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CPU heavy games

smogsy

smogsy

smogsy

Soldato
Joined
9 Dec 2006
Posts
9,287
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@ManCave
hey all

looking for some CPU heavy games i can re-test my computer with for a before/after results @ 4K.

ideally with a benchmark tool for ease of use.

i'm interested in seeing if my cpu is bottle-necked via frequency or ram (doubt it but be nice to confirm)

rig:
2950X PBO at 4.2ghz on all cores 4.4 on single.
1080ti (3090 soon)
32GB @ 3000mhz CL12
 
Sim games like FS2020 are very CPU heavy, especially on the primary thread. Some of the big strategy games like Civilization 5 or 6 are brutal on the CPU in late game with a lot of players and on big maps, and many of the strategy games like Total war series that feature huge battles.

The larger scale multiplayer games that have a lot of people running around at once can be quite brutal, so the battleground games like PUBG, and MMOs like Planetside 2 (F2P)

If you really want to nail your CPU then games that have some kind of simulation plus free play that allow you to set up outrageous scenarios can hammer the CPU, I'm thinking about things like TABS (Totally Accurate Battle simulator) where you can set up 1000's of AI units to fight each other. And simulation games like Besiege where you can download other peoples insane creations and test them in sandbox.

*edit* Just be careful as premade benchmarks often don't reach the extreme conditions that will put a high load on the CPU. And sometimes not even very representative of in game performance, Watch Dogs Legion is one recent example where in game frame rate is way lower than the premade benchmark.
 
seems from research shadow of tomb raider is good one to test & easy to repeat, will give that a go first & re-read those suggestions above, just really want to see if a single core is being maxed to 100% i know threadripper is not a great gaming chip but work comes first :)
 
Fallout 4 with mods in larger settlements,hammers two threads out of the six it will use,and its quite latency sensitive. In Skylake uarch CPUs still are ahead of Zen2 in the game,and I suspect it might be one of the games Zen3 has a big improvement over Zen2 in.
 
smogsy said:
results from shadow

agree just dont want 1 core to be blocking performance due to lower clocks :)
Click to expand...

Just be careful because average graphs of the entire CPU across all cores can show deceptively low usage. Often games run a primary thread which is what bottelnecks first on a single core, in fact that's kinda the rule of thumb, games that are well multithreaded are an exception. Which is why typically high frequency on a single core is what matters the most and why Intel tend to win game performance but then lose at profession workstation performance.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Just be careful because average graphs of the entire CPU across all cores can show deceptively low usage. Often games run a primary thread which is what bottelnecks first on a single core, in fact that's kinda the rule of thumb, games that are well multithreaded are an exception. Which is why typically high frequency on a single core is what matters the most and why Intel tend to win game performance but then lose at profession workstation performance.
Click to expand...
indeed which why i have HWINFO open in screenshot above to monitor each core usage Tomb raider uses about 80% of 1 core
 
Chaos666 said:
see .. you are 100% gpu bound

I am also gpu bound but my fps is higher than yours
Mz32IF0.jpg
Click to expand...
yeh you should be, Threadripper latency + my 1080TI is terrible, Constant 83C on the Aorus Extreme its a terrible Cooler really needs re-pasting or being destroyed. fancy hitting it with a hammer once my 3090 arrives... i know its the GPU as tested another 1080TI and it runs at 67C in the same case

also note the cpu stats are terrible on threadripper :D
 
Ashs of singularity is pretty hammering as it can use all cores / threads. I actually used to use it when installed as a quick check of CPU overclock.
 
Use capframex to record runs stats, you'll get very nice detailed results that the app itself can cross-compare.

As for bench, yeah Ashes of the Singularity is the best pretty much, for CPU. To see some real damage tho I'd say get AC:Odyssey and go to Athens and do laps, or Watch Dogs: Legion and do the same (bonus: it has auto-drive function so you can sorta setup a benchmark) - don't rely on in-game benchmarks in most games, they mostly stress the GPU and don't actually simulate CPU usage. That's what real CPU utilisation is gonna look like in open world games.
 
smogsy said:
seems from research shadow of tomb raider is good one to test & easy to repeat, will give that a go first & re-read those suggestions above, just really want to see if a single core is being maxed to 100% i know threadripper is not a great gaming chip but work comes first :)
Click to expand...
SOTTR DX12 seems pretty well threaded to me - can you try running at 1080p as 2nd half of bench is CPU limited for me there but okay at 1440 so I imagine 4K would be GPU limited even with a 3080.

If you run it in DX11 will see some clear bottlenecking though.
 
Poneros said:
Use capframex to record runs stats, you'll get very nice detailed results that the app itself can cross-compare.

As for bench, yeah Ashes of the Singularity is the best pretty much, for CPU. To see some real damage tho I'd say get AC:Odyssey and go to Athens and do laps, or Watch Dogs: Legion and do the same (bonus: it has auto-drive function so you can sorta setup a benchmark) - don't rely on in-game benchmarks in most games, they mostly stress the GPU and don't actually simulate CPU usage. That's what real CPU utilisation is gonna look like in open world games.
Click to expand...
odyssey is a good shout think i got that installed :)

89% usage max on highest core in Odyssey
 
Last edited:
smogsy said:
looking for some CPU heavy games i can re-test my computer with for a before/after results @ 4K.
Click to expand...

I'm going from memory here so ICBVW... The Death Stranding engine is umpteen-core aware. Ashes of the Singularity is, IIRC, compiled with an 8 core / 16 thread limit (maybe 6 / 12) but the developer has a 16 core / 32 thread version, possibly higher.
 
As mentioned, flight sim games, especially X-Plane 11 is CPU heavy. Upgrade from 1070 to 1080ti can show no improvement. Any you can download a free version to use as your test. DCS World is pretty CPU heavy too, also free.
 
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