New CPU or New 1440 Triple Screen?

M D Gourley · Dec 23, 2023

Hello everyone, sorry noob question here

I have attached some basic Afterburner data in Automobilista 2 and BeamNG just for reference with very wide variations within each Sim when racing / driving.
I have 27" Triple Screen 1080 at the moment.

Question: Would upgrading to 27" Triple Screen 1440 utilise my 3070 more thus releaving some of the work my i7 3770k CPU is having to do or would it just tank the FPS I am getting now with current specs resulting in worse FPS and overall Gameplay?

First screenshot is Automobilista 2

Below is BeamNG Drive

Thanks in advance for any response

RasmusP · Dec 23, 2023

M D Gourley said:
Question: Would upgrading to 27" Triple Screen 1440 utilise my 3070 more thus releaving some of the work my i7 3770k CPU is having to do or would it just tank the FPS I am getting now with current specs resulting in worse FPS and overall Gameplay?

There's no "releaving" work of the CPU when putting more load in the graphics card.
Both parts take X amount of time to complete a frame and if the other part or a fps limiter (or vsync) restricts more fps, the cpu or gpu go to sleep, which results in a lower "load".

If you load one part more, the other part won't work faster.
So BeamNG with traffic might show 22 fps with 80% graphics card load, but your cpu won't produce more fps.

In general:
If you don't have limiter or vsync on and your graphics card load isn't at 95+% load, then your CPU is the bottleneck.
On the other side, CPU load, if not at 99% or you having a single core cpu, is completely useless.
Windows throws everything around between all cores (with some priorities). So whatever you're seeing, it's not the truth.

So yes, you're CPU bottlenecked in 2/4 Screenshots and the only thing to do about it is to upgrade the CPU to something with a better single thread performance.

Your CPU has enough cores, but sadly the single thread performance is not up to modern standards. I had an i7 2600k and it could handle almost anything until 2020, apart from simracing.
10600k was a lot better but not the jump you'd expect after 9 years.
AMD 7600 is a brilliant bang for buck CPU right now but the 7800X3D might have an even better price to performance ratio, since it's 2x the minimum fps in AC & ACC.

Alternatively, 5600 non-x would blow your old i7 out of the water for the least money. It's my budget recommendation.

For Intel, I'd go i3 13100 or 13500 with a B660/760 mobo.

M D Gourley · Dec 23, 2023

RasmusP said:
There's no "releaving" work of the CPU when putting more load in the graphics card.
Both parts take X amount of time to complete a frame and if the other part or a fps limiter (or vsync) restricts more fps, the cpu or gpu go to sleep, which results in a lower "load".

If you load one part more, the other part won't work faster.
So BeamNG with traffic might show 22 fps with 80% graphics card load, but your cpu won't produce more fps.

In general:
If you don't have limiter or vsync on and your graphics card load isn't at 95+% load, then your CPU is the bottleneck.
On the other side, CPU load, if not at 99% or you having a single core cpu, is completely useless.
Windows throws everything around between all cores (with some priorities). So whatever you're seeing, it's not the truth.

So yes, you're CPU bottlenecked in 2/4 Screenshots and the only thing to do about it is to upgrade the CPU to something with a better single thread performance.

Your CPU has enough cores, but sadly the single thread performance is not up to modern standards. I had an i7 2600k and it could handle almost anything until 2020, apart from simracing.
10600k was a lot better but not the jump you'd expect after 9 years.
AMD 7600 is a brilliant bang for buck CPU right now but the 7800X3D might have an even better price to performance ratio, since it's 2x the minimum fps in AC & ACC.

Alternatively, 5600 non-x would blow your old i7 out of the water for the least money. It's my budget recommendation.

For Intel, I'd go i3 13100 or 13500 with a B660/760 mobo.