CPU usage on Lost ark at 50% but low fps

[I_ZaRoX_I]

Lost ark is known to be a CPU heavy game, I'm running on a i7-10700k which is not a bad processor even tho it's a few generations old. The thing is that it's running at 50% usage on all cores at maximum, no matter whether i set it to high or low settings but maximum fps on heavy crowded spaces wont exceed 70-80 fps and 100-120 fps when less populated. I have an RTX 4060 Ti that I recently bought and it's not struggeling either beeing at 60% usage max. I'm wondering why I can't reach higher fps having so much CPU and GPU room to work with. I have all the common solutions already applied, those beeing:

 

- Windows power setting at performance mode

- Bios and graphics card drivers updated to latest version

- XMP profile activated for my 32Gb ram 3200 mHz

- Nvidia control panel tweaks for the game to use max performance available and Vsync off

- Modified registry files to give it higher priority

 

I've seen videos online from people using a 4060 ti and hitting over 200 fps easily in Lost ark. I just don't get what could be happening for mine to get what it looks like a cap at 50% usage exclusively for this game because I ran some benchmarks and some other games and it gets up to 100% usage.

Here an example: 

 

Any idea of what could be happening and if there are any potential solutions?

 

Thank you

[Darkseth]

Hey,

 

there's a few things i want to adress, let's get into it:
 

so that Video is really helpful, as it shows the usage% of CPU and GPU respectively.

Can you provide something similar? Doesn't have to be a Video, but get MSI Afterburner runing, pop-out the Graph window, and maybe reorder the stats (or multiple screenshots).

Important are usage% of GPU and CPU, Clock speeds (to see if anything throttles) and Temperatures. Maybe Power consumption.

 

Just for a bit more insight:

 

- Resolution doesn't matter anything for the CPU. You could set the Game on 480p, 1080p, 4k or even 16k if Monitor & Connection could allow that -  CPU has the same data to calculate. Resolution is 100% GPU-side.

However: If you set your Resolution down from your 1080p to 720p or lower, and fps do NOT change, it usually means there's a CPU Bottleneck. Or anything else bottlenecks the GPU. If that's the case, the GPU is usually not at 100% usage.

 

- Are you at the exact same Spot? Maybe you're at another place ingame, more players around you or something.

i'm using a 13600k + 4070 Super, and on Final Fantasy 14 on max settings in Dungeons or somewhere outside, i capped my fps at 120 or so, while my 4070s is bored, if could do more. CPU is also at extremely low power consumption.

When i visit a place with a lot of players idling around during primetime, where not all Players can even be displayed, i drop to like 60 fps. The CPU bottlenecks, or maybe the Game Engine even, but my CPU is very very Far from beeing maxed out.

 

- A CPU Can bottleneck even at below 50% usage. How? Well, your CPU is a 8 Core CPU with 16 Threads. So 100% / 16 = 6,25. In pure Theory, if a Software can only utalize 1 single Thread, while all other Threads have nothing to do, you can have a CPU Bottleneck at 6,25% (in reality there's windows running and other applications, so 10-15%). Try a Benchmark like Prime95 or Cinebench 2024 on a Single Core. 1 Core is sweating, your usage is <20%, but this right there is a CPU-Bottleneck.

Games can't use Multithreading very well like synthetic Benchmarks can. Often there's alot of stuff running on a Single core, while other stuff can run on multiple cores. While most modern Games can absolutely "use" more than 4 Cores/threads, often there's still certain things going on on a single Core. If this one hits the Limit, that's a CPU Bottleneck too, even if the other Cores are bored.

 

Also, maybe you didn't mount your CPU-Cooler properly, causing heat dissipation to be extremely low --> CPU gets extremely hot fast (90-100°C most likely) --> CPU clock throttles down alot to reduce heat.

 

 

Your CPU should be faster than the one in the Video, yet it delivers less data to the same GPU?! Strange. Something might be going on.

Maybe the CPU is throttling.

Maybe your GPU-Driver is causing an Issue. Try a clean Uninstall with DDU, download the latest driver (or the same one from the Video).

Maybe your Windows installation is somehow rigged - from my experience, nothing is impossible with Microsoft and Windows, literealy any strange behaviour can be possible lol. Clean Reinstall of Windows might help, but it will be a bit annoying maybe.

