tell you if you'll bottleneck or not because there are too many variables (extreme circumstances aside, like running a 5090 on a 2600k or something).
Get the GPU, run HWinfo or the Rivatuner OSD, run the games you want to play at the resolution and settings you want to play them at. If your GPU is consistently somewhere between 90-99% usage, you don't have a CPU bottleneck (or not enough one to matter). If your GPU is consistently below, oh, 80-85%, then you have a CPU bottleneck. Whether you upgrade or not depends on how much your experience bothers you and whether the upgrade cost is worth it to you.
NB: Don't use any of the bottleneck calculator websites, they're full of shit.
Sleddoggamer@reddit
I sort of disagree in this specific case. Its worth highlighting the difference between the casual bottlenecks people talking about and the significant bottleneck this one would create, but still worth noting it would be WORTH it over a 5050
A upgraded CPU would pair great with it, though
WherePoetryGoesToDie@reddit
I didn't want to get into the details, but I don't think the bottleneck is that significant. The 4600g compares favorably to the 2600--half the cache, but runs on the more powerful Zen 2 cores and has a higher boost clock. Seems to be either on-par or a good bit faster. The 5060ti is roughly on-par with the 3070ti in non-VRAM constrained situations.
Now, this article is five years old now, it only benchmarks six games, and it's using the 3070 rather than the 3070ti (which, remember, the 3070ti was a sort of pathetic bump, returning maybe 10% more frames at best for 30% more power), but it's useful because it's from a trusted source and a fast read across different Zen generations. Note how on some of the heavier hitters (CP2077 and Valhalla), the CPUs sort of flatline for the 1080p/max and 1440p/medium benches on the 3070. In the overall average, you've got roughly a 20% jump from the 2600x to the 5600x for the 3070, but a much beefier 40% jump for the much more powerful 3090 (the 5070 would be the modern-gen equivalent).
I think a lot of people think the 5060ti is much more powerful than it actually is, now that we're nearly six years removed from Ampere. And bravo to Nvidia I guess for pulling that bullshit. But the gen-over-gen improvements since the 30-series have been really pathetic, other than the xx90 cards. For example, the 3060ti was on par with the 2080 Super; the 2060 Super was on par with the 1080; the 1060 was a tad worse than the 980. But what do we get with the 4060ti? 3070 performance. What do we get the 5060ti? 3070ti performance. I mean, it's sad that I can pull out a five-year old article and still have it be relevant.
Sleddoggamer@reddit
I'm not sure if your accounting for the difference between a CPU bottleneck and a GPU bottleneck, and the fact they didn't list the games or resolutions they plan to play, though.
The worst part of a maxed out GPU is you had higher frame potential and some slight stuttering, which is probably worth it for the raw frame rates your getting. A maxed out CPU is system wide lag, input latency, and stuttering
WherePoetryGoesToDie@reddit
I'd like to think I was pretty clear about addressing CPU bottlenecks, based on the articles I linked. And because the OP didn't talk state which games or resolutions they plan to play on, I said in my reply to OP:
Like I said, wasn't trying to get into the details with my original comment, didn't think they were necessary. But in response to your comment, I just don't think there's a massive power gap between the 4600g and the 5060ti. I think the former is more powerful than a lot of people think, and the latter is much weaker than a lot of people think.
Sleddoggamer@reddit
I only have estimates without more information which your right to highlight your should take with a grain of salt, but I think its 20-30% on average games.
If a game is CPU intensive its able to be higher. I think 20% is where most people give the hard cut off
WherePoetryGoesToDie@reddit
I'm not even sure if the difference between the 4600g and a Zen 3 CPU would be 20% these days, at least with the 5060ti. The article I linked is five years old, and games have gotten more graphically intensive and mid-range GPUs have not kept pace. If OP was interested in playing modern, triple-AAA titles at 1440p/high (a not-unreasonable use assumption for people picking it up), the difference between the 4600g and the 5600x would probably be very minimal. At the very least, I'd bet there wouldn't be a CPU bottleneck in that scenario with the 4600g, although a Zen 3 CPU would def deliver better 0.1% lows and pacing regardless. Even at 1080p, there probably wouldn't be much of one, assuming max settings, DLSS quality and a AAA title released within the past three years.
I guess what I was trying to say is that OP's CPU can still be perfectly usable with the 5060ti, with absolutely no bottleneck at all in certain common scenarios. And this is less of an endorsement of the 4600g, and more of an indictment of how shitty Nvidia has been in the consumer space since the 30-series.
Mr_Henry_Yau@reddit
You make a few good points but I have 2 comments about them if you don't mind.
