- Jan 14, 2020
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Generally speaking, unless you cap your FPS, you will always have a bottleneck. Even if you are getting 200 FPS, there is something stopping you from getting 201. Bottlenecks become concerning only when you can't reach your preferred FPS.
These are some easy ways to check what is causing your current bottleneck:
(Note: this is assuming that heat isn't a problem, but especially in laptops, temps can be causing your system to throttle, so you need to keep an eye on where your max temps are in-game)
If you use Steam, enable the overlay that gives you CPU/GPU usage statistics. If, in game, one of them is near 100 percent, then that's your bottleneck.
You can also use MSi Afterburner, Nvidia App Bar, AMD Adrenalin Performance Overlay, Xbox Game Bar-- even, less reliably, Task Manager.
Another source of bottlenecks is RAM. In your Steam Overlay, it will show the RAM usage. This one isn't quite as black and white, but if you are maxing out your RAM, that could be a bottleneck as well, but it should be noted that many games use as much RAM as you can give them. But if neither your CPU nor GPU are maxed and your RAM is, then RAM is a problem.
Another way to check for a CPU bottleneck is to reduce your overall graphics settings in the game and see if your FPS improves. If it doesn't, then your CPU is most likely a bottleneck. In open world games, a laptop's CPU, even if it is a good one, is frequently the problem (I speak from many years of experience with this).
Do you have an inadvertent RAM bottleneck? Nvidia cards are automatically set to spill VRAM shortages over to regular RAM. This is especially problematic in systems that have both low VRAM (8 GB or less) and low RAM (16 GB or less). There is not really a great fix for this, but if you are seeing RAM problems (using the method I listed above), then it's worth adjusting this Nvidia setting to see what happens.
In the Nvidia Control Panel, go to Manage 3D Settings and change CUDA Systems Fallback Policy from Default to "Prefer no system fallback". Hit apply and run your game again to check if this alleviated the RAM problem (and potentially created a new VRAM problem)
These are some easy ways to check what is causing your current bottleneck:
(Note: this is assuming that heat isn't a problem, but especially in laptops, temps can be causing your system to throttle, so you need to keep an eye on where your max temps are in-game)
If you use Steam, enable the overlay that gives you CPU/GPU usage statistics. If, in game, one of them is near 100 percent, then that's your bottleneck.
You can also use MSi Afterburner, Nvidia App Bar, AMD Adrenalin Performance Overlay, Xbox Game Bar-- even, less reliably, Task Manager.
Another source of bottlenecks is RAM. In your Steam Overlay, it will show the RAM usage. This one isn't quite as black and white, but if you are maxing out your RAM, that could be a bottleneck as well, but it should be noted that many games use as much RAM as you can give them. But if neither your CPU nor GPU are maxed and your RAM is, then RAM is a problem.
Another way to check for a CPU bottleneck is to reduce your overall graphics settings in the game and see if your FPS improves. If it doesn't, then your CPU is most likely a bottleneck. In open world games, a laptop's CPU, even if it is a good one, is frequently the problem (I speak from many years of experience with this).
Do you have an inadvertent RAM bottleneck? Nvidia cards are automatically set to spill VRAM shortages over to regular RAM. This is especially problematic in systems that have both low VRAM (8 GB or less) and low RAM (16 GB or less). There is not really a great fix for this, but if you are seeing RAM problems (using the method I listed above), then it's worth adjusting this Nvidia setting to see what happens.
In the Nvidia Control Panel, go to Manage 3D Settings and change CUDA Systems Fallback Policy from Default to "Prefer no system fallback". Hit apply and run your game again to check if this alleviated the RAM problem (and potentially created a new VRAM problem)
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