Bottleneck and low FPS

Vykun · August 26, 2016

Hey guys, so for a while now, I have been having an issue with a bottleneck on my PC. I know immediately, that my CPU, and only 12 GB of RAM are definitely what is slowing me down, or what should be at least. However, I guess I don't really understand the how. So, I'm looking to learn a little here, in addition to getting some advice on hopefully fixing the issue.

What I am having the problem with primarily, is very low FPS in games, where it should be higher, given my specs, or at least I would assume. My friend who has a lower end system than I do, is getting higher FPS in games, like ARMA 3 for example. In order to try and solve the problem, I began checking the temps on everything, and seeing what the usage looked like. This is where I became confused, while I was expecting to see either really high temps on something, or the usage capping out, I see that everything is relatively low from what I expected. In all games I am playing, I don't see my CPU usage going higher than 20-30%, and that is with everything else running as well. The highest I've seen my memory usage get is about 75%, but the majority of that is being taken up by Chrome, and all the tabs I usually have open, if I close Chrome, the memory usage drops dramatically. The GPU, I haven't seen doing anything too crazy either, but I am currently looking for opinions on the best software to monitor it, I am only using GPU-Z at the moment. Temps on everything seem fine, in game the GPU is around 40-50c, the CPU is my highest, getting upwards of 70c.

I'm just wondering what exactly is creating the issue. I don't know a ton about this stuff, I know my CPU is definitely holding me back, but if it isn't even capping out on usage, can that still indicate that it is the problem here? Is it possible that something is preventing my hardware from being utilized, and that is what is leading to the low FPS? As I said, a friend who has an i5, 8GB RAM, and a GTX 660, is getting almost double the FPS in ARMA 3 that I am, so I'm a bit confused. Is there some issue with my CPU that I am not aware of, that makes it bad for gaming? I just swapped out my 660 for a 970 last year when I caught one on sale, and expected to see better performance, but so far I am not really seeing much of a difference.

My specs

Motherboard - EVGA X58 SLI3

CPU - i7 950 3.07 GHz

GPU - GeForce GTX 970 SSC

RAM - Corsair Vengeance 12GB DDR3 1600 MHz

PSU - Kingwin LZ 750

OS - Windows 10 64 bit

I can provide more info, or screenshots upon request. Right now I am thinking about just replacing the mobo/cpu/ram, but would like to avoid doing that if at all possible.

Ophidio · August 26, 2016

Arma 3 is very CPU dependent so depending on which i5 he has could be the reason why. Upgrading your Graphics Card wouldn't have really made a difference. Arma 3 also isn't really well optimized for performance in the first place but your CPU would be what's holding you back in that game. I don't see how the i7 is holding it back that much but considering it's a first gen i7 it very well could be the main factor. Your RAM has nothing to do with it though. Your RAM is fine.

Donci · August 26, 2016

The problem is that you are on a very old mobo and CPU platform, and the single threaded(1 core) performance of your pc is bad Compared to newer gen even mid range CPUs, and some games can only really use 1 CPU core, i recommend upgrading to a skylake platform Thats within your budget. For GPU monitoring i recommend msi afterburner and kombustor.

Vykun · August 26, 2016

Yeah, I couldn't really have imagined the RAM being much of an issue, but it can't hurt to mention every possible thing. I know that the CPU is definitely what is slowing down the system, I just don't understand how it is slowing it down by as much as it is. And even so, shouldn't the usage be really high, if it is in fact what is causing the problems? I feel like if the CPU usage is less than 30%, and I am seeing really low FPS, shouldn't it be utilizing more of it or something?

Some other games I've played recently, and have similar issues.

ARMA 3 - 15-30 FPS

Ark - 20-30 FPS

Skyrim Enderal - 8-60 FPS

Life is Feudal - 20-40 FPS

Another thing that really confuses me as well, is that in Ark/ARMA (Haven't tested this much in Enderal yet) I can mess with the graphics settings as much as I want, putting them on the lowest or highest possible settings, and don't really notice much of a difference in the FPS. I typically just play games at whatever they default to, but I would think that if I lowered the settings to the minimum, that I'd see some kind of performance increase, if it was in fact a hardware bottleneck issue that I am experiencing.

9 minutes ago, Donci said:

The problem is that you are on a very old mobo and CPU platform, and the single threaded(1 core) performance of your pc is bad Compared to newer gen even mid range CPUs, and some games can only really use 1 CPU core, i recommend upgrading to a skylake platform Thats within your budget. For GPU monitoring i recommend msi afterburner and kombustor.

So, what you're saying is that the reason my CPU doesn't get utilized is simply because games just won't use more of it than the single core? I suppose that makes a good amount of sense if that is in fact the case. Based off that, there really isn't anything that can be done with the current system then, I take it?