Low CPU and GPU usage,

avit27 · 7 Sep 2013 at 19:32

While playing selcted games. For example: Splintercell Blacklist, FF 14 a realm reborn. Not really bothered about Splintercell as it runs over 130 FPS while playing online.

The problem is mainly with FF 14, the CPU usage is at 50% which would be normal I guess,but the GPU is as low as 63%,the problem is my FPS spikes when panning the camera, FPS from 85-90 straight down to 35-40 which is very distracting.

I'm assuming this is a game fault since this is the only game that suffers,but is there anything I can do to improve this? I should note that I play at max settings on all my games @ 1080p

avit27 · 7 Sep 2013 at 19:35

Also forgot to mention my specs:
i5 4570 @ 3.20 GHz
8 GB Elite DDR3 ram
GTX 670 Power Edition OC

HangTime · 7 Sep 2013 at 23:00

The behaviour you describe can sometimes be indicative of insufficient VRAM. Monitor it with MSI Afterburner or similar.

avit27 · 8 Sep 2013 at 10:50

HangTime said:
The behaviour you describe can sometimes be indicative of insufficient VRAM. Monitor it with MSI Afterburner or similar.

I've monitored the Vram before posting and probably should have included it. This is a 2gb card and the game is using ( the max I've seen so far) 803mb.

I'm just really confused.

HangTime · 8 Sep 2013 at 23:39

Could be an issue with the Spinter Cell engine. I had a similar issue in Conviction which I was never able to get to the bottom of (i.e. nothing seemed to be the bottleneck): http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=22973875&postcount=131

Can't comment on the FF14 engine though

One thing I would suggest is when monitoring CPU usage make sure you do so on a core-by-core basis i.e. it could be that overall cpu usage is 50% but one core handling the most demanding thread is maxed out.

avit27 · 10 Sep 2013 at 11:45

HangTime said:
Could be an issue with the Spinter Cell engine. I had a similar issue in Conviction which I was never able to get to the bottom of (i.e. nothing seemed to be the bottleneck): http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=22973875&postcount=131

Can't comment on the FF14 engine though

One thing I would suggest is when monitoring CPU usage make sure you do so on a core-by-core basis i.e. it could be that overall cpu usage is 50% but one core handling the most demanding thread is maxed out.

So I did what you said and monitored the individual cores, none of them get maxxed out. 2 of them peak at 70% with the odd spike,and the other 2 are pretty low.

Having spoke to people on the FF forums it seems to be a common problem so I've come to conclusion that it's a game issue after all.

Marine-RX179 · 10 Sep 2013 at 13:26

avit27 said:
So I did what you said and monitored the individual cores, none of them get maxxed out. 2 of them peak at 70% with the odd spike,and the other 2 are pretty low.

Having spoke to people on the FF forums it seems to be a common problem so I've come to conclusion that it's a game issue after all.

From the sound of it, either the game is only using 2 threads or cores, or just very poorly optimised and not using 4 cores properly.

With CPU usage at only around 50%, your 4570 is effectively only like a Pentium dual-core but with a slightly faster architecture, higher clock and more caches...so it's not really that surprising that the CPU will bottleneck the GTX670.

It's a shame though that you don't have a K-edition 4570...if you could overclock your CPU, it would still more higher frame rate if you got the same amount of CPU usage on for example the 4570K at 4.50GHz.