[ISSUE] Counter Strike: GO is not maxing out my GPU

[thewhitestig]

My CPU is a Core 2 Quad Q8200 and I had recently put an AMD 6870 in the rig. My CPU is heavily bottlenecking the GPU on other games. Watch Dogs, Assassin's Creed 4 and Battlefield 3 are just a few examples. The CPU there runs at 90-100%, while the GPU runs at 30-55% depending on the game. So the bottleneck there is obvious and we don't need to discuss it. 

BUT

I have a similar and very strange problem in CS: GO 

Take a look at this picture. 

 

Here it's obvious that the CPU is not being the bottleneck. At all. An average of 68% for the total usage, and the per core usage is anywhere between 50-80%. Sometimes the total usage for all cores goes as low as 45%. So my CPU is more than being able to handle this newest version of the Source engine. Nevertheless the GPU usage still hovers around 45-55%. And I can't seem to understand why. If the CPU is not being a bottleneck here, then what's the reason for the GPU to not be able to max all of it's potential? 

[FloRolf]

enable v-sync and your gpu load goes further down \O/

Not sure why this is the case tho. but do you want more than 100fps?

[T6kke]

What GPU you have and I don't think I see it there but what FPS is the game running at ?

 

 

This also fits better under troubleshooting section of the forum.

[Createinator]

CS:GO is not a very demanding game, it just means that your GPU can run it at max without giving its 100%.

[thewhitestig]

Not sure why this is the case tho. but do you want more than 100fps?

If I had a 144hz monitor then yeah, 100fps would be too little. Why would the GPU run at 48% when the CPU is clearly not bottlenecking it, I don't know... And yes, 200fps at 99% utilization would be better than 100fps at 50%. 

[thewhitestig]

CS:GO is not a very demanding game, it just means that your GPU can run it at max without giving its 100%.

If that were the case, then it would be a very poor design choice. Because if I buy a 144hz monitor tomorrow I would not be able to  reap the benefits of the high refresh rate, even though my GPU can clearly push way more than 144fps if it runs at a higher utilization (90-99%). But I don't believe that this is being the case. 

 

 

What GPU you have and I don't think I see it there but what FPS is the game running at ?

 

 

This also fits better under troubleshooting section of the forum.

 

6870 is the GPU. I gave the info in the first post. Game runs at 80-120fps. You can see that "D3D9" was at "101.6 FPS" at the moment of capture in the picture above.

[Enderman]

It is the way the game is coded and optimised, so it does not use all the power it can have.

[Createinator]

If that were the case, then it would be a very poor design choice. Because if I buy a 144hz monitor tomorrow I would not be able to  reap the benefits of the high refresh rate, even though my GPU can clearly push way more than 144fps if it runs at a higher utilization (90-99%). But I don't believe that this is being the case. 

CS:GO is neither visually impressive nor does it utilize advanced physics... running it at 60/100/120/144/200 FPS doesn't make a difference.

CS:GO is locked at 100FPS... and doesn't go any higher unless you change some settings manually.

[thewhitestig]

CS:GO is neither visually impressive nor does it utilize advanced physics... running it at 60/100/120/144/200 FPS doesn't make a difference.

CS:GO is locked at 100FPS... and doesn't go any higher unless you change some settings manually.

I've seen the framerate go as high as 140fps on my GPU, so no the game engine is not capped. Plus, running on a higher framerate reduces input lag. Even on 60hz monitors, it makes a difference in weather your game runs at 60 or 200 fps. As far as I know CS: GO is capped at 300fps. So I'm nowhere near the limit. 

[Createinator]

I've seen the framerate go as high as 140fps on my GPU, so no the game engine is not capped. Plus, running on a higher framerate reduces input lag. Even on 60hz monitors it makes a difference of weather your game runs at 60 or 200 fps. As far as I know CS: GO is capped at 300fps. So I'm nowhere near the limit. 

A driver update might help, I guess.

[exotioner]

I've seen the framerate go as high as 140fps on my GPU, so no the game engine is not capped. Plus, running on a higher framerate reduces input lag. Even on 60hz monitors, it makes a difference in weather your game runs at 60 or 200 fps. As far as I know CS: GO is capped at 300fps. So I'm nowhere near the limit. 

That's correct.

My GTX 780 Direct CU II from Asus drives this game at 280~300 fps constantly, with everything max (of course), so.. yeah, that's the cap.

But to be honest I dont see any big difference from when I underclocked my gpu to run at ~120 fps in the game rather than 300.

(My monitor is 120hz btw)

[thewhitestig]

 

A driver update might help, I guess.

It's not the drivers. I tried it with both 14.4 final and 14.6 beta. 
 

But to be honest I dont see any big difference from when I underclocked my gpu to run at ~120 fps in the game rather than 300.
(My monitor is 120hz btw)

Well, of course anything above 120hz is almost impossible to notice. But the latency is still lower. 120fps gives you 8.3ms of latency. That's the amount of time that the game engine takes to translate the information into a frame. + the additional 5ms of monitor input lag is 13,3ms - that's before the game world reaches your eyes. Of course there are lots of additional latencies coming from the network, the controller input etc. and they all stack on top of each other. But that's another topic altogether. 

