Cpu bottlnecked during gaming, gpu at ~50%

AlecBok · Oct 1, 2014

I have a AMD Athlon II X4 631 overclocked to 4ghz with a Radeon 6850.

I assumed (especially overclocking so much) that this processor would be plenty powerful enough, and my gpu would be the bottleneck, but it appears to be the opposite.

Should this be the case or is there something wrong?

Also overheating should not be an issue the cpu maxes at ~40c according to HWmonitor

rockie_ · Oct 1, 2014

Might the GPU overheat ? Or the game is badly coded . i met some games with such behavior . Run a stress test and see the GPU load - GPU-Z, MSI Afterburner

AlecBok · Oct 1, 2014

Haven't seen the gpu go over 60c, and seems to be that with every game I've tried the cpu is at 20-30% more load than the gpu if not more. Downloaded MSI, but haven't seen a stress test of any sort on it (maybe downloaded the wrong one, I'll fiddle around with it)

rockie_ · Oct 1, 2014

i use Resident Evil 5 Demo benchmark for stress tests . Be careful cus the things could overheat .

mlga91 · Oct 1, 2014

And how is the cpu usage at gaming? and which games are you using?

AlecBok · Oct 1, 2014

Initially tested with thief which is where I saw the near constant 100% cpu and gpu averaging 50%. Red faction Armageddon was 70%ish cpu with 40%ish gpu. Also worth noting that I didn't really notice much difference in performance between switching my cpu back to 2.6ghz and overclocking it back up to 4.0ghz.

rockie_ · Oct 1, 2014

AlecBok :

the CPU is weak and ottleneckes the video card
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-4690-vs-AMD-Athlon-II-X4-631

The single core result is far below 1350 PassMark points .

AlecBok · Oct 1, 2014

Even when it's overclocked so heavy? I know the cpu is a few years old and is weak by today's standards, but so is the gpu. On cpubenchmark.net it rates closely to the i5's that were out at the time http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=AMD+Athlon+II+X4+631+Quad-Core&id=169

Do I really need one of the newest, strongest i5's just to carry my 3-4 year old 6850?

Gam3r01 · Oct 1, 2014

Its not a very strong contender in terms of performance, the CPU itself wont bottleneck the card, but the games you are listing are extremely dependent on single threaded performance which its lacking.

You dont necessarily need a quality i5 to run that, even something like the 6300 would be more than enough. Its just an old processor near the end of its life.

On a side note, dont trust Boss sites (CPUBoss, GPUBoss etc) They get specs wrong, use synthetic benchmarks, and are known to report false numbers from time to time.

rockie_ · Oct 1, 2014

Gam3r01 :

Yes , sometimes some 0 added but if you compare FX 6300 , FX 8350 .... to i5 4690 , you will always see very low single core results for the whole FX series . Also the info could be obtained from other sources too . The results speak for themselves. FX series have weak cores and we all know that very well and feel this in games and tests.

Gam3r01 · Oct 1, 2014

I never said the FX lineup competed with i5s, I'm saying you dont need an i5 for the 6850

AlecBok · Oct 1, 2014

Is Passmark.com trustworthy? According to it my cpu is a 3187 and my gpu is a 2237. Then i compare it to, per say, your specs and your cpu is a 4273 and your gpu is a 4984. It just seems a bit odd to me I guess, I was constantly told by people that when gaming the gpu is almost always the bottleneck unless the cpu is significantly weaker.

AlecBok · Oct 1, 2014

I do see that the 631 has fairly low single threaded performance, is that more important than the overall benchmark?

Gam3r01 · Oct 1, 2014

In most cases yest, Passmark will give you a basic overall view of processors, simply to help you narrow it down.
Once you have a specific model(s) in mind you can look into specific benchmarks and comparisons.

The 631 scores the way it does because it carries 4 cores, which help it on the Passmark scores. However the scores dont correlate to performance much if at all.

AlecBok · Oct 1, 2014

When you say the scores do you mean all scores or just the overall passmark scores?

The Pentium G3258 has a very close single thread performance to the i5 listed earlier and much better than the fx-6300 despite just being a dual core. Would that be a good option or should I still buy a 4+ core processor?

Gam3r01 · Oct 1, 2014

If you want higher passmark scores more cores helps, if you want real world performance look at benchmarks for the games you wish to play.
Almost any game however runs best on stronger cores compared to multiple weaker ones.

I would look into the Pentium, it OCs like no other, and in correlation with the Z97 chipset it has the best upgrade path of any processor.

AlecBok · Oct 1, 2014

Ok, thank you for the help, I'll look more into the pentium.

rockie_ · Oct 1, 2014

AlecBok :

In the past the games and the app were mainly sinle theaded . Now , usually 4 cores/threads at a time are utilized . Some games are starting to use more threads/cores like Battlefied 4 but the graphics load more and more is moving from the CPU to the GPU , where hundreds and thousands graphics stream processors are ready ro respond . So , Intel i5 is powerful enough to feed these stream processors in the GPU . But if the game utilizes mainly 4 threads at a time , it is of great importance the single threaded sore to be high .

Cpu bottlnecked during gaming, gpu at ~50%

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