[Solved] Low framerates despite low utilization

[Zakattacks]

Edit: Turns out my RAM was clocked at 600mhz by default for some reason, and my CPU was too weak (I over clocked it more!)

Hey guys,

I am having an issue where all my games are performing pretty terribly despite the fact that (in some games) I am using less than 50% CPU and my graphics card isn't even clocking up to 500mhz. In fallout 4 I often experience lag spikes and in general pretty terrible performance (my dell laptop can perform better with higher settings!). I need help figuring out the bottleneck (whether it be in software or hardware). I just spent a good amount of money on a gaming PC but it still doesn't run as well as my laptop! I am on a college budget so almost all of my parts are second hand.  Also this is my first post so constructive criticism is welcome.

The only heavyweight games I have are Beamng.drive, Fallout 4, and Watchdogs. Surprisingly watchdogs runs the worst of the bunch so I will try to work with that.

Here is my rig:

- My temperatures are stable. The hottest part of my PC is one of the hard drives (at 65c)

- EVGA 500w W1

- Coolermaster Hyper T4 w/stock fan

- 8gb Kingston HyperX Fury

- Everything that is overclocked usually runs pretty stable

- Sufficient case cooling (4x60mm fans and one 200-ish mm fan)

- XFX AMD r7 360 (single fan version, OC'd to 1207mhz)

 

- AMD Phenom 2 x4 B95 (OC'd to 3.5ghz)

 

- MSI 970A-G43 (bios up to date)

 

 

In FO4 I had to really dial back my setting to low-mid range to get around 40-60fps. For this post I turned up the settings to demonstrate my problem:

Here is the stats (taken after I quit):

The GPU seems to hover around 800mhz but I get lag spikes when it hits 1200mhz.

 

Here are my Watchdogs settings:

I average about 15-20fps on these settings. I average 30fps with all settings at the minimum. 

 

 

 

Here are my Beamng.drive settings:

\

I can usually get 50fps with these settings, but when I use some cars like the cement truck it drops down to 15fps.

The weird part about this is that the gpu is actually not working as hard here, while the cpu stayed the same. You can see in the Core Clock graph where I changed to the cement truck, and it went down. However, my framerate dropped from about 52fps to 17fps.

 

 

Anyway, I'm at a loss as to what my next steps should be. Right now my rig is not good enough to game on.... Any advice would be helpful.

 

[Arcanekitten]

Is it only in fallout 4 ? because that game is just shit.

[iLoiter]

I am going to assume that the CPU is bottlenecking your GPU. Even though game do use multiple cores, single threaded performance is usually the most important factor and the second, third and fourth cores (most of the time) are not carrying as much load. The reason why your CPU usage is around 50 percent is because the 1-2 cores on your amd phenom ii x4 b95 are probably being pushed at its limit.

 

Edit: What are your laptop specs? Also try reinstalling GPU drivers.

Edited September 16, 2016 by iLoiter

[Zakattacks]

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Is it only in fallout 4 ?

No, all of my modern games are crappy.

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What are your laptop specs?

My laptop has a 960m and an i7 (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015PYZ0J6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

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the CPU is bottlenecking your GPU.

I hadn't thought of that. I will try overclocking more (at the cost of stability). I also just read that the dynamic clock speed can also cause lag spikes so I downloaded RadeonPro to disable it (too bad that's not in AMD's settings...)

[Zakattacks]

Thanks guys, I realized that the bottleneck was either the CPU's low single core performance or the fact that my RAM was clocked really low for some reason. I have been able to lessen the issue but I think I need a better CPU