Wavy CPU usage normal? (Ryzen 5600X)

[Johellgren]

Heya!

 

 First of all, my specs:

 

ASUS ROG STRIX B550-E

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X@4.7GHz

GIGABYTE RTX 3080 OC

32GB of Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro @3600MHz

2TB Seagate Barracuda HDD @7.2K RPM

500GB Seagate Firecuda M.2 SSD

EVGA Supernova G2 750W

 

I just have a question regarding my CPU usage in certain situations. After encountering some stuttering while gaming in The Outer Worlds I decided to investigate the cause and I suspected that the CPU might be the culprit.

I watched the CPU utilization graph in the Task Manager and noticed a wavy pattern. This graph is from when I just stood still and didn't move the camera. I would think that the utilization should be more stable?

 

 

 

I thought it might be something weird with the game and decided to run a single core benchmark in Cinebench R23 and got the same, albeit more aggressive, pattern on the same cores.

 

 

I thought that during a stress test the utilization should be 100% at all times (or at least the majority of the test?)

 

When it comes to games it seems that some games run fine and others don't, and the only common denominator is that the games that have the wavy pattern are mostly Unreal Engine games.

 

Is this normal or is something not working correctly? I've never been on Ryzen before so I apologize if this is how the processor is supposed to be, just wanted to make sure everything is fine.

[Tristerin]

What are your temperatures during gameplay on the CPU?

[Johellgren]

33 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

What are your temperatures during gameplay on the CPU?

Here are the temps after 15 minutes of The Outer Worlds

[Tristerin]

1 minute ago, Johellgren said:

Here are the temps after 15 minutes of The Outer Worlds

Is your motherboard on an up to date BIOS?

[Johellgren]

5 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

Is your motherboard on an up to date BIOS?

I am running on ASUS BIOS version 1401, which was released back in December. But it looks like they just released a beta release yesterday (version 1601), maybe I should try that one?

[Tristerin]

20 minutes ago, Johellgren said:

I am running on ASUS BIOS version 1401, which was released back in December. But it looks like they just released a beta release yesterday (version 1601), maybe I should try that one?

nah I wouldnt try beta, just was confirming not on one of the old BIOS' that was known to have wonky power delivery.  Im going to mull on this and see if anything comes to mind, and let others read the post too (lots of knowledgeable people here)

 

Just to confirm, you can see dips in FPS that align with the dips in usage?

[Johellgren]

4 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

nah I wouldnt try beta, just was confirming not on one of the old BIOS' that was known to have wonky power delivery.  Im going to mull on this and see if anything comes to mind, and let others read the post too (lots of knowledgeable people here)

 

Just to confirm, you can see dips in FPS that align with the dips in usage?

Correct, could it be my PSU failing to deliver power? It is from 2013/2014 so it is getting kinda old

[Tristerin]

Just now, Johellgren said:

Correct, could it be my PSU failing to deliver power? It is from 2013/2014 so it is getting kinda old

Personally, not a thought in my mind at all at this point, as that sort of interruption would cause it to shut off imho

[Johellgren]

3 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

Personally, not a thought in my mind at all at this point, as that sort of interruption would cause it to shut off imho

Come to think of it, I have had some pretty odd random reboots recently, not while gaming though. I do have a spare identical newer PSU at home, I think I'm going to swap them out and see if anything changes. Better to rule the PSU out completely, maybe it is getting unstable?

[Tristerin]

10 minutes ago, Johellgren said:

Come to think of it, I have had some pretty odd random reboots recently, not while gaming though. I do have a spare identical newer PSU at home, I think I'm going to swap them out and see if anything changes. Better to rule the PSU out completely, maybe it is getting unstable?

Yes.  I have tons of hardware and the first things I do, because its available, is try other hardware

[Johellgren]

I guess we have some progress, when I turned off D.O.C.P the waves started to look a lot more normal and I could actually play without stutters. So I guess the issue could be with the RAM? This is with the RAM running @2133 MHz

 

[Johellgren]

@TristerinGod I feel like Sherlock Holmes, I think I may have found the issue. I don't know if it is even possible but I think my RAM is mislabelled. It seems that my memory frequency is causing the instability, I don't think my RAM is capable of running @3600 MHz CL18, it seems like it runs fine @3200MHz CL16 (manually adjusted timings). No crashes or anything. If this is the case, is it possible that RAM is mislabelled for another spec or is something just plain wrong with my RAM?