Examples include Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Star Wars Outlaws, Warhammer 40000: Space Marine 2, Silent Hill 2 Remake, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Assassin's Creed Shadows, Doom: The Dark Ages, Mafia: The Old Country, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, Borderlands 4, Dying Light: The Beast, and Crimson Desert.
The only page that I can find gaming performance data about the 4600g shows that CPU is slower than the 3600 which is present in quite a few system requirements pages. Besides, said page tested games which have lower system requirements compared to the games that I've listed above. Moreover, I'm not sure if heavy CPU overclocking is enough to overcome this problem.
If you don't want to reply to them, it's perfectly fine. However, it'll be great if you can enlighten me about whether playing games with a CPU that's slower than the CPUs shown in system requirement pages is a good idea or not. Feel free to ask me if there are any comments that are either confusing to you or offends your CPU beliefs.
WherePoetryGoesToDie@reddit
So reqs are like 80% marketing, 20% educated guesses; the specs are what the publishers think will provide a playable experience, usually tested with whatever they have on hand (if settings and resolutions aren't specifically noted, min specs are usually targeted around 30 FPS/1080p/low-to-medium).
Now, there are a few times where the requirements are set-in-stone, because the CPU or GPU has a very specific feature or instruction set that is not available in earlier models. But that's very rare. 99% of the time, you can go below spec and not only will the game run, it'll sometimes run OK.
A fast example: Here is Space Marine 2 running on a 12-year old CPU. Generally speaking, the listed minimum requirements for that game (8600k) absolutely spanks the 4790k in pretty much every metric. But the latter holds up pretty decently for being absolutely ancient in tech years.
Again, see what I said above about official system reqs being wibbly-wobbly. But the thing about 1440p/high on a modern AAA title is that it can be very graphically demanding, and the 5060ti will be throttled long before the CPU on a lot of titles. Here's Space Marine 2 again, with a 5060ti, DLSS quality with max/RT, on a 9800X3D: Best gaming CPU currently available, right? Except the 5060ti is such shit that, if we were judging it by CPU performance alone, the 9800x3D seems maybe 50-75% more powerful than a 12-year old CPU.
ELI5: The GPU sets a speed limit for a specific game/resolution/settings used. More powerful GPUs can set a higher speed limit. The CPU determines whether you can hit that speed limit or not. The 5060ti isn't powerful enough to set a high speed limit for 1440p/max, so chances are an under-req CPU is more than enough to hit it. This is, again, not an endorsement of the 4600g, but an indictment of the 5060ti.
Mr_Henry_Yau@reddit
Thanks for the reply. It's good to learn something from this.
About what you've just mentioned, they do answer my comments but they do open up a few questions as well.
Question 1: About system requirements are like 80% marketing, 20% educated guesses, where did you get that from? I've never seen that in my entire lifetime before you mentioned it.
Question 2: Why are system requirements often more lenient towards AMD CPUs compared to their Intel counterparts?
Using Space Marine 2 as an example, the official AMD CPU requirement is a Ryzen 5 2600X which is slower than the Ryzen 5 4600G at gaming while the official Intel CPU requirement is a Core i5-8600K which is faster than the Ryzen 5 3600 at gaming according to TechPowerUp.
I asked something similar but with different games (Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, DOOM: The Dark Ages) in an r/buildapc simple questions megathread some time ago but the only response I've got confirms those games are optimized for Ryzen CPUs. I'm not sure if that's the case for most games which are released after November 2023 as well.
Question 3: About this section:
Why did you choose Space Marine 2 as an example when the Ryzen 5 4600G meets the official AMD CPU requirement for that game? Wouldn't it be a better idea to use a game that has a Ryzen 5 3600 as its official AMD CPU requirement instead to prove your point?
WherePoetryGoesToDie@reddit
I was speaking figuratively, to illustrate there's no hard science behind the requirements for any given game. Of course there's no hard way to quantify whether something is X% marketing and X% guessing. That would be silly.
See above about there being no hard science behind game requirements. For Space Marine 2 specifically, I suspect the answer is that Zen 1.5 and 8th gen Intel are the oldest CPUs that support Windows 11. I'd be willing to bet they would have dropped the requirements even lower if Windows 11 didn't have the TPM requirement. For titles that list Zen 2 as a minimum requirement, I'd guess it's because the PS5/XBX has essentially the same CPU under the hood, so it's an easy choice to make when you're writing requirements up. The Intel side requires more guessing.
I chose Space Marine 2 because it was near the top of your list, and it's a popular benchmark game so I knew videos testing old-ass CPUs against relatively new GPUs on it would be easy to find. My point isn't dependent on the 4600g meeting minimum requirements or not; my point is that you can go way under CPU requirements and still get a playable experience. And the 4790k is way under the CPU requirements for Space Marine 2. If you want to do your own legwork, pick your own old-ass CPU and a game, see if someone's made a video for it.
