Question Please help with my i7-10700F

[ibex333]

I bought a dell pre-built computer back when CoVid was in full swing and there was no other way to get my hands on a relatively cheap RTX 3070. Because of this I was stuck with an i5-10400F which I recently upgraded to a i7-10700F so I could get better framerate in Diablo 4. Performance did improve but I am still not at stable 60fps @ 1440p despite meeting and exceeding requirements.

I am not willing to sell my rig at a quarter of what I originally paid for it because it still pays 99% of everything I need very well and I don't feel like building any new computers any time soon. My question is, is there any way I can increase performance with my CPU even further? Because I cannot overclock on a dell mobo, is there any kind of "mod" available for this CPU such as the pin mods that were available for some core 2 duos? Maybe there's a cheap Xeon swap I'm not aware of?

Would I see any monumental shift in performance if I got a 10th gen i9 later in the future when its dirt cheap? I don't think there's any sense in me upgrading my video card as I don't play at 4k, and my power supply will not support anything better anyway. Hell, even if it did, I'm sure my CPU would be a bottleneck.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I've been out of the biz for 4yrs now, so haven't played around with prebuilt Intel systems since that time. You can try the -

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/17881/intel-extreme-tuning-utility-intel-xtu.html

And see if it allows you to boost performance. Someone with hands on experience will have to weigh in otherwise.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Forgot to ask: Have you already eliminated overheating VRMs and CPU thermal throttling? Asking because an 10700 is still a good gaming CPU.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Intel® Core™ i7-10700F Processor (16M Cache, up to 4.80 GHz) - Product Specifications | Intel

Intel® Core™ i7-10700F Processor (16M Cache, up to 4.80 GHz) quick reference with specifications, features, and technologies.

www.intel.com

It's not a K CPU so it is locked. You probably won't have much luck trying to overclock it. What you can do is, monitor the performance of all cores and see if they are hitting the max turbo boost speeds as specified on the Intel specs page. If there's a difference of more than 200 MHz, it's possible that your CPU may be thermally limited. In that case, one option is to disable hyperthreading. That should lower the heat output and give you higher single threaded performance which is what most game engines need to perform better.

Another thing you can do (and only do it out of sheer desperation), is to open the side of your case and see if your CPU hits higher turbo speeds. If not, try blowing a large fan on it (a kitchen fan would be fine for experimenting). If that also doesn't help, you can rule out a better thermal solution .

One more thing is the RAM latency. Check CPU-Z to see what the RAM timings are. You might be able to get slightly expensive DDR4-3600 CL16 RAM that might run at lower latency with your mobo. I would recommend Kingston for best compatibility. Crucial would also be fine. If you do get lower latency, it might only improve the framerate by a few fps at most. Don't expect any miracle.

Last but not the least, check to see that the latest BIOS update is installed. If it is, one option is to run the game under Linux with the mitigations off switch. That should give you higher performance without spectre/meltdown mitigation penality. Arch Linux I think is the fastest Linux distro for gaming. Instead of trying to install Linux on your current SSD, you should get a cheap spare SSD and experiment on that, making sure that your Windows SSD is disconnected while you play with Linux.

Also, I just remembered. Make sure VBS is turned off in the Windows Security options (especially if you are using Windows 11). It is really bad for gaming in terms of performance.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Yup, I see it only has the K SKUs being supported. Bummer.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Performance did improve but I am still not at stable 60fps @ 1440p despite meeting and exceeding requirements.

Are you using DLSS? If not, that should solve your issue. Try running the game using the DLSS Performance profile and you should get a nice fps boost.

Also, I think something is very wrong with your system: https://www.hardwareasylum.com/reviews/video/diablo4_dlss

That guy got 195 fps with a pretty old CPU. It would be really weird if increasing the resolution from 1080p to 1440p makes the game unplayable.

This discussion seems to point the finger at the game engine being really bad at VRAM management:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/11tyuxu

It might help to reduce your texture quality to Medium.

Radeons have better minimum fps in this game, possibly because the Radeon drivers have much less CPU overhead than your GPU's drivers: https://www.tomshardware.com/featur...gs-benchmarks-performance-system-requirements

 

[ibex333]

Are you using DLSS? If not, that should solve your issue. Try running the game using the DLSS Performance profile and you should get a nice fps boost.

Also, I think something is very wrong with your system: https://www.hardwareasylum.com/reviews/video/diablo4_dlss

That guy got 195 fps with a pretty old CPU. It would be really weird if increasing the resolution from 1080p to 1440p makes the game unplayable.

This discussion seems to point the finger at the game engine being really bad at VRAM management:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/11tyuxu

It might help to reduce your texture quality to Medium.

Radeons have better minimum fps in this game, possibly because the Radeon drivers have much less CPU overhead than your GPU's drivers: https://www.tomshardware.com/featur...gs-benchmarks-performance-system-requirements

thank you, will check on that.