Definately being CPU capped

[kilrath81]

I have an i7-6700k with a 4.7ghz overclock. I tested my fps issues in some games by playing with settings and resolution. I bought a 2070 Super for 1080/1440 gaming at hopefully 144fps. Games that i thought would be easy on the system are really struggling. I'm a bit confused on the CPU usage though and if there is much i can do about it without spending 1000 bucks. I currently have 64gb DDR4 2133 ram so i would have to buy 32GB of 3600mhz if i changed to a Ryzen. My board will only take a 7700k as an upgrade which isnt worth the upgrade. 

 

In the games i tested i was getting sometimes 30-40% GPU utilization and sometimes the card would just downclock to 1605mhz while playing because the usage percent was so low at 1080p. The cpu shows 40-50% utilization but it isnt pegging half the CPU, its hitting all threads at about 50%. I would of assumed if it was a CPU issue and seen 50% usage i would see 2/4 cores at 100% and maybe 2/4 Logical processors at 100% in a game that uses 2-4 cores, not all cores/threads at 50%.

 

I work in UE4 and like the core counts for compiling code and shaders so if i upgraded i would want more than a 4c/8t or 8c/8t upgrade but as i spent a bunch of money on a 2070 super and a few other parts that were in need of replacement, i dont have much budget left for a ryzen 3950x or even a 3700x when you factor in the need for ram and a board. So the question/s is, Is there something wrong with my set up that is causing my 6700k to underperform? and is there a reasonably priced worthwhile upgrade that i should be looking at? 3600x seems decent but most people say it wont perform in games much better than the 6700k

[Eigenvektor]

Have you checked thermals?

[Mick Naughty]

So what are you in to see this usage?

have you also verified the card will see 100% in a benchmark or something?

[Jurrunio]

It's the slow RAM if you ask me, some games (say, Assassin's Creed Origins/Odyssey) on Intel CPUs show significant performance difference with slower memory (and even in other games there's still gains to be had)

[kilrath81]

Superposition i get a 20894 score on 1080p normal and it shows 98is% GPU usage.

 

Thermals are good with the GPU at 55ish and the CPU around 50. it on a H100i AIO. Im in games mostly, recently the big one has been "My Time in Portia" which is cartoony and not really packed full of objects to mow down the CPU i wouldnt think, but optimization is always an issue. Ive seen it in Wreckfest and Rust as well. 

 

As for the ram, i was thinking this was it, between using 4 slots instead of just 2 and the 2133mhz being entry level but then again i read conflicting reports of the 2 vs 4 sticks not being noticeable in speed and that upgrading the ram to a higher speed on a 6700k wouldnt really factor very much of an increase either. I could buy 3200 or 3600 CL16 ram and try it... if it doesnt help at least i have ram for an upgrade already.

Edit: This is my ram, bought 2 kits

Kingston
HyperX Fury 32GB DDR4 2133MHz CL14 Dual Channel Kit (2 x 16GB), Black
MX61804 | 740617256598

[St. Nick]

At a 4.7 ghz overclock there is no chance in hell that 6700k should be bottle necking a 2070 super THAT much. Infact if you are only seeing 50% usage on the CPU it's obviously something else that is going on. May we have your full system specs?

[kilrath81]

14 minutes ago, St. Nick said:

At a 4.7 ghz overclock there is no chance in hell that 6700k should be bottle necking a 2070 super THAT much. Infact if you are only seeing 50% usage on the CPU it's obviously something else that is going on. May we have your full system specs?

i7 6700k 4.7ghz (1.403v 46x 102 clock)

Kingston 4x16gb DDR4 2133mhz CL14

H100i AIO

Gigabyte Windforce 2070 Super (Mild OC something like 50mhz core, 700mhz memory)

Maximus Hero VIII Motherboard

EVGA 850 Gold PSU

 

M.2 NVMe 1tb

2 x 2TB HDDS

2 x SSDs in Raid 0 (512gb each)

 

Windows 10 Most recent updates installed

Latest Nvidia Drivers

 

Edit:

I would put this stuff in my signature, but most embarrassingly i haven't figured out how to add a signature yet lol.

[St. Nick]

And you have your windows power plan set to performance as well I will assume, but ask anyway?

[Mister Woof]

Some games are very ipc dependent. So if you are at 50% cpu utilization and your gpu is hanging out at 40%, it can still be a CPU bottleneck.

 

Example, MMOs tend to be very single threaded and will bog down and be limited by ipc.

 

More cores won't help you here, just faster ones.

 

And memory speed as well could be it as stated above.

[St. Nick]

Well sure, you can get more performance with a faster CPU, but he shouldn't be stuck at only 40% utilization with a 6700k and a 2070 super though. That is way to disproportionate. 

[Mister Woof]

34 minutes ago, St. Nick said:

Well sure, you can get more performance with a faster CPU, but he shouldn't be stuck at only 40% utilization with a 6700k and a 2070 super though. That is way to disproportionate. 

I've seen it in games like wow.

 

It only really uses up to 4 cores but the network thread will hammer one core, showing only like 20% utilization on my 8700k, but gpu utilization only to 60% or so and for drops from 200 to 75

 

 

[kilrath81]

The strange part of it all is no core is maxed. The idividual cores were fluctuating between 40% and 60%.

