Is this a normal CPU usage while gaming?

[kapac7a]

Hi everyone, I recently noticed while I am gaming that my cpu usage is kinda low and I was wondering if that's why my fps went down while playing Warzone 2. Almost every monitoring program that I could find displays the same percentage. Isn't it a bit odd for a game that's more cpu based to have such a low cpu utilization? I know that Warzone 2 is extremely unoptimized game, but at the same time I feel like I could have a lot more fps since few months ago I did. 3 Months ago I had R9 390 combined with this cpu and I got around 70fps most of the time, while with 5700XT I am getting 50fps on avg. 

 

CPU: Ryzen 5 2600 3.4Ghz 

GPU: RX 5700XT 8GB

RAM: 32GB HyperX Fury 3200Mhz Dual Channel 

MB: Asus Prime A320M-K 

SSD: Patriot Burst 240Gb (the game is on ssd)

 

https://youtu.be/VNUaydcCwiI

[Ashleyyyy]

your cpu has 12 threads, that would be why. most games can use 4 threads, some 8. but 12 is uncommon. hence, the cpu is only being used for around 30% since it's using a third of those threads. 

 

the advantage of this is that you can say watch a youtube video on your second monitor or have OBS running without impacting the game's performance, since you have cores to spare. the disadvantage is that very few applications can use all 12 threads at once. 

 

as for the difference between the R9 380 vs the new card and it being lower i don't know the cause of that. 

[FI Fheonix]

5 minutes ago, kapac7a said:

Hi everyone, I recently noticed while I am gaming that my cpu usage is kinda low and I was wondering if that's why my fps went down while playing Warzone 2. Almost every monitoring program that I could find displays the same percentage. Isn't it a bit odd for a game that's more cpu based to have such a low cpu utilization? I know that Warzone 2 is extremely unoptimized game, but at the same time I feel like I could have a lot more fps since few months ago I did. 3 Months ago I had R9 390 combined with this cpu and I got around 70fps most of the time, while with 5700XT I am getting 50fps on avg. 

 

CPU: Ryzen 5 2600 3.4Ghz 

GPU: RX 5700XT 8GB

RAM: 32GB HyperX Fury 3200Mhz Dual Channel 

MB: Asus Prime A320M-K 

SSD: Patriot Burst 240Gb (the game is on ssd)

 

https://youtu.be/VNUaydcCwiI

CPU could be a possible bottleneck.  You can check by monitoring CPU and GPU usage while gaming. If CPU usage is high and GPU usage is low, then it's liekly that your CPU is bottlenecking you GPU. You could try overclocking. But it might just be better to upgrade.

[YoungBlade]

4 minutes ago, Ashley MLP Fangirl said:

your cpu has 12 threads, that would be why. most games can use 4 threads, some 8. but 12 is uncommon. hence, the cpu is only being used for around 30% since it's using a third of those threads. 

 

the advantage of this is that you can say watch a youtube video on your second monitor or have OBS running without impacting the game's performance, since you have cores to spare. the disadvantage is that very few applications can use all 12 threads at once. 

 

as for the difference between the R9 380 vs the new card and it being lower i don't know the cause of that. 

3 minutes ago, FI Fheonix said:

CPU could be a possible bottleneck.  You can check by monitoring CPU and GPU usage while gaming. If CPU usage is high and GPU usage is low, then it's liekly that your CPU is bottlenecking you GPU. You could try overclocking. But it might just be better to upgrade.

If you look at the linked video, the CPU is only showing about 7% utilization, which would be less than a single thread. Even just browsing in Windows that would be odd. Notice that HWMonitor only shows a max of 25% - game loading alone should cause more than that on a 2600.

 

Something isn't right with something.

[FI Fheonix]

1 minute ago, YoungBlade said:

If you look at the linked video, the CPU is only showing about 7% utilization, which would be less than a single thread. Even just browsing in Windows that would be odd. Notice that HWMonitor only shows a max of 25% - game loading alone should cause more than that on a 2600.

 

Something isn't right with something.

Possible that they undervolted?

[Ashleyyyy]

5 minutes ago, FI Fheonix said:

CPU could be a possible bottleneck.  You can check by monitoring CPU and GPU usage while gaming. If CPU usage is high and GPU usage is low, then it's liekly that your CPU is bottlenecking you GPU. You could try overclocking. But it might just be better to upgrade.

@kapac7adon't listen to this. as i explained a 6-core 12-thread cpu will almost never see 100% or even close to that usage while running a game, because most games simply arent coded to use 12 threads. the reason for that is if they code it for 12 threads, it'll harm performance on cpu's with less than that. game developers want the most amount of people to play their games and 4-core cpu's are still very common. 

