Do I need a better CPU or GPU?

Hello. I have been playing alot of VR the last few days, and Im experiencing abit stuttering when Im playing some games. So my question is: It it caused by my GPU or my CPU? I took a picture below, showing CPU and GPU usage. Im not an expert in this, so any kind of help would have been greatly appreciated :)

Basic specs:
AMD FX 8350 CPU (4000 MHz) Not overclocked
AMD 290x Gigabyte Windforce OC
8 GB DDR 3 RAM

What resolution are you playing at? And what about quality settings (Antialias, anisotropic filtering, shadow quality, etc)?

eLPuSHeR said:

What resolution are you playing at? And what about quality settings (Antialias, anisotropic filtering, shadow quality, etc)?

My virtual reality headset (HTC VIVE) is running at 2160x1200 and should run in 90Hz for the best experience. There is not so many graphical settings in VR games. The only thing I can really adjust is supersampling which is at 1.0 (standard).

There's one definitive way to find out if your CPU is overloaded: Use the Performance Monitor tool, which you can start from Control Panel\Administrative Tools.

The Performance Monitor tool provides a vast amount of information on your running computer, more than you get from Task Manager or its Resource Monitor. When you first launch it, it tracks your CPU percentage utilization as the default counter. But you can have it track other counters.

First, throw a typical load on the CPU that you're worried might be overloading it.

Then, in Windows 10's Performance Monitor, click on the green "plus" icon to add a new counter to track. Then in the list of counters, select System\Processor Queue Length and click Add>> and then OK. The Processor Queue Length is the number of threads waiting to be serviced by your CPU.

A rule of thumb is that the Processor Queue Length should not constantly exceed 10 times the number of cores of your CPU. For example, for a 6-core CPU, the Processor Queue Length should not exceed 60 on a sustained basis. If it does, your CPU may be overloaded.

Eksy61 said:

There's one definitive way to find out if your CPU is overloaded: Use the Performance Monitor tool, which you can start from Control Panel\Administrative Tools.

The Performance Monitor tool provides a vast amount of information on your running computer, more than you get from Task Manager or its Resource Monitor. When you first launch it, it tracks your CPU percentage utilization as the default counter. But you can have it track other counters.

First, throw a typical load on the CPU that you're worried might be overloading it.

Then, in Windows 10's Performance Monitor, click on the green "plus" icon to add a new counter to track. Then in the list of counters, select System\Processor Queue Length and click Add>> and then OK. The Processor Queue Length is the number of threads waiting to be serviced by your CPU.

A rule of thumb is that the Processor Queue Length should not constantly exceed 10 times the number of cores of your CPU. For example, for a 6-core CPU, the Processor Queue Length should not exceed 60 on a sustained basis. If it does, your CPU may be overloaded.

Did I do it right? The stuttering was very intense at this point.

EdTittel said:

Looks like you did it right, and also looks like the load fails to violate Eksy61's formula (sustained 10X core count). When you run the performance tab in Task Manager, do you see anything maxing out there when the system stutters? It could still be CPU bound, but it might be memory or I/O bound as well.
HTH,
--Ed--

No, nothing seems to reach max. Everything is pretty far from max. Maybe its just the game that is bad optimized? I dont know. My friend has a PC almost identical like mine, but only with a Rx 480 instead of a 290x (almost same performance) and 32 gb ram instead of 8gb, and he can feel stuttering too.

EdTittel said:

This is also a possibility, especially given that your friend's rig has a newer graphics card and 4X RAM when compared to yours. Have you tried other VR games to see if you get the same symptoms from them, too? That might be a good next troubleshooting step: no point trying to fix something that ain't broke!
HTH,
--Ed--

Thats true :) I have tried more games, even a game called Onward that i had to refund because of this problem. But in that game, it was MUCH worse. I dont know if I could blame the GPU or CPU. Hmmm..