Is this a CPU bottleneck?

nitram100 · 29 Apr 2019 at 20:48

Hey guys,

Spec

I5 3570K ar 4.4 ghz
Vega 56 Pulse Sapphire
16bg 1600mhz RAM

I have been playing Planetside 2 again a lot since the DX11 update, and the engine now runs mainly on GPU as opposed to CPU before.

I'm getting GPU fps drops down to the 30's sometimes, which it shouldn't really.

I'm wondering is my old 3570k stopping the Vega use all of it's power, is this a CPU bottleneck?

Taken a pic from my G19 LCD.

https://imgur.com/0loH247

The gpu useage will range from 8% to around 40% with CPU always hovering around 80-99%

MaXxBoulton · 29 Apr 2019 at 20:50

the old i5 is not ideal for that type of a gpu

CuriousTomCat · 29 Apr 2019 at 21:19

nitram100 said:
The gpu useage will range from 8% to around 40% with CPU always hovering around 80-99%

Yes that's your problem. Your GPU is almost idling at lows of 8% while it waits and waits for the CPU to catch up and give it something to do.

nitram100 · 30 Apr 2019 at 11:41

Thanks guys, gonna see what the zen 2 brings to the table otherwise just gonna grab a 8700k or something from members market to free up the bottleneck. Cheers!

MartinPrince · 3 May 2019 at 18:17

nitram100 said:
Thanks guys, gonna see what the zen 2 brings to the table otherwise just gonna grab a 8700k or something from members market to free up the bottleneck. Cheers!

Anything up from an 8600k should give you very good improvements, though the weeks are ticking down to Ryzen3 so if you can hold tight for a bit...

nitram100 · 3 May 2019 at 19:15

MartinPrince said:
Anything up from an 8600k should give you very good improvements, though the weeks are ticking down to Ryzen3 so if you can hold tight for a bit...

Thanks mate I'm definitely holding out, the 3700x looks damn good. The old 3570k has served me well for 6 years!

MartinPrince · 3 May 2019 at 20:21

nitram100 said:
Thanks mate I'm definitely holding out, the 3700x looks damn good. The old 3570k has served me well for 6 years!

Yep, who knew those Sandybridge/Ivybridge CPU's would last so long. I've still got a 2500k in the house that was running at stock but I've just bumped to 4.5Ghz on default volts! It's only mainly used for office type stuff so it will be run till it gives up the ghost.

Martini1991 · 3 May 2019 at 20:37

While you'll certainly have a bottleneck, it shouldn't be *That* bad to the point of only using 8% gpu

nitram100 · 3 May 2019 at 21:14

Martini1991 said:
While you'll certainly have a bottleneck, it shouldn't be *That* bad to the point of only using 8% gpu

Yeh mate, it's definitely not 8% all the time, it fluctuates between 5% to 50% odd while cpu is always 90% roughly.

Martini1991 · 3 May 2019 at 21:17

nitram100 said:
Yeh mate, it's definitely not 8% all the time, it fluctuates between 5% to 50% odd while cpu is always 90% roughly.

It shouldn't really ever be 8% during actual usage though.
I'd chalk it down to the G19 not reading the usage correctly.

Use MSI AB OSD to monitor GPU usage (And do the tick for unified GPU usage) and CPU usage by core while playing planet side.

nitram100 · 3 May 2019 at 21:20

Ok mate will do. The 8% is coming from GPU Z which I custom made in the G19 LCD Host app. If the GPU Z log shows 8% as well, would that be reliable?

Martini1991 · 3 May 2019 at 21:22

nitram100 said:
Ok mate will do. The 8% is coming from GPU Z which I custom made in the G19 LCD Host app. If the GPU Z log shows 8% as well, would that be reliable?

GPUZ isn't something I've ever used for real time monitoring.

I remember planet side 2, and it would always peg a core to 99% easy. I'd be surprised to see it peg a 3570K in its entirety to 99% though.

nitram100 · 3 May 2019 at 21:23

Martini1991 said:
GPUZ isn't something I've ever used for real time monitoring.

I remember planet side 2, and it would always peg a core to 99% easy. I'd be surprised to see it peg a 3570K in its entirety to 99% though.

Yeh, In Plnaetside 2, it's actually got all the cores at 85% + now with the DX11 upgrade, some cores definitely hit 95% when I watch it in real time on coretemp on the G19. When the GPU useage goes down to below 50% I can see the GPU fps counter in the game go low, so it could be accurate.

I'll try setup MSI, cheers mate.

Martini1991 · 3 May 2019 at 21:27

nitram100 said:
Yeh, In Plnaetside 2, it's actually got all the cores at 85% + now with the DX11 upgrade, some cores definitely hit 95% when I watch it in real time on coretemp on the G19. When the GPU useage goes down to below 50% I can see the GPU fps counter in the game go low, so it could be accurate.

I'll try setup MSI, cheers mate.

I can certainly believe 50%, just never 8% at any point during any actual game play.
Planetside 2 came out just after Ivybridge, so the best performance you could get on that game was from CPU's that you're using.

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 6 May 2019 at 13:31

It used to go below 30FPS during battles with 100s of people. So if the same battles are above 30FPS that is an improvement.

Murphy · 6 May 2019 at 14:05

Martini1991 said:
While you'll certainly have a bottleneck, it shouldn't be *That* bad to the point of only using 8% gpu

IIRC GPU-Z's default is to poll sensors every 1sec so an 8% reading could be measuring one of those times that the GPU is waiting on the CPU, you can change the polling rate in the settings but obviously that can be more taxing on the CPU.

Drumroll · 13 May 2019 at 17:46

Are you using a SSD, I assume. As others mentioned, your CPU may not be new, but is far from slow. Unless is a heavily CPU-bound game, the CPU should delivery at least a better performance than the one you're getting. Worthy trying other games and monitor CPU/HDD/GPU usage.
You may have some app putting extra stress/load on the CPU.

MaXxBoulton · 13 May 2019 at 19:09

Murphy said:
IIRC GPU-Z's default is to poll sensors every 1sec so an 8% reading could be measuring one of those times that the GPU is waiting on the CPU, you can change the polling rate in the settings but obviously that can be more taxing on the CPU.

alwasy better off using MSI afterburner, it gives you info on what the cpu and gpu was going in real time

Firejack · 16 May 2019 at 15:47

I have uploaded a few clips of Planetside 2 on my system recently. I have HWinfo + the RTSS overlay displayed.

Maybe not the best example. As I've tweaked a lot of settings;

My Planetside 2 options are a mix of Medium/ High with the Render quality bumped up in the UserOptions.ini file to ~4k resolution on my 1440p monitor.
My Sapphire RX VEGA 56 Pulse 8GB has the GPU core undervolted to P6 975mV/ P7 1000mV and the HBM2 overclocked to 900Mhz
I've a -75mV offset on my AMD Ryzen 2700X
I'm using optimized memory timings (Fast Preset from DRAM Calculator for Ryzen) on my 8-pack 3200Mhz 16GB memory kit.

Should give you a decent comparison with your own system. From my own experience I do agree with others here that you are hitting a CPU bottleneck. At times I'm over 50% CPU usage on a 8-core/ 16-thread CPU.

nitram100 · 17 May 2019 at 10:11

That's great help there Firejack! May I ask how do you find performance with shadows on low? I always run shadows as I think the game is ugly without them.

Oh i can see you have shadows on there, gpu useage is very high, that's great to see. Mine never goes above 50%. Can't wait for zen 3700x!