 

2 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

If you look at the linked video, the CPU is only showing about 7% utilization, which would be less than a single thread. Even idle in Windows that would be odd. Notice that HWMonitor only shows a max of 25% - game loading alone should cause more than that on a 2600.

 

Something isn't right with something.

that's misreporting. if you look at the cpu's power and temperature readings you can see it's obviously doing a lot of work. the program just isn't reporting it for some reason. but it wouldn't idle at 80c... 

Edited April 25, 2023 by Ashley MLP Fangirl
typo

[YoungBlade]

 

That CPU should be pushing over 80fps easily - and should be able to get into the 100fps+ range on a regular basis. Unless the new update has just trashed Zen+ performance for some odd reason.

[YoungBlade]

2 minutes ago, FI Fheonix said:

Possible that they undervolted?

That could be. I've heard that older Ryzen CPUs have odd behavior like this when you try undervolting them, which is why it wasn't recommended before the 5000 series.

[Inception9269]

Only thing I have to add is when it comes to your PC's power options, for gaming PCs it is recommended to have the profile set to high performance. That in some cases can make some of a performance improvement.

[Inception9269]

Just now, YoungBlade said:

That could be. I've heard that older Ryzen CPUs have odd behavior like this when you try undervolting them, which is why it wasn't recommended before the 5000 series.

Idk about that. Back when I was running my 3700x some years back, the system by itself would have the CPU voltage be in the 1.4 volts range, with me always manually lowering it to around 1.32, with no problems at all or performance hits.

[YoungBlade]

1 minute ago, Inception9269 said:

Only thing I have to add is when it comes to your PC's power options, for gaming PCs it is recommended to have the profile set to high performance. That in some cases can make some of a performance improvement.

With old Ryzen, you actually needed to make sure you were using the "Ryzen" power profiles. The standard Windows ones would cause problems like the ones shown here.

 

@kapac7a Are you undervolting? Are you using the "Ryzen Balanced" profile?

[YoungBlade]

1 minute ago, Inception9269 said:

Idk about that. Back when I was running my 3700x some years back, the system by itself would have the CPU voltage be in the 1.4 volts range, with me always manually lowering it to around 1.32, with no problems at all or performance hits.

I don't know about 3000 series, but 1000 and 2000 series had issues with undervolting. Maybe it was fine with 3000 series, but I know that the introduction of Curve Optimizer with the 5000 series made a lot of folks interested in undervolting on Ryzen again, because of how bad it was with the older generations.

[kapac7a]

1 minute ago, YoungBlade said:

 

That CPU should be pushing over 80fps easily - and should be able to get into the 100fps+ range on a regular basis. Unless the new update has just trashed Zen+ performance for some odd reason.

The thing is that all these benchmarks are 5 months old, and I also made one with an old r9 390 where I could also get 70fps. Since then, I have upgraded the graphics and RAM memory, but nothing changed. I also asked someone recently and he said that with this processor he manages to get 70-90fps.

[kapac7a]

2 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

With old Ryzen, you actually needed to make sure you were using the "Ryzen" power profiles. The standard Windows ones would cause problems like the ones shown here.

 

@kapac7a Are you undervolting? Are you using the "Ryzen Balanced" profile?

Yes I am, because I cannot even change to High Performance, for some reason It always returns to normal. I have set this processor power management to 100% and It doesn't change nor it makes a difference.

[FI Fheonix]

7 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

That could be. I've heard that older Ryzen CPUs have odd behavior like this when you try undervolting them, which is why it wasn't recommended before the 5000 series.

Then is the PSU not supplying enough power to the CPU?

[YoungBlade]

9 minutes ago, kapac7a said:

Yes I am, because I cannot even change to High Performance, for some reason It always returns to normal. I have set this processor power management to 100% and It doesn't change nor it makes a difference.

Ryzen Balanced is the profile you want to be using with 1000 and 2000 series CPUs. The other profiles tend to cause problems - at least, they did in the past.

 

Since you upgraded your GPU, have you run DDU to get rid of the old drivers? I know it was AMD to AMD, but that's still generally a good idea, especially if you were using modded drivers with your old 300 series GPU to get it to run newer games better.

 

6 minutes ago, FI Fheonix said:

Then is the PSU not supplying enough power to the CPU?

It's not a PSU issue. Old Ryzen (1000 and 2000 series) did not handle undervolting well. It caused them to drop performance - even if the clockspeeds seemed normal.

[kapac7a]

Just now, YoungBlade said:

Ryzen Balanced is the profile you want to be using with 1000 and 2000 series CPUs. The other profiles tend to cause problems - at least, they did in the past.

