low CPU usage and low GPU usage

[shogun1546]

PLZ help me！ In many games, my CPU and GPU usage both very low，（GTA5 SQUAD COD:WW2 RUST Farcry5）
Using 8700K (OC TO 5.0GHZ) 1080TI 2X8GB 3000mhz .
I use monitoring software to monitor the usage of each CPU core while playing games, and none of them is full-loaded. There is no CPU bottleneck in common sense，but GPU usage is still very low.I want to know what went wrong.

To solve this problem, I spent the whole night trying CPU and memory overclocking, but it didn't work. It really bothered me.

[Stormseeker9]

Do all the games run flawless? 

[shogun1546]

2 minutes ago, Stormseeker9 said:

Do all the games run flawless? 

nope.My GPU usage is 99% in Rainbow 6，but in some open world games, CSGO and battlefield 1 the GPU usage is very unstable（Floating from 99% to 70%）.I was very puzzled to find that my CPU was not full at this time，and don't know where the bottleneck is.

[Stormseeker9]

2 minutes ago, shogun1546 said:

nope.My GPU usage is 99% in Rainbow 6，but in some open world games, CSGO and battlefield 1 the GPU usage is very unstable（Floating from 99% to 70%）.I was very puzzled to find that my CPU was not full at this time，and don't know where the bottleneck is.

99% isn’t low, it’s full utilisation.

 

what is your screen resolution? 1080p/1440p/4K?

[shogun1546]

1 minute ago, Stormseeker9 said:

99% isn’t low, it’s full utilisation.

 

what is your screen resolution? 1080p/1440p/4K?

1080p.  I know 99% is full utilisation，but in many other games my GPU usage only 65%~85%  (gta5 farcry5)

[Epimetheus]

maybe they're not heavy games and don't need all these resources?

[191x7]

Turn on resolution scaling and play at a higher resolution. Let us know if it helped. Your hardware is too beefy for 1080p.

[shogun1546]

3 minutes ago, Epimetheus said:

maybe they're not heavy games and don't need all these resources?

I saw some benchemarks， their GPU run 96~99% in the same game

[shogun1546]

2 minutes ago, 191x7 said:

Turn on resolution scaling and play at a higher resolution. Let us know if it helped. Your hardware is too beefy for 1080p.

I don't think that's the point.Many game benchmarks use the same configuration as I do and run at 1080P resolution, but their GPU usage is very high.

[Minidak]

Vsync on?

[191x7]

46 minutes ago, Minidak said:

Vsync on?

Probably Uniform GPU monitoring OFF

[shogun1546]

7 minutes ago, 191x7 said:

Probably Uniform GPU monitoring OFF

 

55 minutes ago, Minidak said:

Vsync on?

144hz Vsync off

[SpookyCitrus]

I have an 8700K at 5ghz stable on all cores and a GTX 1080ti, when I played at 1080p 144hz I had the same thing, it depends on the game, some games are more CPU intensive than GPU, that's when you'll see higher CPU than GPU usage and then same thing with GPU intensive games. I didn't get full utilization in almost all of my games until switching to 1440p 144hz. But I haven't had any performance issues what so ever even when utilization wasn't 99%.

[shogun1546]

3 minutes ago, SpookyCitrus said:

I have an 8700K at 5ghz stable on all cores and a GTX 1080ti, when I played at 1080p 144hz I had the same thing, it depends on the game, some games are more CPU intensive than GPU, that's when you'll see higher CPU than GPU usage and then same thing with GPU intensive games. I didn't get full utilization in almost all of my games until switching to 1440p 144hz. But I haven't had any performance issues what so ever even when utilization wasn't 99%.

But what really bothers me is that in many benchmarks, other people use the same configuration as me but have higher GPU utilization and fps.I really can't figure out where my configuration bottleneck is.

[shogun1546]

5 minutes ago, SpookyCitrus said:

I have an 8700K at 5ghz stable on all cores and a GTX 1080ti, when I played at 1080p 144hz I had the same thing, it depends on the game, some games are more CPU intensive than GPU, that's when you'll see higher CPU than GPU usage and then same thing with GPU intensive games. I didn't get full utilization in almost all of my games until switching to 1440p 144hz. But I haven't had any performance issues what so ever even when utilization wasn't 99%.

6700k and near 99% GPU usage...This means that at least my 8700K in GTA5 is not a bottleneck.

[SpookyCitrus]

1 minute ago, shogun1546 said:

-snip-

Wait why are you comparing a 6700k, 2060 Super system to yours? That doesn't really compare correctly. Different components can drastically change benchmark results, you have to find benchmarks with your exact components to have a more accurate comparison, and even then every system is completely different. Thermals, overclocks, drivers, software configurations, resolution and application settings. You can really only use system benchmarks to get an idea of the performance you'll have, it's never going to match up exactly. Also just saying this again, you are not going to have 99% GPU or CPU usage in every game at 1080p or even in 1440p there will be some games where it does get up that high but you have pretty good hardware and just because it's not hitting 99% utilization doesn't mean it's bottlenecked or failing, some games just can't push higher end hardware that high yet.

