Full Utilization?

[LegendKillerRG]

Every time I play games I get 15-35% CPU usage on stock clock(i7-950). when it's underclocked to 1.2GHz it still uses 15-35% but it's bottlenecking my GPU.. Why doesn't game take full Utilization of the CPU or at least 50%?

[MdX MaxX]

A lot of games aren't optimized for multiple cores, so they'll max out one or two threads, but won't necessarily max out the CPU because the game is still trying to do most things serially.

 

At least I think that's how it works.

[CornOnJacob]

Check your OS's performance monitor. You will probably see a couple threads at high load and the rest doing nothing. If so, then MdX MaxX's theory is correct.

[WoodenMarker]

Underclocking your cpu would bottleneck your gpu even more...

[InfinateX]

Is it possible the games just simply don't need more proccessing power? What's your average FPS?

[LegendKillerRG]

My average FPS is 64FPS in nearly anything since the games I play aren't that intensive, games I play are CS, CS:S, SMITE, LoL, WC3, DoTA 2, MW3, and TF2 and few others. I get an average 64FPS in CS:S but in a very intense graphic moment I can go down to as low as 17FPS(in zombie mode where people around get on fire) that game uses an average 50-80% GPU and spike up to 99% sometimes. I underclocked my CPU and my GPU usage never got higher than 50% awhile CPU is still at 15-35% ultilization... I don't get why my "overall" CPU ultilization never reach 50%

[IGJoe2192]

Depending on your setup overclocking can add a few FPS, but is it worth it? That is for you to decide. I gain quite a few points in 3dMark by overclocking my i7-920 to 4.2Ghz while also keeping Hyper Threading enabled. That is mostly on the physics side of things. I do see my average FPS jump up by about 10 or so.  

[_wky]

Deleted

[_wky]

Every time I play games I get 15-35% CPU usage on stock clock(i7-950). when it's underclocked to 1.2GHz it still uses 15-35% but it's bottlenecking my GPU.. Why doesn't game take full Utilization of the CPU or at least 50%?

There's probably only a couple threads being used near max and the rest sit there, hence the overall usage is very low. Most games ATM aren't using more than a few threads.

 

See here: