Inconsistent CPU?

[Pleo]

Hello everyone, I really need some help here.

 

I have a feeling that my cpu (i5 3470) is somehow bottlenecking my hd7850. It's really inconsisent because when I play Overwatch the gpu is on full load, and other times I'm just lagging alot and I'm really wondering how this could be, I dont think a i5 3470 should be bottlenecking an old gpu like this. CPU usage is like 95-98% most of the time but overall its pretty slow.

 

Do you smart people on here have any idea what is causing this?

[manikyath]

what are temperatures like, what's your cpu usage like when you're not gaming?

[McHox]

3 minutes ago, Pleo said:

CPU usage is like 95-98% most of the time

yep,bottleneck

[Misanthrope]

My bet would be something in the background eating up too many CPU cycles because you shouldn't see high usage if it was a hardware issue. Do the antivirus thing or even an format that'd be my first step.

[Pleo]

6 minutes ago, manikyath said:

what are temperatures like, what's your cpu usage like when you're not gaming?

CPU on load is around 60. Cpu usage when not gaming is around 10-20%

 

6 minutes ago, McHox said:

yep,bottleneck

I dont get it though, If there was a bottleneck wouldn't it ALWAYS bottleneck? Sometimes I can play very smoothly but after a while it just becomes choppy 

[SageOfSpice]

What OS? Have you checked your DPC latency? What tweaks have you performed so far? Is your CPU falling behind in any other task, or only while playing Overwatch?

[manikyath]

3 minutes ago, McHox said:

yep,bottleneck

least useful comment all day, please stop stating the obvious using overused terms and help the guy figure out why his i5 is maxing out on a game that should run on a potato.

[Pleo]

Just now, manikyath said:

least useful comment all day, please stop stating the obvious using and help the guy figure out why his i5 is maxing out on a game that should run on a potato.

Lmao, that comment actually put a smile on my face. 

[manikyath]

3 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

My bet would be something in the background eating up too many CPU cycles because you shouldn't see high usage if it was a hardware issue. Do the antivirus thing or even an format that'd be my first step.

that'd be my guess as well.

[manikyath]

Just now, Pleo said:

Lmao, that comment actually put a smile on my face. 

thats why i usually word it in such a crude way, because people like reading it

[Pleo]

1 minute ago, SageOfSpice said:

What OS? Have you checked your DPC latency? What tweaks have you performed so far? Is your CPU falling behind in any other task, or only while playing Overwatch?

I just had a clean install of Windows 7 Ultimate, But I also had this problem on Windows 10 pro. I dont know if my CPU is falling behind in any other game since I only play OW. I did install Parkcontrol and put it on high performance. I have no idea what DPC latency is

[SageOfSpice]

6 minutes ago, Pleo said:

I just had a clean install of Windows 7 Ultimate, But I also had this problem on Windows 10 pro. I dont know if my CPU is falling behind in any other game since I only play OW. I did install Parkcontrol and put it on high performance. I have no idea what DPC latency is

Deferred procedure call. Basically, task scheduling and interruption. Prioritizes important tasks like vital drivers over things like applications. Sometimes, when you have a faulty driver or a program that's causing a lot of hard pagefaults, this results in high background CPU utilization, as well as stuttering, skipping, and slight freezes.

 

If you download a program called Latency Mon, it will allow you to take a look at how much execution time specific drivers and services are calling for, which can help you determine what exactly the problem is. It's got a feature on the first page that will give you less technical insight as to whether or not your specific environment has latency issues by showing bars, and providing a description of the performance and projected capabilities of your environment.

 

I would say maybe download and try some other games, maybe even benchmark it with Passmark's performance test and see if your results line up with the average performance seen for your specific processor.

 

If the issue has been persisting across operating systems though... Have you attempted to reset your bios?

[airdeano]

Deferred Procedure Call (DPC) latencies are OS fumbles between OS and driver calls.

Quote

Spikes of high DPC latency can cause a computer to slow to a crawl for a few seconds before speeding up again in super-speed to catch up, then repeating a number of seconds later. During the few seconds of slowness (high latency spike), you may notice jerky and erratic mouse movement, poor quality, stuttering, audio, and pausing and skipping in real time video playback.

source: https://www.sysnative.com/forums/windows-7-windows-vista-tutorials/5721-how-diagnose-fix-high-dpc-latency-issues-wpa-windows-vista-7-8-a.html

there is a tool/app to zero in on issues of latency here: http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

 

has this been a 'thing' or something that has just appeared?

[Pleo]

6 minutes ago, SageOfSpice said:

Deferred procedure call. Basically, task scheduling and interruption. Prioritizes important tasks like vital drivers over things like applications. Sometimes, when you have a faulty driver or a program that's causing a lot of hard pagefaults, this results in high background CPU utilization, as well as stuttering, skipping, and slight freezes.

 

If you download a program called Latency Mon, it will allow you to take a look at how much execution time specific drivers and services are calling for, which can help you determine what exactly the problem is. It's got a feature on the first page that will give you less technical insight as to whether or not your specific environment has latency issues by showing bars, and providing a description of the performance and projected capabilities of your environment.

 

I would say maybe download and try some other games, maybe even benchmark it with Passmark's performance test and see if your results line up with the average performance seen for your specific processor.

 

If the issue has been persisting across operating systems though... Have you attempted to reset your bios? 

No I haven't reset my bios, im a pretty dumb guy when it comes to things like this. I just installed the DPC thingy and my current latency (idle) is averaging about 80.

 

5 minutes ago, airdeano said:

Deferred Procedure Call (DPC) latencies are OS fumbles between OS and driver calls.

there is a tool/app to zero in on issues of latency here: http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

 

has this been a 'thing' or something that has just appeared?

It's been a thing for a while. Sometimes I get 140~ fps and everything looks and FEELS smooth. then other times i have 140 fps and I can just see that's it doesn't look/feel like 140fps. I have a 144hz monitor.

[SageOfSpice]

2 minutes ago, Pleo said:

No I haven't reset my bios, im a pretty dumb guy when it comes to things like this. I just installed the DPC thingy and my current latency (idle) is averaging about 80.

80 is pretty good. If you don't have any spikes, then that's probably fine.

 

Out of curiosity, how much ram do you have?

[airdeano]

since the issue follows you with the OS, sound like a device driver is more an issue. prolly a background process that nabs system resources (updates/malware) could also inflict similar pains.

CPU at 60% shows no bottleneck. bottleneck would be one at 100% and the other at 10%.

 

[Pleo]

Just now, SageOfSpice said:

80 is pretty good. If you don't have any spikes, then that's probably fine.

 

Out of curiosity, how much ram do you have?

8 GB 1300 MHz (Speccy says 665)

[ARikozuM]

AMD cards seem to have trouble with Overwatch. I would run a stress test like 3dMark and see how they perform together. If they're not at 100% when running the benchmark there's an issue with your CPU or GPU.

 

Can you boot into safe mode and run anti-virus?