I just wanted to point out the game engine latency with respect to framerate

60fps = 16.6ms
120fps = 8,3fps
240fps = 4,16fps

You can easily calculate that by dividing the amount of milliseconds in one second / the amount of frames in one second  -  1000ms/60fps = 16.6ms of engine latency. The CEO of Oculus VR talked about all this in a presentation at last year's APU 13 event. 


But of course I don't care much about a few milliseconds of latency. I just want to see my GPU reach it's maximum. And 48% utilization at 101fps is definitely not it's maximum.  <_<

[Createinator]

-snip-

You must be pretty good at FPS games for those fraction of seconds to matter. I don't play FPS competitively and higher frame rates have never made a difference... camping is easy on 30Hz or 144Hz.

[Vladko1]

It is very likely that the processor is the issue here. For example if you payed attention to your CPU usage while converting a video with enabled multithread option, the average CPU load is 30-35%. That's because the conversion is being handled by one thread at most of the time. You may see for example that your cpu load is 30%, 5%, 45%, 11% - but actually these are avarage thread loads for the time between the refreshes. If you install and try All CPU Meter with refresh rate of 0.1 or similar, you will notice the cpu loads better.

[thewhitestig]

It is very likely that the processor is the issue here. For example if you payed attention to your CPU usage while converting a video with enabled multithread option, the average CPU load is 30-35%. That's because the conversion is being handled by one thread at most of the time. You may see for example that your cpu load is 30%, 5%, 45%, 11% - but actually these are avarage thread loads for the time between the refreshes. If you install and try All CPU Meter with refresh rate of 0.1 or similar, you will notice the cpu loads better.

This may be possible. Although I think the problem is somewhere else - the system memory, which is DDR2. 4GB are plenty for Source engine games, but the memory bus is most likely being the bottleneck here. Too bad there is no way to test out in RivaTuner/HWiNFO64 weather or not the memory bus is too slow for that specific GPU+CPU combo. There's probably a way to calculate what's the maximum (GPU and CPU) performance you can achieve given the 800mhz speed of the memory. But I don't know how to do this calculation. If anyone knows, feel free to help a brother out. 

[thewhitestig]

...

And to your point, I reduced the hardware polling period from the default one of 2000ms (once every 2 seconds) to 200ms and then to 100ms which is the lowest the app is able to provide. And here are the results. 

200ms polling

100ms polling

As you can see there there isn't any difference between the 2 second results, and the 0.1 second results. So the problem isn't there. CPU is still not the bottleneck. 

 

[Vladko1]

Maybe it's not, but if as i pointed out previously

 

You may see for example that your cpu load is 30%, 5%, 45%, 11%

  which may be bottleneck

[thewhitestig]

Maybe it's not, but if as i pointed out previously

 

  which may be bottleneck

So basically you're saying that every time the CPU is in between polling it's on 100% utilization, but as soon as polling time comes, it drops to 60%? Keep in mind that the polling data is the current utilization at that exact millisecond, not the average utilization from the past 100ms. So if the app was taking data from every single millisecond and then averaging it out every 100ms then yes, in principle what you suggested could happen, although it's extremely unlikely. But the hardware polling is not functioning in that way. It's not averaging the data, it's taking samples every 100ms.

[thewhitestig]

Here's an older game that puts load on all CPU cores and takes advantage of all the available GPU power. It's Far Cry 2. 


1680x1050, maxed out, 8xmsaa, fps 50-70 with an average of 60

[Patrick3463]

CS:GO is neither visually impressive nor does it utilize advanced physics... running it at 60/100/120/144/200 FPS doesn't make a difference.

CS:GO is locked at 100FPS... and doesn't go any higher unless you change some settings manually.

cs go is locked at 1,000fps. But in game its capped at 300 fps. You can remove the cap by typing "fps max 999" in console

[GoldSrc]

It's Source, even a potato can run Source games, your GPU will never be at 100% for all games, that's not how it works.

You're not going to use the same strength to lift 30Kg (66lbs), to lift 1Kg (2.2lbs).

If a game does not need complex graphics calculations, there's no need to use all the power, is the same reason notepad doesn't use 100% of your CPU.

[PlayStation 2]

CSGO is very odd. It's hard to fully max out your CPU and GPU usage without creating an artificial bottleneck.

[Thony]

cs go is locked at 1,000fps. But in game its capped at 300 fps. You can remove the cap by typing "fps max 999" in console

This is topic from MAY 2014.

Bringing topics older than 2 weeks back to the top is against ToC of this forum.

Hope u all know that now.

Game has had over 30 updates since then so the issue might be irrelevant by now.

So please stop commenting.

[Patrick3463]

This is topic from MAY 2014.

Bringing topics older than 2 weeks back to the top is against ToC of this forum.

Hope u all know that now.

Game has had over 30 updates since then so the issue might be irrelevant by now.

So please stop commenting.

OK I will not respond to this topic. Promise

[Zenk]

Step 1 : follow the steps

Step 2 : open nvidia control panel

Step 2.1 : click on surround and physx thing

Step 2.2 : select your gpu for phhsyx (if you really think it is powerful)

Step 3 : type these in your csgo launch options -high -nojoy +mat_queue_mode 2 -threads [your cpu thread count] -nod3d9ex1 -noaafonts +r_dynamics 0 +fps_max 999999999999999999

Step 4 : open game

Step 5 : steps are over congratulations