Who can solve this problem? Game not using the full power of my GPU.

[Combat_Killer]

Hi All,

 

I have the weirdest problem that i cant get anyone from the Microsoft, NVidia and my game Dev. Team to solve. I had once found a bandaid solution but after my games latest patch notes they have changed the games settings and UI so i cant use my hack anymore, which has now made me resort to coming here and see if there is any tech guy around that explain and solve this phenomenon.

 

Problem.

The game that im playing Black Desert Online isnt, doesnt or wont use my GPU power to the fullest potential.

When i can get my game to work correctly my PC runs at around 35% CPU usage and 100% GPU usage. When it doesnt run right (what its doing now, not running correctly) my CPU runs @80% maxing out @100% which causes game freeze or FPS drops as far as 5FPS to 30FPS, whilst my GPU power wont go past 70% usage. BTW these figures are coming from task manager.

So can someone please answer these 2 questions for me;

 

1. How in the hell can force my game to use my GPU power instead of CPU?

 

2. Explain to me how does the PC system balance CPU power and GPU power?

 

My Theory

My PC specs,

Gigabyte H170 Gaming 3 DDR4 Vers.

Gigabyte GTX 960 4GB Vers.

These prob dont matter but ill list them anyways,

Intel i5-6600k 3.50GHz

2 x 16GB HyperX Kingston RAM

 

What i am noticing is that my launchpad is hanging now, which it never did before this problem arose, and whilst looking at Task Manager - Performance Graph, i noticed that as soon as the launcher comes up my GPU switches on, then switches off like a sec or 2 later, then while im getting inside the game there are a few segments in the GPU graph that the GPU is or wants to turn on, but its switching off or seems something is forcing it to throttle. When im inside the game playing, my GPU wont go past 76% usage, very rare i even see it go past 80%.
I had this exact same problem before with the game, my bandaid solution for it in the past was to load the game, go into settings select windowed mode hit save, then go back in and select fullscreen and untick a box called "Load Optimization Mode" hit save, then load up the game. This is what i was doing to get the game to work properly, but now after their latest patch they have changed the UI and i tried to do the same hack but its not working anymore.

I found the vid i did to show their support team YouTube Vid!

 

Here is what im thinking is happening, because there are 2 versions of my mobo and gpu, the game and or my OS is detecting my hardware and throttling both hardware, or perhaps more so my GPU. As with my mobo, there are 2 types of H170 a DDR3 and DDR4 vers. And with my gpu the same thing 2 GTX 960 gpu's a 2gb and a 4gb. Well i have gotten the DDR4 mobo and the 4gb gpu and im thinking that my system is calibrating itself or telling the game that to use the lower settings to suite my hardware.

OR

 

The game itself is not just allowing it to use the full gpu power, which is what im actually thinking, that is why im here on the hopes that someone might know how to force the game to use my gpu power as the NVidia CP seems to have zero effect towards my games settings.

Before i go i thought i would list of things that i have tried doing.
- Disabled all of microsoft gaming HUD crap, through settings and registry, so GameDVR is fully disabled.

- Tried manipulating and changing all the settings through the NVidia CP

- Tried Re-Hacking the game to get it to unlock the GPU power, like i had previously but to no avail.

- I also reinstalled the game from a fresh install.

 

Anyhow i cant figure the fucking shit out and im really hoping that someone around here can solve this problem for me.
Im willing to skype, discord or anything if need be if it will make it easier.

 

Just please help!!!

Thanks in advance.

 

Forgotten info

 

Here are my NVidia CP settings;

Ambient Occlusion --- Not support for this application 
Anisotropic Filtering --- 4x 
Antialasing - FXAA --- Use global setting (OFF) 
Antialasing - Gamma correction --- Use global setting (ON) 
Antialising - Mode --- Enhance the Application Setting 
Antialising - Setting --- 4x 
Antialising - Transparency --- Multisample (for performance) OR 2x (supersample) (this is for quality) ---> I personally chose the Multisample option 
CUDA - GPUs --- Use global setting (ALL) 
Maximum pre-rendered frames --- 3 
Multi-Frame Sampled AA (MFAA) --- Use global settings (OFF) 
OpenGL rendering GPU --- Use global setting (Auto-select) 
Optimise for Compute Performance --- Use global setting (OFF) 
Power Management Mode --- Prefer Maximum Performance 
Shader Cache --- Off 
Texture Filtering - Anisotropic Sample Optimisation --- Off 
Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias --- Clamp 
Texture Filtering - Quality --- High Performance 
Texture Filtering - Trilinear Optimisation --- On 
Threaded optimisation --- Use global setting (Auto) 
Triple Buffing --- On 
Vertical Sync --- Off 
Virtual Reality pre-rendered frames --- Use global setting (1)

Edited March 11, 2018 by Combat_Killer
Inputting my NVidia CP settings

[TrigrH]

https://www.reddit.com/r/blackdesertonline/comments/617b7u/bdo_high_cpu_usage/

[iRileyx]

Cpu at 100 and gpu not going past 70 is a bottleneck with your cpu. You can't force the game to use more gpu instead of cpu. 

