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How can you tell if your CPU is the gaming bottleneck

almoststew1990

almoststew1990

almoststew1990

Soldato
Joined
12 May 2011
Posts
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Southampton
It's pretty obvious when your GPU is the bottleneck in your set up due to variable framerates depending what you're looking at, looking at floor increasing framerates etc etc.

What about a low end CPU? Does it cause jerky inconsistent framerates (not necessarily low frame rates)? Hang ups? Long loading times only?

I ask because with my £6 AMD e350, when I load into a game properly, I often get 1 frame every 4 seconds or so, for 30 seconds and then it will return to a normal 30fps or so. Is this my CPU?

(yes yes I know this CPU/motherboard is meant for, well, nothing at all really, but I'm just messing around with it.)


EDIT- I also get hangs around Windows that can last up to 10 seconds. I have Page Filing off.

Rest of specs are

Windows 7 64Bit
AMD e350 OC to 1.7GHz
4GB DDR3 RAM @ 1413MHz
512MB NVidia 9600GT
Some old 250GB HDD.
 
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Its not a simple case of whether the cpu is just low powered, it also related to the rest of your system feeding data to it to be processed, ie amount of ram, hdd speed.

Having a low vram gpu may also cause problems as textures need to be loaded into vram more often causing delays.

I have Page Filing off,

turn it back on windows needs it whether you have 16gb ram or 2.

But back to your original question 100% cpu usage = cpu bottleneck, that's just a general rule of thumb some games wont be 100% cpu but still be cpu throttled due to poor optimization.
 
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Your CPU would definitely bottleneck a 9600GT in a lot of cases. In the purely theoretical, there are many possibilities (over/under clocking new GPU) but 100% CPU usage is the easiest.

Also for the love of the Gods, turn your pagefile back on, it’s important!!!
 
Don't ever turn the page file off with 4gb ram. You're leaving nowhere for data to go when the memory floods.
 
Use afterburner monitoring and check your cpu usage.

For example, FSX is notoriously CPU bound and any cpu would be pegged at 100% whilst even at 4k res and AA a 970 won't be at 100%
 
ALXAndy said:
Don't ever turn the page file off with 4gb ram. You're leaving nowhere for data to go when the memory floods.
Click to expand...

I've turned it back on and set it to system managed and it still does the hangs :/ I'll try out FSX and watch it weep.


As an aside the Page File is an overflow area for when you run out of RAM- Windows moves the least accessed data into the Pagefile. Is that a correct 'in an nutshell' explanation?

Why would I ever use more than even 2GB of RAM at a time, especially on a system with a low energy passive CPU? The game in question is Allied Assault, which needs 128MB of RAM. Even if it took 768mb I would still be no where near my RAM limit. I don't have Steam open, no chrome tabs open, no Antivirus, no bloatware...
 
McGraw said:
Use afterburner monitoring and check your cpu usage.

For example, FSX is notoriously CPU bound and any cpu would be pegged at 100% whilst even at 4k res and AA a 970 won't be at 100%
Click to expand...

Not quite.
A CPU doesn't need to be 100% for their to be a bottleneck (In fact the overall CPU usage could be sitting at ~40% yet you've got a CPU bottleneck)
 
almoststew1990 said:
As an aside the Page File is an overflow area for when you run out of RAM- Windows moves the least accessed data into the Pagefile. Is that a correct 'in an nutshell' explanation?
Click to expand...
I suppose that's a simplistic explanation but it also handles things like disk cache. Basically Windows will use as much RAM as it can because it'll speed everything up.

almoststew1990 said:
Why would I ever use more than even 2GB of RAM at a time, especially on a system with a low energy passive CPU? The game in question is Allied Assault, which needs 128MB of RAM. Even if it took 768mb I would still be no where near my RAM limit. I don't have Steam open, no chrome tabs open, no Antivirus, no bloatware...
Click to expand...
A clean Windows install can happily use numerous GiB of RAM if available. Just because you have nothing open doesn't mean background services aren't running. Check Resource Manager to see where your RAM is being used.

In short, just let Windows manage your memory.
 
Less than 100% gpu usage in game when frame limiting or vsync are off would indicate a cpu bottleneck.

I'd use the afterburner overlay to monitor the gpu usage.
 
If anyone is interested, I coupled the CPU with my SSD and now it really flies compared to before- none of the hangs around Windows and in games. It really would be fine in a basic internet and Word PC. The integrated GPU is good for Oblivion, GRID at 136*768. Pretty good for £6 :) I might try it with my 7970 to see how much the frame rates actually improve.
 
You may have attached the SSD to the motherboard via a cable, which then links via the southbridge which is not directly connected to the CPU. It would then link to the Northbridge and over to the CPU if you want to refer to 'coupled' but that's just my take on it...
 
Quite simply - when your CPU has reached its maximum gaming power and starts to hold back your GPUs. I used to see massive bottle necking with Crysis 3 on a I5 2400 due to the derped clock speed. Added a FX 8 @ 4.5ghz and my min FPS shot from 23 to 38.
 
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