Low frame rate in games but also low CPU+GPU usage

[user100monkey]

One more.
This time Diablo 3.
see http://postimg.org/image/bh4xsmmzj/

103 FPS in town
CPU core 4 @ 81% everything else <50% (GPU 40% cpu core3 52%)

13.6 FPS in greater rift
CPU core 4 @ 58% apart from that system no even in use
GPU 8%
cpu1 19%
cpu2 31%
cpu3 20%
cpu4 58%

Why the low frame rate?

Something here is not right. Note the CPU usage even lower in the greater rift @ 13FPS then it is in town.

Game engine logic should be simple.
loop. get user input, do game logic, render, loop.
It should do the loop as fast as possible, eg as fast as the slowest component can handle.
So if your CPU is the slowest it will be the bottleneck for example. The bottleneck can be ID'ed as that component that would be at 100% utilization. The CPU is not nor is the GPU, what component is the bottleneck?

Answer on post card

 

[Marine-RX179]

One more.
This time Diablo 3.
see http://postimg.org/image/bh4xsmmzj/

103 FPS in town
CPU core 4 @ 81% everything else <50% (GPU 40% cpu core3 52%)

13.6 FPS in greater rift
CPU core 4 @ 58% apart from that system no even in use
GPU 8%
cpu1 19%
cpu2 31%
cpu3 20%
cpu4 58%

Why the low frame rate?

Something here is not right. Note the CPU usage even lower in the greater rift @ 13FPS then it is in town.

Game engine logic should be simple.
loop. get user input, do game logic, render, loop.
It should do the loop as fast as possible, eg as fast as the slowest component can handle.
So if your CPU is the slowest it will be the bottleneck for example. The bottleneck can be ID'ed as that component that would be at 100% utilization. The CPU is not nor is the GPU, what component is the bottleneck?

Answer on post card

Window's CPU usage history under performance will always show activity across the cores, even if the game is actually using 1 to 3 cores.

If you select the game under processes in task manager, and then set the Affinity to only use 2 of the 4 cores, you will see the activity that was originally on the 3rd and 4th core being moved onto the 1st and 2nd cores and the usage become much higher, 3rd and 4 cores have no activity, and your frame rate remaining absolutely the same.

Forget about what the window is telling you, instead just google the name of the games plus CPU cores as keyword, and you should easily find discussion topics that will tell you how many CPU cores does the particular game (engine) uses.

 

[user100monkey]

I have disabled the page-file and may be seeing an improvement.
Installing Diablo and Starcraft onto SSD drive to see if it affects the minimum frame rates.

 

[Hades]

Window's CPU usage history under performance will always show activity across the cores, even if the game is actually using 1 to 3 cores.

If you select the game under processes in task manager, and then set the Affinity to only use 2 of the 4 cores, you will see the activity that was originally on the 3rd and 4th core being moved onto the 1st and 2nd cores and the usage become much higher, 3rd and 4 cores have not activity, and your frame rate remaining absolutely the same.

Forget about what the window is telling you, instead just google the name of the games plus CPU cores as keyword, and you should easily find discussion topics that will tell you how many CPU cores do the particular game (engine) uses.

I think this is quite likely to be the case. The C2Q won't have great single threaded performance compared to a modern CPU and while the load is being spread across all 4 core it may still be running very serialised.

 

[ChrisD.]

You CPU is holding the game back. Many have said this, you choose to ignore. It's quite simple really.

 

[SkeeterUK]

An extra 4gb of ram preferably a dual channel set of 8gb tho would help in some situations as 4gb is rather low for most modern setups.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Ah this is interesting to hear, as everyone else in my guild reports solid 60fps whilst running the Nephalem Rifts and whilst i get in extreme fights down to single figure FPS

Well I am only running a GTX660 at 1680X1050 with a Xeon E3 1230 V2 and 16GB of RAM,although people in the OcUK D3 thread say the same:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=26380661&postcount=25005
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=26380686&postcount=25006
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=26380793&postcount=25009
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=26380940&postcount=25011

The slowdowns happen in the extreme fights in the Nephalem Rifts if there are multiple packs - it does not happen all the time though and seems to be inconsistent,so I suspect it it a server problem though.

Having said that a mate with an FX chip does tend to do a bit more worse than me at the same times although he is running at higher resolution than me with an AMD HD7870XT(D3 tends to also prefer Nvidia cards IIRC),so single threaded performance is important,but there are other considerations too,ie,the Blizzard servers.

However,IIRC there was some noise that the newer patches have not helped with performance too.

Edit!!

Yeah D3 and WoW arent good places to look if ya like FPS, with my system i get drops of very low fps depending on big fights, in d3 ill be grinding along fine on 60 fps then a crusader joined my groups and starts throwing horses everywhere and my fps goes through the floor. At least Heroes of the Storm runs nice and smooth.

Even this poster said the same.

So short answer - yes a CPU upgrade would help,but it won't stop all slowdowns in the game IMHO.