 

What are your temps like? Could be thermal throttling. 

[Combat_Killer]

6 minutes ago, TrigrH said:

https://www.reddit.com/r/blackdesertonline/comments/617b7u/bdo_high_cpu_usage/

im not having that issue.

 

6 minutes ago, RKRiley said:

Cpu at 100 and gpu not going past 70 is a bottleneck with your cpu. You can't force the game to use more gpu instead of cpu. 

 

What are your temps like? Could be thermal throttling. 

my temps are fine and the CPU isnt the bottleneck, cause if it was it would be happening all the time if that were the case.

[TrigrH]

Just now, Combat_Killer said:

im not having that issue.

Quote

When it doesnt run right (what its doing now, not running correctly) my CPU runs @80% maxing out @100% which causes game freeze or FPS drops as far as 5FPS to 30FPS, whilst my GPU power wont go past 70% usage

The CPU is getting slammed by the game, you are having an issue related to that. If the CPU is pinned you don't get anymore frames.

[Combat_Killer]

1 minute ago, TrigrH said:

The CPU is getting slammed by the game, you are having an issue related to that. If the CPU is pinned you don't get anymore frames.

You missed this part...
When i can get my game to work correctly my PC runs at around 35% CPU usage and 100% GPU usage.

After latest patch notes.
When it doesnt run right (what its doing now, not running correctly) my CPU runs @80% maxing out @100%

The latest patch has changed something on how it runs, modifying or even changing settings through the NVidia CP does nothing to the game, so this is telling me that when the game loads it ignoring my NVidia CP settings, therefore not using my proper GPU settings that i have setup to run that game.

I can understand where you're coming from, but thats only relevant if you are playing the game for the very first time and its always running like that. But because my problem is after their latest patch notes and these patch notes included fiddling and modifying the games system settings and the UI, im guessing its done something to cause my PC to ignore my GPU settings when playing the game.

[asus killer]

31 minutes ago, Combat_Killer said:

 

1. How in the hell can force my game to use my GPU power instead of CPU?

 

2. Explain to me how does the PC system balance CPU power and GPU power?

 

 

the gpu can't do it's job if the cpu can't keep up and vice versa. The system specs should be balanced to avoid this.

If the cpus goes to 100% the gpu will have to wait for him to keep up, so gpu usage and fps drop.

[Arttu89]

6 minutes ago, Combat_Killer said:

You missed this part...
When i can get my game to work correctly my PC runs at around 35% CPU usage and 100% GPU usage.

After latest patch notes.
When it doesnt run right (what its doing now, not running correctly) my CPU runs @80% maxing out @100%

The latest patch has changed something on how it runs, modifying or even changing settings through the NVidia CP does nothing to the game, so this is telling me that when the game loads it ignoring my NVidia CP settings, therefore not using my proper GPU settings that i have setup to run that game.

I can understand where you're coming from, but thats only relevant if you are playing the game for the very first time and its always running like that. But because my problem is after their latest patch notes and these patch notes included fiddling and modifying the games system settings and the UI, im guessing its done something to cause my PC to ignore my GPU settings when playing the game.

 

I don't think you understood what he meant.

 

From what you wrote it dosn't look like the game is ignoring the GPU settings, there's something in the game that causes high load on the CPU, if the CPU is pinned close to 100% all the time it's uncapable to proccess the data that the GPU requires from it fast enough, ergo your graphics issues and lower load on the GPU. Your issue is not the graphic settings (unless you set them up too high) it's something about the game putting heavy load on the CPU.

 

Since it's an online game it may be related to the antihack solution they're running, I've experienced similar problems in the past, where a poorly implemented antihack was pinning the CPU randomly in a game that on it's own didn't require much CPU power. One other thing you can try, if you're running an antivirus disable it before you run the game and see if anything changes, some particular game and antivirus combos have a tendency to "react" with each other and cause problems.

 

Aside of that only the game devs would be able to find the issue if they'd be willing to troubleshoot it.

[Combat_Killer]

23 minutes ago, Arttu89 said:

 

I don't think you understood what he meant.

 

From what you wrote it dosn't look like the game is ignoring the GPU settings, there's something in the game that causes high load on the CPU, if the CPU is pinned close to 100% all the time it's uncapable to proccess the data that the GPU requires from it fast enough, ergo your graphics issues and lower load on the GPU. Your issue is not the graphic settings (unless you set them up too high) it's something about the game putting heavy load on the CPU.