 

We get this "problem" a lot on here, where someone builds a PC based on benchmark videos and are worried that because there are slight deviances in performance that there is something wrong. Most of the time it's just the poster worrying over nothing, if your fps is fine and your gameplay is smooth, and the only thing is the GPU usage percentage then I'd say you're fine. But if you are actually getting issues like crashes, massive frame drops or constant stuttering then it may be an actual issue.

 

If you are having gameplay problems such as those there's a few things you can look into. 

Is your GPU thermal throttling?

Is there an overclock causing an issue?

Are all drivers and updates installed and on the most recent version? The most important are the Motherboard Firmware(Bios) and GPU drivers.

Is everything being supplied with the correct amount of power, if your Powersupply isn't the correct wattage or is having issues then it can hurt your performance.

 

 

[shogun1546]

34 minutes ago, SpookyCitrus said:

Wait why are you comparing a 6700k, 2060 Super system to yours? That doesn't really compare correctly. Different components can drastically change benchmark results, you have to find benchmarks with your exact components to have a more accurate comparison, and even then every system is completely different. Thermals, overclocks, drivers, software configurations, resolution and application settings. You can really only use system benchmarks to get an idea of the performance you'll have, it's never going to match up exactly. Also just saying this again, you are not going to have 99% GPU or CPU usage in every game at 1080p or even in 1440p there will be some games where it does get up that high but you have pretty good hardware and just because it's not hitting 99% utilization doesn't mean it's bottlenecked or failing, some games just can't push higher end hardware that high yet.

 

We get this "problem" a lot on here, where someone builds a PC based on benchmark videos and are worried that because there are slight deviances in performance that there is something wrong. Most of the time it's just the poster worrying over nothing, if your fps is fine and your gameplay is smooth, and the only thing is the GPU usage percentage then I'd say you're fine. But if you are actually getting issues like crashes, massive frame drops or constant stuttering then it may be an actual issue.

 

If you are having gameplay problems such as those there's a few things you can look into. 

Is your GPU thermal throttling?

Is there an overclock causing an issue?

Are all drivers and updates installed and on the most recent version? The most important are the Motherboard Firmware(Bios) and GPU drivers.

Is everything being supplied with the correct amount of power, if your Powersupply isn't the correct wattage or is having issues then it can hurt your performance.

 

 

I just used that video to show that 8700k shouldn't be a bottleneck. I've seen a lot benchmarks of GTAV and Battlefield 1（also using 1080ti 8700k 2X8GB，even memory frequencies are lower than mine.），the biggest difference is that their graphics card usage is stable at about 90 percent，and mine is mostly around 80 percent, sometimes even down to  60 percent. I watched a lot of popular science videos on hardware.，youtubers usually emphasize that CPU and GPU need to be matched properly，but in fact, 8700K after overclocking shouldn't be the bottleneck.And I also use dual-channel memory.

Besides, I do have some problems with game crashes. After I overclocked the CPU and memory（8700k 5.0ghz   2x8GB 3200MHZ）, I used AIDA64 for half an hour of stability testing. But when I play games（I only played BF1 and BFV these days）, crashes often occur after 20 minutes gaming.And another extremely annoying problem for me is that whenever there is an explosion in the game, my GPU usage drops to zero in an instant.

[shogun1546]

55 minutes ago, SpookyCitrus said:

Wait why are you comparing a 6700k, 2060 Super system to yours? That doesn't really compare correctly. Different components can drastically change benchmark results, you have to find benchmarks with your exact components to have a more accurate comparison, and even then every system is completely different. Thermals, overclocks, drivers, software configurations, resolution and application settings. You can really only use system benchmarks to get an idea of the performance you'll have, it's never going to match up exactly. Also just saying this again, you are not going to have 99% GPU or CPU usage in every game at 1080p or even in 1440p there will be some games where it does get up that high but you have pretty good hardware and just because it's not hitting 99% utilization doesn't mean it's bottlenecked or failing, some games just can't push higher end hardware that high yet.

 

We get this "problem" a lot on here, where someone builds a PC based on benchmark videos and are worried that because there are slight deviances in performance that there is something wrong. Most of the time it's just the poster worrying over nothing, if your fps is fine and your gameplay is smooth, and the only thing is the GPU usage percentage then I'd say you're fine. But if you are actually getting issues like crashes, massive frame drops or constant stuttering then it may be an actual issue.

 

If you are having gameplay problems such as those there's a few things you can look into. 

Is your GPU thermal throttling?

Is there an overclock causing an issue?

Are all drivers and updates installed and on the most recent version? The most important are the Motherboard Firmware(Bios) and GPU drivers.

Is everything being supplied with the correct amount of power, if your Powersupply isn't the correct wattage or is having issues then it can hurt your performance.

 

 

My power supply is 550 watts. The temperature of video card and CPU in the game is about 70 degrees.Using the latest Nvidia driver.The BIOS version hasn't changed since i bought the motherboard last year.My own inference is that my ram frequency is not high enough，maybe I should try to buy two 4000MHz ram?

