Cant get my gtx 970 to run at full power on high refresh

[ComradeBard]

I have a 1440p 165hz main monitor and the problem is in less demanding games like Dota 2, Halo MCC, Elite Dangerous... instead of using the full gpu power it uses 70-80% sometimes even less and stays at lower fps. I tried everything that came to mind: windows is set to the high preformance plan, the setting in windows and nvidia have the screen to 165hz, i have the nvidia control panel set to prefer maximum preformance and highest fps. Incresing the power limit and overclocking didnt work either. Any ideas how to solve this?

 

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

It is likely that your CPU is the limiting factor here. Please list your specs in full.

[ComradeBard]

Doubt it,  with those games and a 970. None of them strain the cpu very much, but I can always oc it a bit to see if theres a change in gpu usage. I really dont think a 4690k is the limiter in 10yo games tho
Cpu: i5 4690k @ stock
Ram: 16GB 1833 hyperx

Gpu: Gtx 970
Storage: 250GB Kingston and 500GB Samsung sata ssds, 1TB WD green
Psu: xfx xxx 650W
Monitor 1: Dell s3220dgf
Monitor 2: Old  LG Flatron

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

8 minutes ago, jollypirate said:

Doubt it, not with those games and a 970. None of them strain the cpu very much

I have experience with Halo MCC with a 4790K, except one that is overclocked to 4.8Ghz and running with 2200 MHz RAM.

 

Your CPU is limiting your frame rate. OC your CPU, and I guarantee your FPS will increase.

[ComradeBard]

Not like i have any better idea either way . Il oc and test it out

[jaslion]

1 hour ago, jollypirate said:

Not like i have any better idea either way . Il oc and test it out

Easy thing to do is check in task manager which core is near or at 100%. If one is at 100% then boom there is the issue. 10 year old games tend to just be dual core games at most which is true for both dota and mcc. They can use more but really mainly rely on 2 cores for the most part

[ComradeBard]

Had some afternoon classes so didnt have time to oc yet, i did test what @jaslion said + some extra stuff.

So for mcc looks like you were right, it pings the cpu to 100% and even closing all my background stuff gives a huge boost to my mins.

For dota and e:d there was no difference tho, cpu usage sat at 80 and 60 respectively across all cores. What was running in the background didnt seem to have any effect on the fps.

 

In dota i tried to get the gpu to start working more by loading in a ton of heroes and illusion but the cpu and gpu utilization stayed the same  just my fps dropped

Now im gonna try and OC, if nothing else itl help halo

[-rascal-]

2 hours ago, jollypirate said:

Had some afternoon classes so didnt have time to oc yet, i did test what @jaslion said + some extra stuff.

So for mcc looks like you were right, it pings the cpu to 100% and even closing all my background stuff gives a huge boost to my mins.

For dota and e:d there was no difference tho, cpu usage sat at 80 and 60 respectively across all cores. What was running in the background didnt seem to have any effect on the fps.

 

In dota i tried to get the gpu to start working more by loading in a ton of heroes and illusion but the cpu and gpu utilization stayed the same  just my fps dropped

Now im gonna try and OC, if nothing else itl help halo

 

From what I recall DOTA 2 is based on the Source Engine (e.g. game engine as HL2, L4D), so it only really uses ~2 cores.

It juggles the CPU usage around from one core to the next, but never fully using 3 or 4 cores.

 

https://www.gamingpcbuilder.com/dota-2-hardware-performance-tested/

Quote

The CPU utilization is only 55% with 4 cores, 70% with 3 cores, 84% with 2 cores, and 100% with 1 core. This means that the full potential of a quad-core processor will not be unleashed and can only stress two cores.

 

The CPU clock is almost not essential for this game dropping only 5–8 fps for every 200MHz and 400MHz until it dropped 20 fps at 2.4GHz. This means that you need a processor with more than 2.4GHz clock speed. Setting the Boost feature to On instead of Auto gives a little 2 fps increase in performance.

 

Meanwhile, turning the Boost off (dropping the clock speed down to 3.2GHz) diminishes a couple of fps, ranging from 5 to 17 fps depending on how many cores are active.  Disabling cores also reduces the performance, but the biggest dropped occurs when running with only one core left, where it reduced to half of the performance of the dual-core, which is 128 fps, down to 64 fps with boost off. But surprisingly, a single core yielded 64 fps, a very playable result provided you have a very capable video card. Also, a high clocked dual-core (3.2 and 3.6 GHz produces 128 and 137 fps respectively) is faster than a low clocked 2.4GHz quad-core with only 121 fps.

 

3.2 GHz = 128 FPS

3.6 GHz = 137 FPS

+0.4 GHz = +9 FPS

 

Say...

If your i5-4690K @ 3.6 GHz = 137 FPS.

i5-4690K @ 4.6 GHz = +23 FPS gain = 160 FPS

i5-4690K @ 4.8 GHz = +27 FPS gain = 164 FPS

IMO, that's no small number....

[ComradeBard]

Allright so im confused. I got my cpu to 4.4GHz and theres no difference.In MCC  the cpu isnt pinged at 100% all the time anymore, but the gpu usage still never goes beyond 84% and theres really no noticable difference between oc and just closing my background tasks (which i did in both tests anyway). Dota and E:d exactly the same i got the same fps and resource usage again
Im not sure whats going on here i expected to get at least halo to actually improve since it was using all of the cpu

Side note i think in that dota article you linked they reused old results based on the numbers compared to mine (80% cpu utilization), the old ui in the game screenshot and the fact they say the fps cap is 120 (its 240 now)