 

I might have forgot to mention that when i took "My Time at Portia" to 1440p it kicked the card up to 50%-60% and put the clock back to 2085mhz from 1605mhz that i was getting in 1080p, So i know something is tieing it up since the resolution bump gave me no more or less FPS, it just used more of the GPU. 

[kilrath81]

1 hour ago, St. Nick said:

And you have your windows power plan set to performance as well I will assume, but ask anyway?

Yes my power plan is on performance but i was under the impression a windows update made that redundant anyway since they added their "Game Mode" game detection

[Ben17]

Just now, kilrath81 said:

Yes my power plan is on performance but i was under the impression a windows update made that redundant anyway since they added their "Game Mode" game detection

yes but its still best to check  sometimes there's still a problem with performance not being turned on

[kilrath81]

Should i try to OC my ram to 3200mhz manually and see (if its at all stable) if it changes things much? I've never overclocked ram, i read that 2133 CL13 usually will hit 3200 easily and CL14 will usually hit 3000. The guides ive read say leave timings on auto and it will knock the timings to 16 or 17 automatically to make up for the mhz increase but is ram overclock usually this successful? if i try it, the ram wont fry will it?

[xg32]

58 minutes ago, kilrath81 said:

Should i try to OC my ram to 3200mhz manually and see (if its at all stable) if it changes things much? I've never overclocked ram, i read that 2133 CL13 usually will hit 3200 easily and CL14 will usually hit 3000. The guides ive read say leave timings on auto and it will knock the timings to 16 or 17 automatically to make up for the mhz increase but is ram overclock usually this successful? if i try it, the ram wont fry will it?

it's the ram, and it doesnt hurt if you try to oc it first before spending any money, even taking out 2 sticks and ocing it would help, try for 4 sticks 2666 or 2 sticks 3000 imho.

[kilrath81]

3 minutes ago, xg32 said:

it's the ram, and it doesnt hurt if you try to oc it first before spending any money, even taking out 2 sticks and ocing it would help, try for 4 sticks 2666 or 2 sticks 3000 imho.

When i built the system it was running game servers and needed the 64gb of ram, now even as a game development rig it doesnt need 64gb so thanks, i think i will try taking two out and doing an overclock. Obviously not straight to 3000 but through 2400, 2666, etc. If it is the ram and i can get 3000 out of it then i will leave the two stick in and if they die, i have 2 spare, if they die i can just get 2 more.

 

Thanks everyone for your time, when i get home from work i will give this a go and report back any results.

[kilrath81]

So i had to put my timings to 16 16 38 at 1.35v at 2666 which booted with 2 sticks. I havent bothered to try higher yet and i dont see any improvement on the situation, I had to clear my CMOS so i am only running 4.6ghz atm as well (skipped a lot of my finer tweaks to just get running with the mem overclock). I took a screenshot to try to help illustrate the oddity im seeing. 

[Mister Woof]

What game is this happening on again?

[kilrath81]

5 minutes ago, Plutosaurus said:

What game is this happening on again?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/666140/My_Time_At_Portia/

[Mister Woof]

3 minutes ago, kilrath81 said:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/666140/My_Time_At_Portia/

That's kind of an indie game.... My wife plays it but I haven't looked at her hardware utilization.

 

It entirely possible that it's just an engine issue and not elated to your hardware.

 

Does this happen in other games?

[kilrath81]

1 minute ago, Plutosaurus said:

That's kind of an indie game.... My wife plays it but I haven't looked at her hardware utilization.

 

It entirely possible that it's just an engine issue and not elated to your hardware.

 

Does this happen in other games?

I get issues like this in Wreckfest and it is extremely bad in rust. Wreckfest is an in house engine and runs better than the other two. The other two are Unity, and unoptimized but you would figure you would pin either the CPU cores or the GPU but it isnt really fully stressing either and its only getting 80ish fps of the 144 im asking it for. 

[kilrath81]

As an update, After a whole night of playing i found the ram clock helped a lot with the FPS lows. I had much fewer fps drops and stutters while playing. The frame rate MIGHT have increased a tiny bit in certain scenarios but not by much if it did. Still not using 100% of any single core of the cpu or the GPU for some odd reason. Maybe still ram causing CPU to wait... i will try 3000mhz after work and see but i dont think these sticks are going to do it without some nasty timings which will likely negate any mhz increase.

[Mister Woof]

8 minutes ago, kilrath81 said:

As an update, After a whole night of playing i found the ram clock helped a lot with the FPS lows. I had much fewer fps drops and stutters while playing. The frame rate MIGHT have increased a tiny bit in certain scenarios but not by much if it did. Still not using 100% of any single core of the cpu or the GPU for some odd reason. Maybe still ram causing CPU to wait... i will try 3000mhz after work and see but i dont think these sticks are going to do it without some nasty timings which will likely negate any mhz increase.

That game is really not a hardware hog. I get the feeling it still will pull great numbers on old Haswell i7s and they typically are on 1866 or less DDR3.....

 

I think something else is wrong.

 

Don't know what, but that's my gut

 

[Mister Woof]

Wait, are your games on the HDD or SSD