 

Since you upgraded your GPU, have you run DDU to get rid of the old drivers. I know it was AMD to AMD, but that's still generally a good idea, especially if you were using modded drivers with your old 300 series GPU to get it to run newer games better.

 

It's not a PSU issue. Old Ryzen (1000 and 2000 series) did not handle undervolting well. It caused them to drop performance - even if the clockspeeds seemed normal.

I did run DDU before even installing a new gpu. 

The conclusion would probably be that they messed up the performance with the new update for older processors, that for some reason the programs don't show the exact percentage as @Ashley MLP Fangirl said, and that I need a new processor and motherboard if I plan on playing this game.

[YoungBlade]

1 minute ago, kapac7a said:

I did run DDU before even installing a new gpu. 

The conclusion would probably be that they messed up the performance with the new update for older processors, that for some reason the programs don't show the exact percentage as @Ashley MLP Fangirl said, and that I need a new processor and motherboard if I plan on playing this game.

Why do you need a new motherboard? You could drop in a Ryzen 5 5600 or Ryzen 7 5700X, or even a Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and that board should handle it just fine.

 

The Asus Prime A320M-K is a bizarrely strong motherboard. If you added a couple of cheap heatsinks to the VRM and have a case with good airflow, it could handle a Ryzen 9 chip.

 

 

[kapac7a]

1 minute ago, YoungBlade said:

Why do you need a new motherboard? You could drop in a Ryzen 5 5600 or Ryzen 7 5700X, or even a Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and that board should handle it just fine.

 

The Asus Prime A320M-K is a bizarrely strong motherboard. If you added a couple of cheap heatsinks to the VRM and have a case with good airflow, it could handle a Ryzen 9 chip.

 

 

Haha I'm glad to hear that because I was on the fence about whether to do it, I think I'll go with the Ryzen 7 5700X and two more fans inside the case.

[Ashleyyyy]

35 minutes ago, FI Fheonix said:

Then is the PSU not supplying enough power to the CPU?

in that case it would just turn off. 

 

6 minutes ago, kapac7a said:

Haha I'm glad to hear that because I was on the fence about whether to do it, I think I'll go with the Ryzen 7 5700X and two more fans inside the case.

why are you throwing money at a software issue? there's ways you can try to fix this in software. 

 

for a start, when gaming, what is your gpu usage? 

[kapac7a]

3 minutes ago, Ashley MLP Fangirl said:

in that case it would just turn off. 

 

why are you throwing money at a software issue? there's ways you can try to fix this in software. 

 

for a start, when gaming, what is your gpu usage? 

I'm just planning what to upgrade next, it will help me on a long run since r5 2600 is already 5 years old. The gpu usage varies from 30% up to 80% depending on a situation in CoD. There are also upscaling settings in Warzone that don't do too much since I installed a new gpu.

[Ashleyyyy]

1 minute ago, kapac7a said:

I'm just planning what to upgrade next, it will help me on a long run since r5 2600 is already 5 years old.

bruh i'm running a 4670K, that's a 10 year old cpu. still totally fine. 

 

2 minutes ago, kapac7a said:

The gpu usage varies from 30% up to 80% depending on a situation in CoD.

can you go to task manager, performance, on the cpu tab right click the graph and select logical processors like this: 

this shows the usage of the individual cores. can you screenshot that with the game running? 

[kapac7a]

34 minutes ago, Ashley MLP Fangirl said:

bruh i'm running a 4670K, that's a 10 year old cpu. still totally fine. 

 

can you go to task manager, performance, on the cpu tab right click the graph and select logical processors like this: 

this shows the usage of the individual cores. can you screenshot that with the game running? 

First gameplay photo is with lowest upscaling settings, second photo is without upscale, no difference in fps whatsoever. The funniest thing is, when I am spectating other players the fps is casually averaging 80. 

[Ashleyyyy]

4 minutes ago, kapac7a said:

First gameplay photo is with lowest upscaling settings, second photo is without upscale, no difference in fps whatsoever. The funniest thing is, when I am spectating other players the fps is casually averaging 80. 

as expected. the game is using half of the cores as i predicted. the cpu is the bottleneck here, as you can see by the gpu being below 50%... 

 

[kapac7a]

27 minutes ago, Ashley MLP Fangirl said:

as expected. the game is using half of the cores as i predicted. the cpu is the bottleneck here, as you can see by the gpu being below 50%... 

 

After a little digging I found a fix, it was an audio related problem. Apparently there is an option in the game that allows you to enable voice chat for the whole lobby (150 players), so after switching to only friends voice chat, the game is running from 60 up to 90fps. Anyways, it is a CPU bottleneck so I will upgrade it, in a few months probably... Thanks for the help yall!