CPU bottleneck? if so what should i do?

Tomas_Garrido · May 1, 2014

Specs:

AMD Phenom ll x6 3,2Ghz

8Gb RAM

7870 OC Gigabyte

ASRock 970 Pro3

Tacens Radix 750W

2 Monitors

-----------------------------------

Since like a few months ago ive been having freezes while playing games, i tought the problem was my RAM, and then i added 2GB more but is still happening.

2 days ago i had the Resource monitor open on my other screen while playing and when the game was freezing i saw that the "bars" from the CPU thing went all the way down.

So i think the Problem is a Bottleneck from my CPU, what should i do?

CraigN · May 1, 2014

Generally, if your CPU is the bottleneck, you should get a new CPU. What games are you trying to play? Are your CPU temps getting high? That could be causing the chip to throttle itself if so.

Some other problem could be at play here, the six-core Phenom II isn't exactly a snail. Yes there's better chips but it still pulls its own weight. If it is a real performance bottleneck though (and not an underlying problem), your solution is only to get a better CPU.

qwertyDS · May 1, 2014

Overclock the cpu

i7Baby · May 1, 2014

First check that the cpu is actually 'bottlnecking' - runa a stress test/heavy game and see what the % usage is on the card (using Afterburner) and on the cpu (using Task Manager) If the cpu is at 100% or near to it while the gpu is a lot less then you're right - the cpu is bottlenecking. But with that combination I don't think it'd be much of a bottleneck.

Traciatim · May 1, 2014

I think you are misinterpreting the results. If your CPU usage drops drastically that means it isn't doing very much work during the time your slow down happens. Generally if your CPU is the thing causing the problem you will see one or more of your cores pegged in the 90+% range while your GPU usage drops since the CPU can't push out data fast enough to keep up with what the GPU can pump out . . . which is usually described as your CPU being a bottleneck.

This would seem to me that the slowdown is caused by something like the game you are playing loading assets at the time or another process is hogging some resource the game needs so it has to wait. I would first rule out your hard drive, run a scandisk with the full surface scan to ensure you aren't getting read errors on the drive. It's not very likely, but it can cause the symptoms you've described so far.

I do have a Phenom X4 965BE with a 7850 so a fairly similar machine, but mine is overclocked slightly (I think mine is running at 3.8Ghz instead of 3.4 if I remember correctly). The overclock really helps in situations like playing big battles in Planetside2 so that you don't get such a huge performance drop. But if you are actually seeing freezing for a second or two every few minuets it sounds more like something is actually wrong with either some software, configuration, or hardware.

Tomas_Garrido · May 1, 2014

CraigN :

My CPU temps when i play are like 40 Degrees Celsius. i Play Battlefield 4, DayZ, Planetside 2....

CraigN · May 1, 2014

Definitely not thermal throttling then. I would follow Traciatim's suggestion in that case. Sounds like something else is at play here.

maddogfargo · May 1, 2014

Traciatim :

+1 for the explanation above

Game freezes and low CPU usage is the OPPOSITE of a bottleneck. Something is causing crashing and lockups. Could be a driver update or some other software. Even a recent flash update that turned hardware acceleration back on has been causing some crashing issues.

The Phenom II x6 CPU is still a very capable gaming CPU and will usually run quite happily at 4.0GHz with good cooling and clean power. I've had it successfully drive 2 x HD 7950's in crossfire with Crysis 3 maxed out except for 1 setting: AA was at 2x SMAA. Very consistent 40-60FPS. Both GPUs at 95-99% and all 6 CPU cores at 90% on a 990FX board able to push both GPUs at PCIe x16.

Tomas_Garrido · May 1, 2014

i7Baby :

The CPU usage is around 50-65% while playing, and GPU like 50-60%

Tomas_Garrido · May 1, 2014

Traciatim :

I think you are misinterpreting the results. If your CPU usage drops drastically that means it isn't doing very much work during the time your slow down happens. Generally if your CPU is the thing causing the problem you will see one or more of your cores pegged in the 90+% range while your GPU usage drops since the CPU can't push out data fast enough to keep up with what the GPU can pump out . . . which is usually described as your CPU being a bottleneck.

