Where's my bottleneck?

[Sunwarder]

Hi,

 

I have a curious issue. I recently build a new high-end computer and I'm having a weird issue where some games would not max out on FPS while none of the components are at 100% usage. Here's the tech specs of the PC:

 

MB: Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Xtreme WB

CPU: Core i9-9900ks @ 5.1GHz

GPU: Asus RTX 2080 TI Strix White

Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 4x16GB @ 3200MHz CL16 (I guess I cheaped out here the most)

Storage: Samsung 2TB 970 Evo Plus

Cooling: Custom watercooling loop

PSU: Seasonic TX Prime 1000w

Monitors: 2x Asus PG279QE 2560x1440 144Hz G-Sync + Asus MB16AC 1080p 60Hz

 

Ok. With that out of the way I try to game at 1440p 144 fps and in some games it works out. Fortnite for example keeps the GPU above 90% util and at least one of the CPU cores at 80+ % and keeps at 144 fps pretty stable and goes to 160+ if I uncap the fps. I don't play a lot of games but I try to keep all the settings maxed out with this hardware. So Fortnite a good example of my hardware being utilized good and I'm clearly hitting the GPU "bottleneck" there.

 

The controversial examples I have are in Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft where D3 is the worst. In D3 no matter what I do the fps won't go over ~146 while the GPU is at 40% and 1 CPU core at ~60%. System memory is at like 20% and there's plenty of free VRAM. The PerfCap reason says utilization. Similar story in WoW. FPS tends to fluctuate and goes to 144 when out in the world and GPU is around 80-90% and in those cases fps will go higher if uncapped but in major cities I get around 100 fps and GPU at 70%. The first thought is always a CPU bottleneck in this case but no single core goes over 80% (Note: I tried disabling addons as well - no difference).

 

Notes: No vSync in play. Windows power profile at max performance. No thermal-throttling happening. CPU stays around 90 degress on Prime 95 small FFT, around 50 degrees while gaming and GPU doesn't go over 75 degrees.

 

At this point I'm beginning to wonder if the bottleneck is caused by me cheaping out on memory frequency/timings. Do you guys have any other idea what could be wrong?

 

Thanks!

[_Omega_]

1440p at 144hz.... most of the times it should be your GPU... dont think its the RAM

[jj9987]

I don't think you have a bottleneck in the hardware. Just like you said - utilization is the performance cap. It looks like you are simply hitting the FPS limit. The RAM is definitely not the bottleneck, Intel CPUs are not that hungry for high-speed/low-latency memory.

 

I don't know G-Sync, but could that limit the FPS to the maximum refresh rate of the monitor, similar as to how VSync does?

[Viper9]

At this point it seems like it's the games fault, maybe there's a FPS cap of some sort.

 

To be honest I don't see why you want 144 FPS for a hack and slash like Diablo 3.

 

 

[schwellmo92]

Those are both older games, I would say it's just the game engine holding it back at that point.

[dizmo]

You'll get more performance with faster RAM.

 

@_Omega_ @jj9987

Technically, it is. If he has faster RAM, he'll get better performance. He already has top tier everything else, so that is his bottleneck for further gains.

[_Omega_]

7 minutes ago, dizmo said:

You'll get more performance with faster RAM.

 

@_Omega_ @jj9987

Technically, it is. If he has faster RAM, he'll get better performance. He already has top tier everything else, so that is his bottleneck for further gains.

i think in the most games that are optimised for more FPS faster ram would only make a small difference. He could get a Titan RTX or 2 2080Ti with NVLink …

[MiniMike DK]

Have you checked your power plan settings? Are they set to High Performance?

Also check the settings for your GPU in the Nvidia control panel.

[Roswell]

This is expected performance. I'm sure if you start looking at individual core usage, one of them is getting pegged to 100%, especially in WoW. Not every game is threaded well and will make your CPU look like it's not doing much.

[Sunwarder]

Thanks, guys!

 

@MiniMike DK Power plan was already on high performance but I had forgotten about the GPU setting. Was on Optimal power. Changing to high perf didn't affect gaming performance (not noticing it so far at least) but it solved another annoying problem I had - the GPU coil whines like crazy when fully idle (monitors sleep). I had set up screen savers to workaround that before. 

@jj9987 Good point about G-Sync. Don't think so because Fortnite can get over 144fps. I'll research more on this, though.

@Viper9 You're right, I don't need it. It's more of a tinkering kind of problem at this point.

@dizmo Well you're not wrong. I kind of had the same thoughts too. I am going to take the benefit of the doubt here and ease my mind by deeming it an issue with older games like some of the other people are suggesting. I kind of went for the looks here and 3600 was double the price so I'm going to have to live with it.

 

I guess I should just drop it with these older games. I am happy with the overall performance anyway. I'm not getting a Titan or a second GPU anytime soon

[dizmo]

3 hours ago, _Omega_ said:

i think in the most games that are optimised for more FPS faster ram would only make a small difference. He could get a Titan RTX or 2 2080Ti with NVLink …

 

51 minutes ago, Sunwarder said:

@dizmo Well you're not wrong. I kind of had the same thoughts too. I am going to take the benefit of the doubt here and ease my mind by deeming it an issue with older games like some of the other people are suggesting. I kind of went for the looks here and 3600 was double the price so I'm going to have to live with it.

 

I guess I should just drop it with these older games. I am happy with the overall performance anyway. I'm not getting a Titan or a second GPU anytime soon

 

You'd be surprised, with a top tier system you can see frame improvements of between 20 - 40 fps. Title dependent of course.