High CPU Usage in Games

WalrusWaffleEye · September 20, 2020

For a few months now I've noticed that my CPU is always at high CPU usage while playing games. I'm having trouble addressing or understanding the issue so I'll try listing down the facts so far:

It's i5 6600K that's overclocked to 4.5Ghz on an Asus Z170a motherboard. The GPU is a MSI GTX 970.
It's not a cooling problem, the highest its gotten to is 75 Celsius while processing videos in Sony Vegas.
I downloaded the free version of Driver Booster in order to update all my drivers.
I've updated Windows whenever possible.
I recently moved my OS to a new M.2 SSD while keeping the old hard drive for games (I think I partitioned the disks weirdly because I have a recovery and local disk that have 400 MB in them along side my Hard drive and SSD)
I upgraded to 3200 MHz 16GB RAM
WMI Provider Host usually takes around 10% at all times, even when I'm doing nothing. (I checked online for solutions on this but I found none worked)
It commonly will spike to 100% CPU usage in games like Overwatch, Borderlands 2, and Saints Row 4 at low settings.
I downloaded QuickCPU and unparked my cores while maxing out a lot of the values to attempt at getting better performance.
I view the usage in Task Manager and sometimes QuickCPU

The reason I'm asking this now is that I heard from my friend that he was getting 8% CPU usage on Saints Row 4 while I was getting 88-100%. His computer was around the same price as mine and built 8 years ago. I built mine 5 years ago. I'm wondering if this is normal or if I have to just wipe my pc and reinstall windows. Before my PC could run Overwatch low quality 144 Fps no problem but now it keeps frame dropping, my only assumption is that it's my CPU's problem because it reaches 100% while my GPU is at around 30%. Maybe it's the poor optimization of the games themselves but I feel like that isn't right either. If you guys could give me a way to diagnosis the problem that would be nice. A solution would be even better! Anyways if there's no other way I guess you can link me some videos with steps on how to reinstall windows while keeping my old programs. To be honest, it would be very annoying redownloading all those drivers, I don't think I have the disks anymore, but I'll get them online if I have to.

Thank you in advance if you read this super long post and help.

ki8aras · September 20, 2020

the only way to get 8% cpu usage is with sth like a 12 core cpu, today's games use more cores so its normal(my 6600k had about the same usage when i was playing gta)

Applefreak · September 20, 2020

You do want 100 % cpu usage in games. If you had a 16 core cpu and 100 % usage in Battlefield 2, I'd be worried but with modern games you can easily max out 6 and sometimes 8 core cpus.

WalrusWaffleEye · September 20, 2020

Thanks for the replies. I thought the games would run better since they are old in my eyes but I guess 7 years isn't that much time. I presume the issue in frame drops is something else then. I don't think my GPU is what's holding me back since it's at 30-50% usage depending on when fights happen in Overwatch but I'll investigate more. That's the only other reason I can think of. Maybe Reinstalling Windows is the only option. My last theory is that Overwatch has been updated so many times that it runs worse than it did a year or two ago. I recently saw a video dating back two years where the GTX 970 could reach 160-180 fps consistently but my game runs at 144 fps but can drop a few times to 80-50 for one second intervals during fights. Well I'll figure it out someday. Once again thank you guys!