[shogun1546]

1 hour ago, SpookyCitrus said:

Wait why are you comparing a 6700k, 2060 Super system to yours? That doesn't really compare correctly. Different components can drastically change benchmark results, you have to find benchmarks with your exact components to have a more accurate comparison, and even then every system is completely different. Thermals, overclocks, drivers, software configurations, resolution and application settings. You can really only use system benchmarks to get an idea of the performance you'll have, it's never going to match up exactly. Also just saying this again, you are not going to have 99% GPU or CPU usage in every game at 1080p or even in 1440p there will be some games where it does get up that high but you have pretty good hardware and just because it's not hitting 99% utilization doesn't mean it's bottlenecked or failing, some games just can't push higher end hardware that high yet.

 

We get this "problem" a lot on here, where someone builds a PC based on benchmark videos and are worried that because there are slight deviances in performance that there is something wrong. Most of the time it's just the poster worrying over nothing, if your fps is fine and your gameplay is smooth, and the only thing is the GPU usage percentage then I'd say you're fine. But if you are actually getting issues like crashes, massive frame drops or constant stuttering then it may be an actual issue.

 

If you are having gameplay problems such as those there's a few things you can look into. 

Is your GPU thermal throttling?

Is there an overclock causing an issue?

Are all drivers and updates installed and on the most recent version? The most important are the Motherboard Firmware(Bios) and GPU drivers.

Is everything being supplied with the correct amount of power, if your Powersupply isn't the correct wattage or is having issues then it can hurt your performance.

 

 

Because of my low GPU usage ，my FPS  is even lower than 1070ti in some games  ：（    （ultra setting 1080P）

[shogun1546]

My video

[SpookyCitrus]

4 hours ago, shogun1546 said:

I just used that video to show that 8700k shouldn't be a bottleneck. I've seen a lot benchmarks of GTAV and Battlefield 1（also using 1080ti 8700k 2X8GB，even memory frequencies are lower than mine.），the biggest difference is that their graphics card usage is stable at about 90 percent，and mine is mostly around 80 percent, sometimes even down to  60 percent. I watched a lot of popular science videos on hardware.，youtubers usually emphasize that CPU and GPU need to be matched properly，but in fact, 8700K after overclocking shouldn't be the bottleneck.And I also use dual-channel memory.

Besides, I do have some problems with game crashes. After I overclocked the CPU and memory（8700k 5.0ghz   2x8GB 3200MHZ）, I used AIDA64 for half an hour of stability testing. But when I play games（I only played BF1 and BFV these days）, crashes often occur after 20 minutes gaming.And another extremely annoying problem for me is that whenever there is an explosion in the game, my GPU usage drops to zero in an instant.

This sounds like an unstable overclock to  me, try turning the overclock off and running at stock settings to see if it improves, just because an overclock runs fine in aida for 30 minutes doesn't mean it's stable. Usually if you're overclocking you want to run Aida for HOURS and if your games are crashing after 20 minutes of playing that can also lean towards your overclock being the culprit.

 

4 hours ago, shogun1546 said:

My power supply is 550 watts. The temperature of video card and CPU in the game is about 70 degrees.Using the latest Nvidia driver.The BIOS version hasn't changed since i bought the motherboard last year.My own inference is that my ram frequency is not high enough，maybe I should try to buy two 4000MHz ram?

What model of PSU is it that?If it's a cheap or old PSU it  can be a huge problem for more demanding hardware. You're ram isn't the problem upgrading to 4000mhz ram will do absolutely nothing for you. If you could please post a detailed part list of your system. 

[Fakmykak]

lol

[shogun1546]

6 hours ago, SpookyCitrus said:

This sounds like an unstable overclock to  me, try turning the overclock off and running at stock settings to see if it improves, just because an overclock runs fine in aida for 30 minutes doesn't mean it's stable. Usually if you're overclocking you want to run Aida for HOURS and if your games are crashing after 20 minutes of playing that can also lean towards your overclock being the culprit.

 

What model of PSU is it that?If it's a cheap or old PSU it  can be a huge problem for more demanding hardware. You're ram isn't the problem upgrading to 4000mhz ram will do absolutely nothing for you. If you could please post a detailed part list of your system. 

Intel Core i7-8700K, 5098 MHz (51 x 100)

MSI Z370 Tomahawk (MS-7B47)  (3 PCI-E x1, 3 PCI-E x16, 2 M.2, 4 DDR4 DIMM, Audio, Video, Gigabit LAN)

BIOS： AMI UEFI (05/17/2018)

    
G-SKILL DDR4 3000MHz 8GB
 7F7F7F7FCD F4-3000C16-8GTZR
    
G-SKILL DDR4 3000MHz 8GB

7F7F7F7FCD F4-3000C16-8GTZR
   

GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (11 GB)

Samsung SSD 970 EVO 250GB  (250 GB, PCI-E 3.0 x4)
ST2000DM006-2DM164  (2 TB, 7200 RPM, SATA-III)

PSU:  https://antec.com/product/power/eag-pro550.php  

[Nena Trinity]

Try to set Windows to performance mode maybe?

[shogun1546]

4 hours ago, Nena360 said:

Try to set Windows to performance mode maybe?

It's already set up.