never reach 100% load on GPU

[graphics whore]

i just set up watercooling on my 5870, running it at 1000/1350 1.2v (was stable at stock voltage but thought id be safe) and theres no performance increase because it never reached 100% load.

am i CPU limited?
i have a i7 920 DO at 3.4ghz (bought through overclockers so it does throttle itself down to stock i believe)

i run realy low setting in COD4 to get ridiculous frame rates..

 

[RavenXXX2]

Well if the game you are playing is not very GPU intensive it will not load the GPU much, same if you lower GFX settings.

 

[graphics whore]

i have not limited the max fps (vsync is off) so it should run as fast and the gpu will let it

 

[setter]

i run realy low setting in COD4 to get ridiculous frame rates..

Tbh, with that setup you should be able to run cod4 maxed and still get decent frame rates, not the most demanding game.

 

[RavenXXX2]

Nah it won't, the latest GPU's only put out what you feed them, lower GFX in my experience does not always gain a ton of FPS when the load on the GPU is low.

 

[TheRealDeal]

I also think its hard to fully load amd's architecture because of there shader setup. Amds theoretical performance is way above nv's but they perform similarly because of most games not being able to fully utilise the shaders. I think what i said is pretty basic as i do not fully understand but i don't think its to far off the mark.

 

[Rroff]

COD4 is based on an old engine its not really gonna stress the GPU much even churning out 100s of fps.

 

[graphics whore]

thanks guys, no waterblock for the cpu then haha

 

[ThomasTheTankEngine]

thanks guys, no waterblock for the cpu then haha

Nope. Download some cpu usage software, and you'll see that most modern games won't even use 50% of your i7.

 

[graphics whore]

so then, the game runs at around 250 fps constantly.. when it can go up to 1000fps (if i stand in a corner or something) whats stopping it going to say 500fps constantly?

and i get frame drops etc to around 100fps even tho the gpu never sees more than 90%load.

anyone know enuff about chip architecture / boards to give a nice detailed answer?

(before you ask, at extremely high frame rates you can jump/shoot faster and the map has no clutter aka looks like CS which is required for competative gaming)

 

[Duff-Man]

so then, the game runs at around 250 fps constantly.. when it can go up to 1000fps (if i stand in a corner or something) whats stopping it going to say 500fps constantly?

In slightly over-simplified terms:

Every frame of a game has a certain amount of work that must be done by the CPU, and a certain amount of work that must be done by the GPU. Until ALL work has been done (by CPU and GPU), the frame cannot be drawn.

What you're doing is lowering the graphics settings, such that the work required by the GPU is very little. So it finishes its workload well before the CPU, and sits idle until the CPU has finished. This is why your GPU is never at 100% load - a lot of the time it is just sat idle and waiting for the CPU.

As for why you can reach 1000fps in a corner, well in a corner there is very little work for the CPU to do, so it finishes its workload quickly (in roughly 1/1000th of a second). If you're not at 100% load, then then GPU still finishes its workload BEFORE the CPU. You can't run at (say) 500fps constantly, because when you're out in the open with stuff happening, the CPU needs more than 1/500th of a second to finish its workload.

If you want higher framerates, you need a faster CPU. If you want your GPU to work at 100%, up the resolution and/or increase the detail levels. While your GPU is operating at less than 100% load you will see virtually no drop in framerate by increasing resolution or details. They will basically come "for free".



edit: Slightly ironic that you've called yourself "graphics whore", and yet you're running at low detail levels that don't stress the nice high-end GPU that you have

 

[graphics whore]

haha very true, i run super high settings for single player games tho!

so basicaly what your saying, is im CPU throttled?
ill download come cpu monitering softward and give it a try to see it it hits 100% if it does then 4Ghz here i come!!!

 

[Duff-Man]

so basicaly what your saying, is im CPU throttled?
ill download come cpu monitering softward and give it a try to see it it hits 100% if it does then 4Ghz here i come!!!

More or less, yeah that's what I'm saying

The CPU load should be high, but don't expect it to be quite 100%. The computations the game gives to the CPU might not put it under 100% load, particularly if you have a quad core CPU (not all cores will have load, and not all that are used will be at 100%).

You should still see a decent improvement from clocking the CPU though. BTW you can monitor the CPU load easily enough by doing alt-ctrl-del and clicking the "performance" tab in task manager.