Mr_Henry_Yau@reddit
About 1 and 2, if you've brought up your suspicions that Zen 1.5 and 8th gen Intel are the oldest CPUs that support Windows 11 earlier and titles that list Zen 2 as a minimum requirement due to the PS5/XBX having essentially the same CPU under the hood, we could've saved some time and cut out the made up percentages entirely.
About 3, the list that I've brought up earlier is arranged via release date and almost all of them are tested in TechPowerUp's game testing section (Indiana Jones and the Great Circle being the only exception). It's a shame that game testing often tests for GPU performance only and it would've been nice to see CPU performance testing as well.
About the Space Marine 2 video that has a Core i7-4790K + RX 6800 combo, I'm not sure if having an average frame rate that's below 60fps is considered playable to begin with.
About this section:
Noted. I suppose the shock of you choosing a Space Marine 2 video that has a CPU which is completely overkill even according to the recommended requirements has scrambled my brain for some time. What my point is choosing something like DOOM: The Dark Ages (or other games which have a Ryzen 5 3600 in their system requirement pages) for your examples would've been more convincing.
Anyways, I'm not sure if OP will bother to read this discussion to begin with since he/she has only responded to the worst advice given in this Reddit post as of time of writing this comment.
WherePoetryGoesToDie@reddit
Look mate, you didn't ask that specific question about AMD vs Intel reqs when I gave you my tongue-in-cheek response. The point remains that there's no real method or science to coming up with game requirements, so they shouldn't be taken too seriously. Like, are you a non-native English speaker? If so, 1. your English is very good, but 2. you're taking some things very literally, or getting stuck on details because I'm not drawing a clear 1-to-1 connection for you. Missing the forest for the trees, so to speak.
OK, let's take it all the way back to what these walls of text were meant to address:
Here's Doom running on a 4060ti 8 GB with a 4790k, ultra 1080p with DLSS quality. Here it is running on a 4060ti 8 GB with a 7800x3D, same settings. Performance is close (def not in the lows, tho) despite the former CPU being 11 years older than the latter and five years older than the minimum listed requirement, because the GPU is running near-enough to 100% in both situations.
So. If a 4790k can max out the 4060ti here, a 4600g, having more threads/faster architecture/faster RAM, can definitely max it out. And that's because 1. game requirements are mostly bullshit, 2. the 4060ti sucks, and 3. the 5060ti is barely better than the 4060ti. Ipso facto, OP likely wouldn't run into a CPU bottleneck on many modern AAA titles at 1440p/high with a 4600g/5060ti combo.
Don't be a snob, a lot of console games run at 30 FPS locked and many people seem to be perfectly fine with that. Even some people with heavy-duty PC hardware will play at 30 FPS locked, because they prefer pretty graphics over frames and want to run shit like CP2077 at 4k with pathtracing. All use-cases as equally valid as people who refuse to play anything at less than 60+ FPS.
Mr_Henry_Yau@reddit
About this part:
I'll need your help to find that one since I have absolutely no idea which response is a tongue-in-cheek one in the first place.
About this part where you asked whether I'm a non-native English speaker, you got me. I'm from Malaysia.
About drawing a clear 1-to-1 connection for me, please do so. It's pretty hard to understand this topic without said 1-to-1 connection.
About this section:
Much better.
A simple "For some people, yes." is already good enough. There's no need to use the word "snob" here.
WherePoetryGoesToDie@reddit
Oh, fuck all the waaaaay off.
ssuper2k@reddit
1080p???
Sleddoggamer@reddit
It might not be huge enough to matter, but if you can afford it, its definitely worth upgrading your CPU
Thats a budget APU that will max out on CPU usage as it tries to max your GPU usage at both 1080p and 1440p for a lot of game. The difference between a CPU GPU bottleneck is if you max out as GPU, all you did was get everything you paid for and hit your limit, but if you bottleneck with your CPU causes system wide stuttering/input lag and unresponsive applications whenever the CPU is trying to give instructions faster than it can give them, which will suck a lot more than a GPU bottleneck
pythonic_dude@reddit
16gib 5060ti will be mostly fine. 8gib will be a disaster. Also, if your motherboard isn't b550 or x570 a cpu upgrade won't help (the problems are not on the cpu being too weak, but on being stuck with pcie3).
New-Meeting9007@reddit
There are websites on the internet that can check your parts to see which will bottleneck at what point
-robotdog@reddit (OP)
Thanks.
New-Meeting9007@reddit
What I did was just entering my cpu + gpu and after that “bottleneck calculator”
That helped for me