It is a recurring, cyclical theme that is tremendously complex to cover. The question of whether to update CPU or GPU for a specific PC has so many answers that anyone with experience in the sector will ask us first for the specifications of the PC, but why is it so difficult to discern between CPU vs GPU to update ? Is there a rule by which to govern and lay a foundation?
The quick answer to such a situation is simple: you cannot take any ruler or measuring rod in this, it is impossible, but we can give a series of guidelines.
When to upgrade CPU before GPU
This is the first approach that we must make within the gaming section. Curiously, the change will not be determined by the performance in the game itself, that is, the FPS that our PC is capable of showing on the screen, if not two values that together will give us a great example that it is time to say goodbye to our processor or even to the platform if there is no upgrade possible.
These values are the load of the cores in the game and the load of the GPU. If the load of all the cores playing exceeds 80% and the graphics card load is not exceeding 95%, it means that we have a bottleneck in our PC. This will be higher or lower depending on the balance we have between these two parameters, but in any case, be it by number of total cores or by pure frequency in boost (or both), it is time to change the CPU.
What should we move towards? If the load of a thread / core reaches 100% and the rest does not reach the aforementioned 80%, what the game demands is undoubtedly a higher frequency of that core. This does not mean that there is a bottleneck, since the rest of the cores are in an acceptable load range without collapse, but we could gain performance.
When should we upgrade the GPU vs CPU?
Well, it is the opposite case to the one mentioned just above, that is, when the CPU does not collapse either at 80% load in all its cores or at 100% in one or more threads. Here we must take into account a detail that differentiates it from the previous case, and that is that the GPU always stays at 99% and / or with a load on its VRAM close to 95%, depending on the game.
There is not much more to add here beyond that we notice low FPS rates where it is not comfortable for us to play, since the tolerance level of one and the other is totally different. There are players who cannot lower than 100 FPS and others who with 30 or 40 is an acceptable minimum.
Exceptions
As in everything, there are a series of exceptions that can make us believe that we are in one of the two named cases and also the cause is the same: the temperature. A high temperature can result in a frequency drop by the so-called Throttling, so that we enter one or even both scenarios if finally the two components exceed their Tjmax.
Therefore, you have to make sure that the temperature is correct or at least not very high to guarantee that we are more or less in one of the two cases. We also insist, you have to look at the whole PC to detect that, indeed, either the CPU or the GPU is the component to change to gain performance.
Changing the GPU for a faster one will always be the easy option, but you have to make sure that the CPU can push it enough, because if it cannot be money badly invested in this eternal fight between cpu vs gpu.
