Is 100% usage possible?!

[SergentWallnuss]

I've been wondering why my CPU and GPU usage never go up to 100% while gaming. Yet, my framerate doesn't reach 60FPS.

 

I have seen several YouTube videos where the usages go up to 100% constantly, so basically it should be possible to achieve that, right?

 

It's said that there might be a motherboard bottleneck if your CPU and GPU can't reach 100% usage because it can't process the power of those components. However, while benchmarking the do, in fact, go up to 100% usage in my system, so that shouldn't be the problem in my case, right?

 

So is there a software problem? Or do those games simply not use all the CPU cores or something like that?

 

I've been wondering about that for quite a while and couln't really find any solutions or great help, so I just figured I might give it a go in here.

[Haro]

Specs ?

Temps ?

What games and at what res?

[SergentWallnuss]

Just now, TofuHaroto said:

Specs ?

Temps ?

What games and at what res?

I7-6700

GTX 1070

16GB DDR4 2133MHz

 

I'm going to focus on My Summer Car for now:

The temps are below 70°C. I am playing on 1920x1080 and it's running below 40FPS

 

In GTA5

my GPU temps go up to the limit of 83°C and the game runs at about 50FPS on 1920x1080 as well.

[Jet_ski]

Run the resource monitor and play the game for a bit. It should identify your bottleneck. For instance if your disk utilization is at 100% then your storage might be slow.

 

Also you never want 100% utilization because in that case, if you even want to abort whatever is happening, your system will freeze as it’ll push it over the edge.

[Haro]

1 minute ago, SergentWallnuss said:

The temps are below 70°C. I am playing on 1920x1080 and it's running below 40FPS

Ddu the drivers 

 

[SergentWallnuss]

4 minutes ago, Jet_ski said:

Run the resource monitor and play the game for a bit. It should identify your bottleneck. For instance if your disk utilization is at 100% then your storage might be slow.

 

Also you never want 100% utilization because in that case, if you even want to abort whatever is happening, your system will freeze as it’ll push it over the edge.

Alright thanks, will do that.

 

Oh yeah right, that sounds comprehensible haha, thank you.

[SergentWallnuss]

5 minutes ago, TofuHaroto said:

Ddu the drivers 

 

What does that to exactly?

I've just had a look into that and it appears that it uninstalls some drivers and does something with the system. However, it could also mess up my system if I understood that correctly....

[Haro]

Just now, SergentWallnuss said:

However, it could also mess up my system if I understood that correctly....

Display driver uninstaller 

Check a video on how to use it

[SergentWallnuss]

1 minute ago, TofuHaroto said:

Display driver uninstaller 

Check a video on how to use it

Alright, will do, thank you very much!

[Haro]

Just now, SergentWallnuss said:

Alright, will do, thank you very much!

Good luck 

[SergentWallnuss]

1 hour ago, Jet_ski said:

Run the resource monitor and play the game for a bit. It should identify your bottleneck. For instance if your disk utilization is at 100% then your storage might be slow.

 

Also you never want 100% utilization because in that case, if you even want to abort whatever is happening, your system will freeze as it’ll push it over the edge.

I've been looking at my usages for a little bit now and my disks stay at 0% (or go up 2% very rarely), my CPU has an average of about 50%, GPU of 30% and RAM of 50% as well, so there shouldn't be any bottlenecks.

The individual CPU Threads stay at about 30%-50%. They don't really go above that.

[Jet_ski]

I’m out of ideas. Maybe this will help: 

https://support.rockstargames.com/articles/205778987/GTAV-PC-General-Troubleshooting-Installation-Issues-Crashes-Freezes-Poor-Performance

[Craftyawesome]

23 minutes ago, SergentWallnuss said:

The individual CPU Threads stay at about 30%-50%. They don't really go above that.

Can you see if a single thread benchmark/stress test shows the same thing? Windows seems to move threads between cores.

 

I suspect either your cpu or your ram speed is the problem. Your cpu is not outstanding, and your ram is slow. 

 

Double check if your ram is dual channel. You can see this with cpu-z channel #.

 

You could also try some sort of benchmark that tries to check if you are gpu bound like shadow of the tomb raider.

[SergentWallnuss]

20 hours ago, Jet_ski said:

I’m out of ideas. Maybe this will help: 

https://support.rockstargames.com/articles/205778987/GTAV-PC-General-Troubleshooting-Installation-Issues-Crashes-Freezes-Poor-Performance

Thank you, I will have a look into that.

