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Is My 5Ghz CPU bottlenecking my 7950s?

RichH

RichH

RichH

Associate
Joined
1 Dec 2011
Posts
434
Hey guys,

I am getting GPS usage in the low 90s at times on the Valley benchmark.

Is it my CPU holding me back?

Seems to only happen at really high GPU clocks -1300/1730 on 7950s.

I really thought a 5ghz chip wouldn't hold anything back, but perhaps that is not the case?
 
RichH said:
Hey guys,

I am getting GPS usage in the low 90s at times on the Valley benchmark.

Is it my CPU holding me back?

Seems to only happen at really high GPU clocks -1300/1730 on 7950s.

I really thought a 5ghz chip wouldn't hold anything back, but perhaps that is not the case?
Click to expand...

Not in that benchmark. I have an i7 and even my gpu usage drops a bit from 98-99% as the scenes in Unigine Valley change so frequently that keeping 99% usage is impossible.

You will experience a bottleneck in battlefield 3 though. ;)
 
RichH said:
Haven't experienced bottleneck in Battlefield 3 so far. Haven't played it for ages though, has it changed?
Click to expand...

What res do you play?

Go into a 64 man vehicle server. Ensure vsync is off and any fps limiters. Enable some form of on screen display and note both your gpu usage results. See if you get 99% usage on both gpu's.
 
As I said, I haven't played it in a while, but I never use frame limiters and I seem to remember getting 99% usage most the time, even on big servers.

Never really played the vehicle maps much though.

Saying that I would never play at these sort of clocks, they are benchmark only clocks.
 
Oh right, well I suppose it is good that games are punching CPUs that much.

If bf4 is the same or worse perhaps it is an excuse to upgrade....
 
Also how do you know when it is a bottleneck and when it is drivers or the game?

90% 90% = bottleneck, 99% 80% = bad drivers/game?
 
Minstadave said:
64 man Caspian border is the CPU killer.
Click to expand...

Definitely

I find this map is more impacting on cpu than even Bandar desert which is the largest map. I suppose it's to do with concentration of actions/firefights and complex terrain both of which have more precedence in Caspian than Bandar
 
RichH said:
Also how do you know when it is a bottleneck and when it is drivers or the game?

90% 90% = bottleneck, 99% 80% = bad drivers/game?
Click to expand...

Typically low gpu usage, often combined with subpar performance or microstutter. With an overclocked i7 at 4.5ghz or higher you will see your cards pegged at 99% most of the time online in battlefield 3.
 
LtMatt said:
Typically low gpu usage, often combined with subpar performance or microstutter. With an overclocked i7 at 4.5ghz or higher you will see your cards pegged at 99% most of the time online in battlefield 3.
Click to expand...

Didn't really answer the question...
 
RichH said:
Didn't really answer the question...
Click to expand...

Well i know its the game as ive used both cpu's while owning the game. Typically you could spot it by seeing 100% cpu usage in task manager but in bf3 you're limited by lack of cores/threads rather than pure speed. You can try lowering the image quality and see if your frames go up, if they don't then assume a bottleneck as the gpu can render more frames than the cpu can deliver.

I'm sure someone will have a better explanation though. :)
 
I can agree with LtMatt regarding cpu bottlenecks in this game. Both of us and several other multi gpu users i play bf3 with have experienced the same. In my case it was a 3570k at 4.5ghz, hence my switch to a 3770k. 80% gpu use with the old cpu, 90% use with the new cpu, even at stock speed.
 
RichH said:
Hey guys,

I am getting GPS usage in the low 90s at times on the Valley benchmark.

Is it my CPU holding me back?

Seems to only happen at really high GPU clocks -1300/1730 on 7950s.

I really thought a 5ghz chip wouldn't hold anything back, but perhaps that is not the case?
Click to expand...

The Valley bench does bottleneck GPUs but you would need to be using at least 3 x HD 7970s.

With your setup there should be no problem.
 
OP, you say this only happens when your GPU is clocked very high. Are you sure your card is stable at that clock? The card might somehow be throttling, hence the lower GPU usage.

This is something I noticed when testing a couple of HD6970s. One was clocked higher than the other but both gave the same performance. In that case, it definitely wasn't a CPU limitation because the MSI Lightning HD6970 I tested afterwards was able to scale with clock speed just fine thanks to its superior power delivery. If I were you, I'd run some benchmarks with the clocks set at 1200MHz and 1300MHz and see if the latter actually gives a performance improvement.
 
I have a similar problem with my 2 7970s in BF3.

If I run my cards at stock (1000/1375) I get low usage on any map/player count which can be anything from 40-75%.

If I lower my cards to 925/1375 my usage goes up to about 75-90%.

Disabling crossfire gives me a constant 99% usage.

I am running an i7 920 @ 4.1 and a resolution of 1080p.

So in my case BF3 does not benefit me running my cards at anything over 925/1375.
 
chief barker said:
I have a similar problem with my 2 7970s in BF3.

If I run my cards at stock (1000/1375) I get low usage on any map/player count which can be anything from 40-75%.

If I lower my cards to 925/1375 my usage goes up to about 75-90%.

Disabling crossfire gives me a constant 99% usage.

I am running an i7 920 @ 4.1 and a resolution of 1080p.

So in my case BF3 does not benefit me running my cards at anything over 925/1375.
Click to expand...

HT on or off?.
 
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