Where is the bottleneck?

[Jesmo]

So I have this weird problem...

In some games i seem to have a bottleneck somewhere in my system... the thing is, I don't know where the bottleneck is located... In Skyrim and Borderlands 2 I am doing about 60 fps on max settings... The weird thing is, that my cpu is running at 30-40 %, my gpu is at 50 % max, and my ram is never beyond 40 % on both system and v-ram.... So where is my bottleneck?  Temps are also fine... And other games seems to be bottleneck by either my cpu or gpu, but noth thses two games...

Specs:

FX-6300 @4.5 ghz

GTX 980 EVGA SC

MSI 970 something-somthing-motherboard

8 gigs of ddr3 ram

Skyrim on SSD and Borderlands on HHD...

[glitchmaster0001]

the FX 6300 might be your culprit 

[suchamoneypit]

yeah i think its the FX-6300, getting something like  a 212 evo and overclocking the FX-6300 could mitigate this for relatively low cost.

[PlayStation 2]

Are either of the games running with V-Sync enabled?

[Gonio]

CPU is bottleneck. Even a decent Intel on probably a lower clock speed outperforms your CPU. Most likely scenario is that your CPU can't provide all required data fast enough for the GPU. See the CPU in this case as the foot standing on the hose.

 

And why it happens in 1 game and not the other, is just how a specific game is working. 1 might be more CPU dependand or require simulation calculations for game, while others are just graphically demanding.

[SkilledRebuilds]

Skyrim I can understand the 60fps cap (Dat Physics)

But Borderlands 2, should be fully fledged maxed out with more FPS than that at 1080p, it's hardly demanding and with unlocked FPS in game, you should be passing 120FPS easily.

[Jesmo]

16 hours ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

Are either of the games running with V-Sync enabled?

No

[Jesmo]

16 hours ago, suchamoneypit said:

yeah i think its the FX-6300, getting something like  a 212 evo and overclocking the FX-6300 could mitigate this for relatively low cost.

Aldready have... it's runing at 4.5 ghz... And as I wrote; it's only using 40 % of the cpu, so I can't see how the cpu is the bottleneck...

[Jesmo]

16 hours ago, SkilledRebuilds said:

Skyrim I can understand the 60fps cap (Dat Physics)

But Borderlands 2, should be fully fledged maxed out with more FPS than that at 1080p, it's hardly demanding and with unlocked FPS in game, you should be passing 120FPS easily.

I have a 144 hz monitor so I get 144 fps when inside small buildings (which is fucking with the physics engine, so pots and pans are flying around like crazy) but only about 60 when outside... And Borderlands should be running a lot better, I just can't seem to find out why...

[SkilledRebuilds]

4 minutes ago, Jesmo said:

Aldready have... it's runing at 4.5 ghz... And as I wrote; it's only using 40 % of the cpu, so I can't see how the cpu is the bottleneck...

Misconception example... A CPU does NOT have to be at 100% to bottleneck.

Example - If a game uses only 1-2 cores (not saying this is the case in your situation), Even 3-4 cores,.... your CPU is not going to be at maximum usage.

But by a game/client only using 1-2 or 3-4 cores to feed the systemwide instructions of the game, you can lose performance in comparison to a higher IPC CPU,  the same limited-threading situation of a 6 core intel only using 4 cores for a specific game, it will not be 100% efficient, but the Intel IPC being more powerful, performance drops less.

 

[Jesmo]

16 hours ago, Gonio said:

CPU is bottleneck. Even a decent Intel on probably a lower clock speed outperforms your CPU. Most likely scenario is that your CPU can't provide all required data fast enough for the GPU. See the CPU in this case as the foot standing on the hose.

 

And why it happens in 1 game and not the other, is just how a specific game is working. 1 might be more CPU dependand or require simulation calculations for game, while others are just graphically demanding.

But then why is my cpu only doing about 40 %.. I also get bottlenecks in other games like csgo, saints row, rise of the tomb raider, but in all those games my cpu is runings at 80-100 %... 

[Jesmo]

3 minutes ago, SkilledRebuilds said:

Misconception example... A CPU does NOT have to be at 100% to bottleneck.

Example - If a game uses only 1-2 cores (not saying this is the case in your situation), Even 3-4 cores,.... your CPU is not going to be at maximum usage.

But by only using 1-2 cores to feed the systemwide instructions of the game, you can lose performance in comparison to a higher IPC CPU as well.