[SergentWallnuss]

21 hours ago, Craftyawesome said:

Can you see if a single thread benchmark/stress test shows the same thing? Windows seems to move threads between cores.

 

I suspect either your cpu or your ram speed is the problem. Your cpu is not outstanding, and your ram is slow. 

 

Double check if your ram is dual channel. You can see this with cpu-z channel #.

 

You could also try some sort of benchmark that tries to check if you are gpu bound like shadow of the tomb raider.

When I do some benchmarks etc. the CPU does reach 100% usage.

 

I've checked MSI CPU-Z and it appears that my RAM is a single channel, so I guess that's quite bad XD.

 

I've downloaded the SOTR demo from steam and ran the benchmark. With the high preset I could average 62FPS and it tells me that I am 11% GPU-bound. Is that good or bad or what exactly does that tell me? I guess it means that my CPU is way to slow for my GPU?

[Craftyawesome]

2 hours ago, SergentWallnuss said:

When I do some benchmarks etc. the CPU does reach 100% usage.

 

I've checked MSI CPU-Z and it appears that my RAM is a single channel, so I guess that's quite bad XD.

 

I've downloaded the SOTR demo from steam and ran the benchmark. With the high preset I could average 62FPS and it tells me that I am 11% GPU-bound. Is that good or bad or what exactly does that tell me? I guess it means that my CPU is way to slow for my GPU?

Lets try to fix your ram first. Do you have two sticks of ram? Dual channel is typically slot 1 and 3 or 2 and 4. Check your motherboard manual, though. If you only have one stick, you will have a hard time with performance. Also, is your ram supposed to be 2133? That is typical without xmp, although if you bought cheap ram that might be its max.

 

My bench:

 

6600k @ 4.5 GHz

1060 6G with minor oc

Dual channel 2300 MHz ram


 

 

Gpu bound is when your gpu is why your framerate is low. So something else is holding your framerate back. Your cpu should probably beat mine, since my short google suggests SotTR works better with 4c8t. Although, my OC might lower that gap.

That basically leaves ram. With single channel 2133, I'm surprised it isn't worse. Can you send a listing of what you bought?

[SergentWallnuss]

19 hours ago, Craftyawesome said:

Lets try to fix your ram first. Do you have two sticks of ram? Dual channel is typically slot 1 and 3 or 2 and 4. Check your motherboard manual, though. If you only have one stick, you will have a hard time with performance. Also, is your ram supposed to be 2133? That is typical without xmp, although if you bought cheap ram that might be its max.

 

My bench:

  Hide contents

6600k @ 4.5 GHz

1060 6G with minor oc

Dual channel 2300 MHz ram


 

 

Gpu bound is when your gpu is why your framerate is low. So something else is holding your framerate back. Your cpu should probably beat mine, since my short google suggests SotTR works better with 4c8t. Although, my OC might lower that gap.

That basically leaves ram. With single channel 2133, I'm surprised it isn't worse. Can you send a listing of what you bought?

No I only have one stick of ram with 2133MHz and it doesn't support xmp...already checked that

 

I don't really have the shopping list of what I've bought but I know I've got those components:

CPU: I7-6700 @3,40GHz

GPU: GTX 1070 MSI Gaming X

RAM: Kingston DDR4-2133 1 Stick á 16GB

Motherboard: MSI Z170-A PRO

 

I'm running my games off a HDD but as there is next to no usage I don't really think that should be a problem.

 

So I guess the best thing would be to upgrade my ram instead of heading towards a better CPU?

 

Thank you very much for your help!

[xg32]

35 minutes ago, SergentWallnuss said:

 

RAM: Kingston DDR4-2133 1 Stick á 16GB

there's the problem, if the ram's running in single channel it slows down the cpu by 30-40%

[Craftyawesome]

19 minutes ago, SergentWallnuss said:

No I only have one stick of ram with 2133MHz and it doesn't support xmp...already checked that

 

I don't really have the shopping list of what I've bought but I know I've got those components:

CPU: I7-6700 @3,40GHz

GPU: GTX 1070 MSI Gaming X

RAM: Kingston DDR4-2133 1 Stick á 16GB

Motherboard: MSI Z170-A PRO

 

I'm running my games off a HDD but as there is next to no usage I don't really think that should be a problem.

