Why is my CPU usage higher than the benchmarks I’ve seen on YouTube with the same specs (CPU & GPU)?

[Turop_Sy]

In Cyberpunk 2077, most people I’ve watched are running with around 40–60% CPU usage, while mine is stuck at 100% all the time. I even saw someone with the same CPU but using an RTX 5070 instead of my RX 9070, and they had the same lower CPU usage as the others.

Not sure if it matters, but I installed Windows 11 on top of Windows 10 (upgrade install) instead of doing a clean format.

My PC specs:

CPU: i5-14400F

GPU: RX 9070 16GB (non-XT)

RAM: 16GB DDR4 2666MHz

Motherboard: ASRock H610M

PSU: 650W

Storage: NVMe 1TB

 

[LeKill3rFou]

It could depends of settings used, the resolution, etc...
How is your GPU usage?
How run the game?

 

[Turop_Sy]

I game on 1920x1080
on ultra GPU usage is around 60~80% if I turn on RTX, it goes up
The game runs fine I'd say... 60~80fps depends on where I am. But the high CPU usage is not like the tests I've seen

 

[LeKill3rFou]

I game on 1920x1080
on ultra GPU usage is around 60~80% if I turn on RTX, it goes up
The game runs fine I'd say... 60~80fps depends on where I am. But the high CPU usage is not like the tests I've seen

Yeah, I don't think it should hit 100% anyway
Did you check in Task Manager if something else is using CPU more than it should? Or anything strange?
Also, if possible, increase your resolution to 1440p to see if your CPU goes down and GPU usage goes up, as it should (in theory).

 

[SigilFey]

Seems weird. Normally, a CPU can hit 90%-100% if it's throttling the GPU...but a 14000 series should be plenty to feed a 9070.

1.) As @LeKill3rFou mentioned, what background apps are you running? (Not necessarily actively, but check your Task Manager and see what's resident in memory.)

2.) You may want to manually run a Windows Defender scan to ensure there's no malware/viruses present.

3.) The Windows 10 to Windows 11 thing could be related, depending on what was installed and configured on the drive. That might be hard to track down and confirm though. (If you have $50-$60 to spare, grab a new 1TB SSD and install Windows 11 clean on that, creating a dual-boot option at startup. See if it performs like that on clean install of Win11. At worst, you get another TB of storage/gaming space without losing anything.)

4. Do you know how many CPU cores are being utilized when it happens?