 

Do you have similar Issues in other Games? Do you get the expected Performance on different games or Benchmarks, just to see if the CPU for example usually does perform as it should?

[DoctorNick]

1 hour ago, I_ZaRoX_I said:

Lost ark is know to be a CPU heavy game, I'm running on a i7-10700k which is not a bad processor even tho it's a few generations old. The thing is that it's running at 50% usage on all cores at maximum, no matter whether i set it to high or low settings but maximum fps on heavy crowded spaces wont exceed 70-80 fps and 100-120 fps when less populated. I have an RTX 4060 Ti that I recently bought and it's not struggeling either beeing at 60% usage max. I'm wondering why I can't reach higher fps having so much CPU and GPU room to work with. I have all the common solutions already applied, those beeing:

 

- Windows power setting at performance mode

- Bios and graphics card drivers updated to latest version

- XMP profile activated for my 32Gb ram 3200 mHz

- Nvidia control panel tweaks for the game to use max performance available and Vsync off

- Modified registry files to give it higher priority

 

I've seen videos online from people using a 4060 ti and hitting over 200 fps easily in Lost ark. I just don't get what could be happening for mine to get what it looks like a cap at 50% usage exclusively for this game because I ran some benchmarks and some other games and it gets up to 100% usage.

Here an example: 

 

Any idea of what could be happening and if there are any potential solutions?

 

Thank you

I don't think the game is that CPU intensive. You can test if CPU usage go down at higher resolution. Checkout this as its pretty similar to your case, apart from using a faster cpu 7800X3D, compare with ultra settings as 3060 ti and 4060 ti is almost on par:

 

 

 

[Mark Kaine]

Typically setting things to "max performance" ironically reduces performing so don't do that... use default settings until the issue is resolved... 

[podkall]

What's your monitor resolution?

[I_ZaRoX_I]

It's a 1080p 144hz monitor. I have a 2 monitor setup, one pluggled though displayport (main) and the other HDMI which is also 144hz.

 

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

Typically setting things to "max performance" ironically reduces performing so don't do that... use default settings until the issue is resolved... 

I defaulted everything and you're right that it wasn't giving any significant performance, couldn't tell the difference once I switched back.

 

1 hour ago, DoctorNick said:

I don't think the game is that CPU intensive. You can test if CPU usage go down at higher resolution. Checkout this as its pretty similar to your case, apart from using a faster cpu 7800X3D, compare with ultra settings as 3060 ti and 4060 ti is almost on par:

 

 

 

That shows up what I was mentioning about CPU intense game, his cpu is better than mine and even on a worse graphics card he gets 30-50 more fps on that same spot compared to me.

I also went to the spot from the video I shared and it just better optimized. I managed to get 190 fps there but still 30 fps behind from the vid and he has an older gen CPU.

2 hours ago, Darkseth said:

Hey,

 

there's a few things i want to adress, let's get into it:
 

so that Video is really helpful, as it shows the usage% of CPU and GPU respectively.

Can you provide something similar? Doesn't have to be a Video, but get MSI Afterburner runing, pop-out the Graph window, and maybe reorder the stats (or multiple screenshots).

Important are usage% of GPU and CPU, Clock speeds (to see if anything throttles) and Temperatures. Maybe Power consumption.

 

Just for a bit more insight:

 

- Resolution doesn't matter anything for the CPU. You could set the Game on 480p, 1080p, 4k or even 16k if Monitor & Connection could allow that -  CPU has the same data to calculate. Resolution is 100% GPU-side.

However: If you set your Resolution down from your 1080p to 720p or lower, and fps do NOT change, it usually means there's a CPU Bottleneck. Or anything else bottlenecks the GPU. If that's the case, the GPU is usually not at 100% usage.

 

- Are you at the exact same Spot? Maybe you're at another place ingame, more players around you or something.

i'm using a 13600k + 4070 Super, and on Final Fantasy 14 on max settings in Dungeons or somewhere outside, i capped my fps at 120 or so, while my 4070s is bored, if could do more. CPU is also at extremely low power consumption.

When i visit a place with a lot of players idling around during primetime, where not all Players can even be displayed, i drop to like 60 fps. The CPU bottlenecks, or maybe the Game Engine even, but my CPU is very very Far from beeing maxed out.