 

So I guess the best thing would be to upgrade my ram instead of heading towards a better CPU?

 

Thank you very much for your help!

You could try overclocking your ram to at least help, but a relatively fast set would probably be better. Maybe this unless you can find a cheaper and still relatively fast kit.

[SergentWallnuss]

7 minutes ago, xg32 said:

there's the problem, if the ram's running in single channel it slows down the cpu by 30-40%

ohh I see, so I will definitely upgrade that as soon as I can.

 

Thank you very much!

[SergentWallnuss]

2 minutes ago, Craftyawesome said:

You could try overclocking your ram to at least help, but a relatively fast set would probably be better. Maybe this unless you can find a cheaper and still relatively fast kit.

Thank you, I will have a look at some of those....I've been looking into those G.SKILL ones for some time.

 

What about the speeds? The faster the better or do I have to pay attention on something like the compatibility with the CPU?

[Craftyawesome]

3 hours ago, SergentWallnuss said:

Thank you, I will have a look at some of those....I've been looking into those G.SKILL ones for some time.

 

What about the speeds? The faster the better or do I have to pay attention on something like the compatibility with the CPU?

Hmm. I think you mainly need to pay attention to the motherboard and not the CPU. I think a z series should let you run high speed ram without a k series CPU, but I would like someone else to confirm this. Or you could see if it at least lets you manually oc your ram.

Your mobo support page says up to 3200MHz. Although, my msi mobo says 3600 max on it and will let me manually select higher, but IDK if XMP will go higher than listed.

So you might not want to bother with more than 3200?

Higher speed is better, and lower CAS latency/timings is better. Also keep in mind that a faster speed also improves actual latency. For example, 3600 CL 18 has the same latency as 3200 CL 16, but the 3600 has higher bandwidth.

[SergentWallnuss]

8 hours ago, Craftyawesome said:

Hmm. I think you mainly need to pay attention to the motherboard and not the CPU. I think a z series should let you run high speed ram without a k series CPU, but I would like someone else to confirm this. Or you could see if it at least lets you manually oc your ram.

Your mobo support page says up to 3200MHz. Although, my msi mobo says 3600 max on it and will let me manually select higher, but IDK if XMP will go higher than listed.

So you might not want to bother with more than 3200?

Higher speed is better, and lower CAS latency/timings is better. Also keep in mind that a faster speed also improves actual latency. For example, 3600 CL 18 has the same latency as 3200 CL 16, but the 3600 has higher bandwidth.

I've been looking around online shops as well and settled with a G.SKILL Aegis 16GB kit. 3200MHz and CL16. I think I'm going for that.

 

I really hope that improves the performance of my pc.

 

Thank you very much for you help!

[SergentWallnuss]

19 hours ago, Craftyawesome said:

Hmm. I think you mainly need to pay attention to the motherboard and not the CPU. I think a z series should let you run high speed ram without a k series CPU, but I would like someone else to confirm this. Or you could see if it at least lets you manually oc your ram.

Your mobo support page says up to 3200MHz. Although, my msi mobo says 3600 max on it and will let me manually select higher, but IDK if XMP will go higher than listed.

So you might not want to bother with more than 3200?

Higher speed is better, and lower CAS latency/timings is better. Also keep in mind that a faster speed also improves actual latency. For example, 3600 CL 18 has the same latency as 3200 CL 16, but the 3600 has higher bandwidth.

I went to a computer store today and bought a pair of G.SKILL Aegis 2x8GB DDR4 3000MHz CL16.

XMP doesn't work for me (PC bluescreens and says there is a problem). I think that's because my motherboard has a maximum voltage of 1.2V and the ram needs 1.35V....not too much of a problem for me though.

 

I ran the SotTR benchmark and averaged 81FPS instead of 62FPS, so I am really happy with the result.

 

Thanks for everyones help here!

[Craftyawesome]

56 minutes ago, SergentWallnuss said:

I went to a computer store today and bought a pair of G.SKILL Aegis 2x8GB DDR4 3000MHz CL16.

XMP doesn't work for me (PC bluescreens and says there is a problem). I think that's because my motherboard has a maximum voltage of 1.2V and the ram needs 1.35V....not too much of a problem for me though.

 

I ran the SotTR benchmark and averaged 81FPS instead of 62FPS, so I am really happy with the result.

 

Thanks for everyones help here!

Will it not let you manually set any voltages or is it just reverting to 1.2?