This would seem to me that the slowdown is caused by something like the game you are playing loading assets at the time or another process is hogging some resource the game needs so it has to wait. I would first rule out your hard drive, run a scandisk with the full surface scan to ensure you aren't getting read errors on the drive. It's not very likely, but it can cause the symptoms you've described so far.

I do have a Phenom X4 965BE with a 7850 so a fairly similar machine, but mine is overclocked slightly (I think mine is running at 3.8Ghz instead of 3.4 if I remember correctly). The overclock really helps in situations like playing big battles in Planetside2 so that you don't get such a huge performance drop. But if you are actually seeing freezing for a second or two every few minuets it sounds more like something is actually wrong with either some software, configuration, or hardware.

the thing is the "issue" appeared in one day i havent changed anything i tried re-installing Win 7 again and everything, even with Drivers from 2013.... :/

CraigN · May 1, 2014

Try what he's suggesting with the scandisk. If you have a faulty or slowly failing hard drive, reinstalling Windows and Drivers won't solve the problem.

Traciatim · May 1, 2014

Tomas_Garrido :

Troubleshooting is really about doing one thing at a time and try to pinpoint problems, when weird things are happening it's sometimes really difficult to track down exactly what's causing it.

Try the drive scan, if only to help rule it out as a problem.

If you run Prime95 for a while with all of your cores maxed out does it still happen?

How about if you run Unigen Heaven through a few loops?

If both of those pass without the pauses, if you use MSConfig and disable pretty much every startup item does it still happen in the games you play?

Tomas_Garrido · May 1, 2014

Traciatim :

I think you are misinterpreting the results. If your CPU usage drops drastically that means it isn't doing very much work during the time your slow down happens. Generally if your CPU is the thing causing the problem you will see one or more of your cores pegged in the 90+% range while your GPU usage drops since the CPU can't push out data fast enough to keep up with what the GPU can pump out . . . which is usually described as your CPU being a bottleneck.

This would seem to me that the slowdown is caused by something like the game you are playing loading assets at the time or another process is hogging some resource the game needs so it has to wait. I would first rule out your hard drive, run a scandisk with the full surface scan to ensure you aren't getting read errors on the drive. It's not very likely, but it can cause the symptoms you've described so far.

I do have a Phenom X4 965BE with a 7850 so a fairly similar machine, but mine is overclocked slightly (I think mine is running at 3.8Ghz instead of 3.4 if I remember correctly). The overclock really helps in situations like playing big battles in Planetside2 so that you don't get such a huge performance drop. But if you are actually seeing freezing for a second or two every few minuets it sounds more like something is actually wrong with either some software, configuration, or hardware.

After Scandisk Freezes are still going, even worse :/

Traciatim · May 1, 2014

Tomas_Garrido :

Traciatim :

After Scandisk Freezes are still going, even worse :/

You did the whole scan for bad sectors thing... and it said?

It wasn't meant to fix the problem, it was meant to discover if your drive was the cause of the problem.

Also, if after that the problem is worse then it's likely your drive is failing. I would seriously suggest you find an external drive of some sort and get anything important you need off of that drive.

Tomas_Garrido · May 1, 2014

Traciatim :

Tomas_Garrido :

You did the whole scan for bad sectors thing... and it said?

It wasn't meant to fix the problem, it was meant to discover if your drive was the cause of the problem.

Also, if after that the problem is worse then it's likely your drive is failing. I would seriously suggest you find an external drive of some sort and get anything important you need off of that drive.

A while ago (a month) a message from windows popped and said that something from the HDD was wrong and i might lose all my stuff in it. should i try installing win7 on my other HDD?

Tomas_Garrido · May 4, 2014

i know whats goign on, i have it fixed, it was my main HDD, i installed windows on my other HDD and now is working fine

Traciatim · May 4, 2014

Tomas_Garrido :

Traciatim :

A while ago (a month) a message from windows popped and said that something from the HDD was wrong and i might lose all my stuff in it. should i try installing win7 on my other HDD?

Tomas_Garrido :

Excellent, glad you found out the issue and it's fixed.

CPU bottleneck? if so what should i do?

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