 

All cores are runing at 40 - 50 %... if the games only used one or two, shouldn't core number one and two be runing at 80-100 % and the others much lower?

[SkilledRebuilds]

Just now, Jesmo said:

All cores are runing at 40 - 50 %... if the games only used one or two, shouldn't core number one and two be runing at 80-100 % and the others much lower?

Thats not how it always works, while obviously we all want it to... use more, be faster, get higher performance...

 

The developers have coded the game that way, for whatever reasons.

The inefficiency to make some games NOT multi-core aware is stupid, but it happens, so overclocking the cores can help those single/dual threaded games that don't use all cores, and higher frequency (Mhz/Ghz) raises to gain performance on those fewer used cores. (WHich you've already done)

[Jesmo]

6 minutes ago, SkilledRebuilds said:

Thats not how it always works, while obviously we all want it to... use more, be faster, get higher performance...

 

The developers have coded the game that way, for whatever reasons.

The inefficiency to make some games NOT multi-core aware is stupid, but it happens, so overclocking the cores can help those single/dual threaded games that don't use all cores, and higher frequency (Mhz/Ghz) raises to gain performance on those fewer used cores. (WHich you've already done)

hmm.. well csgo, skyrim and borderalands aren't exactly "new titles" anymore, so I guess I can't do much about it... 60 fps in fine for gaming anyways, I was just wondering why it wasn't running any faster... 

[SkilledRebuilds]

1 minute ago, Jesmo said:

hmm.. well csgo, skyrim and borderalands aren't exactly "new titles" anymore, so I guess I can't do much about it... 60 fps in fine for gaming anyways, I was just wondering why it wasn't running any faster... 

There are likely guides out there to get the most/more out of them games...

But happy is happy, if your happy with its performance, then all is good in a sense that your NOT Kicking yourself or tearing your hair out...

When Zen reveals itself, likely a great upgrade.

[Gonio]

I asume you have also everything up to date. Somehting else you can look at is if specific games have certain video settings that might mess stuff up. Even if it is supported, certain stuff can still mess up when enabled/disabled. This can even happen if the hardware is good enough. Also certain games fps lock in certain circumstances...

 

But as we mentioned it's most likely your CPU. AMD architecture is way slower then Intel, cache size might be an issue, etc.

[Jesmo]

13 hours ago, Gonio said:

I asume you have also everything up to date. Somehting else you can look at is if specific games have certain video settings that might mess stuff up. Even if it is supported, certain stuff can still mess up when enabled/disabled. This can even happen if the hardware is good enough. Also certain games fps lock in certain circumstances...

 

But as we mentioned it's most likely your CPU. AMD architecture is way slower then Intel, cache size might be an issue, etc.

Yes, everything is up to date (both games and drivers).

 

I blame the game build. When the cpu is bottlenecking in other games (which it does) it runs much faster than in Borderlands and Skyrim....

[PatrikTheToth]

Some games,  commonly open world games like Fallout 4, GTA V and The Witcher 3 benefit a lot from faster RAM speeds. the new Red Engine likes Ram frequency even more than CPU overclocking. Digital Foundry made a few videos about this topic, you can look up their benchmarks to see that faster RAM can provide a substantial difference in certain scenarios, especially with lower performance CPUs.   

[Jesmo]

3 minutes ago, PatrikTheToth said:

Some games,  commonly open world games like Fallout 4, GTA V and The Witcher 3 benefit a lot from faster RAM speeds. the new Red Engine likes Ram frequency even more than CPU overclocking. Digital Foundry made a few videos about this topic, you can look up their benchmarks to see that faster RAM can provide a substantial difference in certain scenarios, especially with lower performance CPUs.   

Fallout 4 and GTA V gets bottlencked by my cpu (runing at 80-100%) and witcher 3 by my gpu (runing at 99%)... 

[PatrikTheToth]

4 minutes ago, Jesmo said:

Fallout 4 and GTA V gets bottlencked by my cpu (runing at 80-100%) and witcher 3 by my gpu (runing at 99%)... 

What is the frequency of your RAM? You could try overclocking it and see if it helps  

This is one of the videos I was talking about:

 

[Jesmo]

11 hours ago, PatrikTheToth said:

What is the frequency of your RAM? You could try overclocking it and see if it helps  

This is one of the videos I was talking about:

 

I guess it does make sense in those open-world games, where the ram is constantly loading new areas... I guess Witcher is just really well optimized...