 

Since it's an online game it may be related to the antihack solution they're running, I've experienced similar problems in the past, where a poorly implemented antihack was pinning the CPU randomly in a game that on it's own didn't require much CPU power. One other thing you can try, if you're running an antivirus disable it before you run the game and see if anything changes, some particular game and antivirus combos have a tendency to "react" with each other and cause problems.

 

Aside of that only the game devs would be able to find the issue if they'd be willing to troubleshoot it.

Oh ok, ya i misunderstood you totally.....

Well i have a support ticket open with them atm, but i dont think they are gonna be able to help as they arent the sharpest tool in the shed, if ya know wat i mean!
 

When i pm'd a GM Tech guy showing him that vid that i posted in my OP, he confirmed to me that they forced the players based pc's to use specs that they feel that the game runs well at, and what i was doing was unlocking/braking the system by doing that method that i was doing whilst loading the game. He basically told me that i was telling the game to use my GPU power instead of CPU power.
What i was hoping by coming here was perhaps finding someone that new how to do the same hack but through the registry or game files instead of me trying to do it with the games loading screen settings. But all everyones conclusions are "Oh, its ur CPU bottlenecking" when i know that isnt the problem. When i can finally get it to run right ill come back here and show everyone that its not my CPU bottlenecking thats causing this issue.

I have had my pc for almost 4+yrs and been playing the game for since release of feb 2016, so i would know if there was a problem with bottlenecking. Its just they program their game somehow to throttle or bottleneck my pc, i just got to find a way to disarm it like i did before. I just got to get the game to follow my GPU settings instead of my CPU settings.

 

I have tested this with other games that i have installed, ill go and play around with NVidia CP settings and it changes the behavior inside the game, but the only game that DOESNT change in behavior is BDO. So this is telling me that somehow they have added some type of coding to ignore the NVidia CP settings, cause no matter what settings i change or alter it has no effect to the game at all.

 

 

Here is part of the convo from that GM admitting it about what i said.

Hey again,

I do understand that, it is indeed possible to get out of the "FPS lock", although this is not something we suggest. While it is true that the engine might have behaved differently in the past, continuous updates are being applied that may change, remove, or alter previously present functions.

While opening the possibility of tweaking everything in the game engine sounds very intriguing at first, unfortunately it is not a viable vision, as most of the settings are hard coded in for stability reasons.

[Paul Vreeland]

Black Desert Online is a CPU bound game.  Notice all that physics, especially in highly populated areas?  (Player clothing and hair, boob jiggle, Horse clothing and hair, Wagon accessories)

 

In BDO, all physics are currently handled by the CPU.  If you are in a populated area, your FPS will tank due to all the physics calculations.

 

They are not offloading that work to PhysX or other Compute language in the GPU, all in CPU.  When your CPU is too busy to handle the load, delivery of data to the GPU is delayed.  (100% CPU / lower GPU %)

 

You cannot turn down or disable physics in BDO.  You can use low poly avatar models I forget the setting name where Faraway people are like black shadows, NOT "high end mode" (keeps player and npc render distance lower).  But get more than 20 people and their horses on the screen and FPS WILL take a hit.  It doesn't help that most players play females with the added boob jiggle and more jiggly outfits such as skirts.

[Soulsreaper]

when they updated the game, the fixed the glitch that u where using to make the game use the gpu instead of cpu, some games run more on cpu then gpu, and its obvous that there having this game run more on the cpu as the updates go along, if u want it to get beter youll have to get a different cpu like a i7.      there wont be any way around having the game use your gpu instead of cpu  unless u find a hack. some devs as there updating and changing games change what the games processing goes through. see  I play runescape a big mmo it used to drive a lot of the cpu, but as they graphics got beter and they changed things about the game engine the devs had it start running more off the gpu instead of the cpu. its basically just what ever way the company wants to take the game. not all games are gpu heavy

 

[Ace McPlane]

If the game was previously not maxing out the CPU I really don't think we should be telling them they have a bottleneck.

I wouldn't want to make someone buy expensive new parts when they actually don't need to.

That should be the last resort thing to suggest, not the first thing to jump to.

The last 3 times I asked a question, people tried to tell me I had a bottleneck and I proved each time that I didn't and found the real issue myself so yea.. people jump to that way too quickly.

 

Anyways, my first guess would be that something else is pinning the CPU outside of the game.

What's the CPU usage like at idle?

[Ace McPlane]

Honestly, sounds like you should just reinstall windows next.

