This is the result of a performance bottleneck triggered by another component in your system.
Here’s how to spot them and what you’ve got the option to do.
The GPU is almost exclusively responsible for the graphical aspect of gaming, or the image on your screen.
Justin Duino / How-To Geek
If your CPU is significantly more performant than your GPU, that means you have a GPU bottleneck.
Bottlenecks don’t lend themselves to a simple yes or no categorization.
In a perfect world, your PC would be at the midpoint to avoid any form of bottleneck.
Justin Duino / How-To Geek
A quick way to check is to use a bottleneck calculator, likethe one provided by PC Builds.
input your system’s information, and it’ll tell you what parts are bottlenecking and by what percentage.
when you land MSI Afterburner up and running, follow ourguide on setting up MSI Afterburnerfor performance tracking.
RSplaneta/Shutterstock
If your GPU isn’t fully utilized, you might have a CPU bottleneck, and vice versa.
Note that this is an over-generalization.
A CPU with eight cores or more will rarely get to 100% in video games.
KsanderDN/Shutterstock.com
More importantly, some games are poorly optimized and happen to lean on one component more than the other.
Strategy and open-world games can skyrocket your CPU usage, whereas shooters put more load on the graphics card.
The GPU also sees higher utilization if you game at1440p or 4K.
Your personal tastes also play a role here.
If stick purely to strategy games, it makes little sense to optimize your PC for other genres.
First, it’s easy to lower your in-game graphics tweaks to see an immediate performance jump.
This isn’t something you should worry about too much.
Some game genres are inherently CPU or GPU-bound, so shopping around your preferences makes a ton of sense.
Remember that game updates andinstalling new GPU new driverscan have a big impact on performance too.
