Ok first of all. Anyone trying to play BF2042 with a CPU of any less than 8 cores and 16 threads is not going to have a very good time at all.
Even older BF1, and BFV use 15 threads steadily and consistently. I mean that even an Intel i7 8700K or Intel i7 8086K with 6 cores and 12 threads are going to get pressed to the max. (In the older Battlefield titles) Yes every single thread will hit 98-100% CPU usage under those very heavy loads with explosions and a lot of action etc. etc. Once that CPU usage goes up, your GPU usage falls down.. Lowering the graphics is going to make this worse, because you are giving the GPU less burden and giving more to the CPU.
I recently purchased and installed the new Battlefield 2042. The only issues I had was that I would play the game, and after 10-15 minutes it would just close to the desktop without an error of any sort. It turns out that Nvidia Geforce experience was causing this. So, I quickly resolved the issue. And my game play is ridiculously smooth..
First of all, I am a performance junkie!! I love computer hardware and I love 0% CPU usage when I idle on my Windows 10 desktop. Meaning I dont want any unnecessary crap running in the back ground. Your keyboard RGB software? Yeah, no thanks! Or maybe your software for your sound card and headphones. This is all the most ridiculous crap that the average people constantly install and run. When is why the above user is getting better performance, because when you create a new windows user account, it gives you a new desktop. Which means it won't be running all these garbage programs and services at startup when you login. These programs consume and eat resources away and do nothing for you!
I run a very stripped-down version of Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC, I run an Intel 11900K delidded direct die @5.4Ghz all cores, I have a 3090 Kingpin at 2,190Mhz and the memory is at 23Gbps. The reason I run an 11900K is because of the IPC and how fast this CPU actually is once properly optimized. My latency is around 36NS which is literally half of that of any Ryzen platform, and I don't need to worry with Windows 11 with Intel 12th gen processors. Windows 11 is NOT ready yet.. So, while 12th gen intel is fantastic and all.. I'm going to take a pass for now. My setup is tuned out to the maximum of bleeding edge with overclocks, and so is my operating system. My bottom right windows task bar shows two icons running, and that is the Nvidia control panel and Evga Precision for overclocking my 3090 Kingpin.... Thats it!!
Now, getting to actual performance results and numbers. This game is extremely well optimized! Just not on any CPU with less than 16 logical processors/threads. And the reason is that Battlefield has been using 15 threads now since 2016. So yeah! It's time to upgrade your CPU as I said before it has been over 5+ years now since Battlefield has been pushing well on 15-16 threads from a processor, so anything less is NOT going to cut it, I run the game BF2042 at 2560x1440P at 165HZ refresh rate, I run ULTRA detail, with (DLSS=OFF) I average 120-158+ FPS depending on the map. This game literally runs like butter. (And yes DLSS is OFF)
So, the simple and very easy fix after ranting over this is you need to re-install Windows 10! But first, you need to upgrade your CPU's to something with some fast IPC, then set your memory timings up properly, as DDR4 XMP profiles are terrible right out of the box. Just a $350 dollar well tuned 11700K would eat this game alive. Now, I am sure there are plenty of Ryzen CPU's that would work great too. The only reason I don't run one is because their latency is total crap. Easily doubling my system memory latency.