 

If you don't want to lose your save games, backup every folder in C:\users\<yourname>\appdata (this folder is hidden so type it in the address bar manually).

Most of your saves will be in those 3 folders, but for the games you really care about

google it and make sure you're backing up the saves for them right.

 

Don't copy everything back after reinstalling windows though. Go through them one at a time and make sure you're only copying save games as there is other stuff in those folders you wouldn't want to copy back to a new install.

[Combat_Killer]

@Soulsreaper @Paul Vreeland @Arttu89 @asus killer

 

I dont know how to say this without offending yo guys, but you were all wrong.

Video showing how bad it was (kindof) --> youtube

 

Here is a screenshot i done to compare, tried to get it close as possible to get in the exact same place.
LEFT side after reformat   ----   RIGHT side before reformat

 

Now here are screenshots showing you CPU down GPU up

Game plus other apps/software open as well...

 

Here is another one with only game open...

 

So, now explain to me then how can this be, hmm? And i havent even touched or modified the M.Soft Xbox GameDVR files, so im loading that plus NVidia GeoForce and STILL getting the massive performance boost.
CPU dont kind of go over 50% now and the GPU @100% and i have now the performance back to normal. If what you all said was true, then i wouldnt been able to get these results.


 

On 14/03/2018 at 1:12 AM, stateofpsychosis said:

Honestly, sounds like you should just reinstall windows next.

Thats exactly what i did.
I figured that because i upgraded to win10 1501 vers. when it first come out, when i was on win7 and the edition of win10 went and had to major updates, the anniversary and creators fall packages, plus going from vers.1501 to vers.1709, i  figured i might as well and see what happens. 
Well what do you know things are back to normal now.

Its really hard to tell exactly who do i point the finger at, NVidia? Microsoft? or game developers?
At the end of the day things are running normal like they were and thats all that matters now.

Thanks all that helped as i do appreciate it alot!!!
Cheers.

[Ace McPlane]

2 hours ago, Combat_Killer said:

@Soulsreaper @Paul Vreeland @Arttu89 @asus killer

 

I dont know how to say this without offending yo guys, but you were all wrong.

Video showing how bad it was (kindof) --> youtube

 

Here is a screenshot i done to compare, tried to get it close as possible to get in the exact same place.
LEFT side after reformat   ----   RIGHT side before reformat

 

Now here are screenshots showing you CPU down GPU up

Game plus other apps/software open as well...

 

Here is another one with only game open...

 

So, now explain to me then how can this be, hmm? And i havent even touched or modified the M.Soft Xbox GameDVR files, so im loading that plus NVidia GeoForce and STILL getting the massive performance boost.
CPU dont kind of go over 50% now and the GPU @100% and i have now the performance back to normal. If what you all said was true, then i wouldnt been able to get these results.


 

Thats exactly what i did.
I figured that because i upgraded to win10 1501 vers. when it first come out, when i was on win7 and the edition of win10 went and had to major updates, the anniversary and creators fall packages, plus going from vers.1501 to vers.1709, i  figured i might as well and see what happens. 
Well what do you know things are back to normal now.

Its really hard to tell exactly who do i point the finger at, NVidia? Microsoft? or game developers?
At the end of the day things are running normal like they were and thats all that matters now.

Thanks all that helped as i do appreciate it alot!!!
Cheers.

No prob.

[WhiteShade71]

Hey there I'm currently experiencing the exact same problem as you reported, I took the time to read through all the replies and didn't quite understand how you fixed it, could you please explain in more detail if it's not too much trouble.

P.S: it's not bottlenecked I checked

 

PC specs:

Computer name: OMEN by HP Laptop 15-dc0xxx

CPU :  i7-8750H 6 core 12 threads @ 3.9 GHz

RAM : 1x16 GB DDR4 2666Mhz

GPU : GTX 1050ti 

 

[Johnny_]

On 8/24/2019 at 12:39 PM, WhiteShade71 said:

Hey there I'm currently experiencing the exact same problem as you reported, I took the time to read through all the replies and didn't quite understand how you fixed it, could you please explain in more detail if it's not too much trouble.

P.S: it's not bottlenecked I checked

 

PC specs:

Computer name: OMEN by HP Laptop 15-dc0xxx

CPU :  i7-8750H 6 core 12 threads @ 3.9 GHz

RAM : 1x16 GB DDR4 2666Mhz

GPU : GTX 1050ti 

 

Did you find source of the problem? Im pretty sure you're being ram bottlenecked. I had similar problem with csgo which is also cpu bound game. Before buying 2nd ram stick I was getting around 150 fps with drops under 140. After buying the 2nd ram stick I'm getting between 210-300 fps.

I would recommend looking for a 2nd 16Gb or 2x 8Gb.