 

- A CPU Can bottleneck even at below 50% usage. How? Well, your CPU is a 8 Core CPU with 16 Threads. So 100% / 16 = 6,25. In pure Theory, if a Software can only utalize 1 single Thread, while all other Threads have nothing to do, you can have a CPU Bottleneck at 6,25% (in reality there's windows running and other applications, so 10-15%). Try a Benchmark like Prime95 or Cinebench 2024 on a Single Core. 1 Core is sweating, your usage is <20%, but this right there is a CPU-Bottleneck.

Games can't use Multithreading very well like synthetic Benchmarks can. Often there's alot of stuff running on a Single core, while other stuff can run on multiple cores. While most modern Games can absolutely "use" more than 4 Cores/threads, often there's still certain things going on on a single Core. If this one hits the Limit, that's a CPU Bottleneck too, even if the other Cores are bored.

 

Also, maybe you didn't mount your CPU-Cooler properly, causing heat dissipation to be extremely low --> CPU gets extremely hot fast (90-100°C most likely) --> CPU clock throttles down alot to reduce heat.

 

 

Your CPU should be faster than the one in the Video, yet it delivers less data to the same GPU?! Strange. Something might be going on.

Maybe the CPU is throttling.

Maybe your GPU-Driver is causing an Issue. Try a clean Uninstall with DDU, download the latest driver (or the same one from the Video).

Maybe your Windows installation is somehow rigged - from my experience, nothing is impossible with Microsoft and Windows, literealy any strange behaviour can be possible lol. Clean Reinstall of Windows might help, but it will be a bit annoying maybe.

 

Do you have similar Issues in other Games? Do you get the expected Performance on different games or Benchmarks, just to see if the CPU for example usually does perform as it should?

As far as I see is not related to thermal throtteling because my CPU stays at 60ºC all the time while running the game. Windows install is pretty recent, beeing only 3 months old and also doesn't seem to be a GPU drivers issue since all other games I tested work just fine making use of max GPU power.

It's gotta be something related to multi threading.

 

I attach a screenshot showing CPU usage and temps

[DoctorNick]

1 hour ago, I_ZaRoX_I said:

That shows up what I was mentioning about CPU intense game, his cpu is better than mine and even on a worse graphics card he gets 30-50 more fps on that same spot compared to me.

I also went to the spot from the video I shared and it just better optimized. I managed to get 190 fps there but still 30 fps behind from the vid and he has an older

 

If you think about, then it might make perfect sense. Checkout the difference in performance from 10700K to 7800X3D in 1080p. (this is with 4090 though)

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-7-7800x3d/19.html

 

[I_ZaRoX_I]

12 minutes ago, DoctorNick said:

If you think about, then it might make perfect sense. Checkout the difference in performance from 10700K to 7800X3D in 1080p. (this is with 4090 though)

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-7-7800x3d/19.html

 

That's why I wasn't comparing it to a newer gen processor, but to the one I posted that is a i7-9700k 1 gen older than mine and gets slightly better performance by the looks of things

[TatamiMatt]

11 minutes ago, I_ZaRoX_I said:

That's why I wasn't comparing it to a newer gen processor, but to the one I posted that is a i7-9700k 1 gen older than mine and gets slightly better performance by the looks of things

Also depends on the core vs thread count, LA might run better on non hyperthreaded cores which the 9700K has. Im not sure if it does now, but tis another theory

[I_ZaRoX_I]

I was looking some vids not related to lost ark and came up to a comment from a guy saying to install Process Lasso and to dissable hyperthreading just for a certain program, seems to do the trick for Lost ark. 

 

Looks like hyperthreading worsens performance by a lot

[DoctorNick]

14 hours ago, I_ZaRoX_I said:

I was looking some vids not related to lost ark and came up to a comment from a guy saying to install Process Lasso and to dissable hyperthreading just for a certain program, seems to do the trick for Lost ark. 

 

Looks like hyperthreading worsens performance by a lot

Interesting. Would be interesting to see if it's the same case with SMT (AMD HT)

[I_ZaRoX_I]

This might only be noticeable on older intel processors because newer gen processors already have good performance in game and achive really good FPS, but for those who have older ones where hyperthreading was just introduced like mine seems to enhance performance.

 

Maybe for older AMD dissabling SMT could improve FPS