Massive bottlenecking with x4 860k

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slicernce

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After hearing lots of positive things about the x4 860k, I went out and bought one, thinking that it wouldn't bottleneck my 660 ti.

Whenever I'm in a cpu-intensive game, I get massive frame drops. Apparently my cpu maxes out while my gpu usage is only about 40%. I can barely play GTA 5, modded Skyrim, and Planetside 2. SWTOR gives me awful frame rates. My cpu's not overclocked though. Is there something I can do to fix this?

I have another problem with this cpu - it's not displaying temperatures in any cpu temp program. MSI Afterburner, Realtemp, and CPU-Z tell me nothing.
 
Solution
clutchc
You answered your own question; OC it to the max. I have/had that processor and the MIS Gaming board for it. With my GTX 960 FTW @ 1480 MHz and the 860K @ 4.2 GHz, it did pretty good, although I didn't play those particular games. The benchmarks I ran showed that the GTX 960 could always max out at 100%.

But this was strictly single player. Online/multiplayer will take a much higher toll on the CPU.
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clutchc

clutchc

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You answered your own question; OC it to the max. I have/had that processor and the MIS Gaming board for it. With my GTX 960 FTW @ 1480 MHz and the 860K @ 4.2 GHz, it did pretty good, although I didn't play those particular games. The benchmarks I ran showed that the GTX 960 could always max out at 100%.

But this was strictly single player. Online/multiplayer will take a much higher toll on the CPU.
 
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Solution
convertedconsolegamer_92

convertedconsolegamer_92

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Exactly this. This CPU will not shine in gaming at stock speeds. You need 4.2 minimum, ESPECIALLY for games like Skyrim and Planetside 2 which are two of the most CPU intensive games on the market. Even when overclocked the 860K will not perform as well as an I3 or even an overclocked G3258. Buy a cheap air or liquid cooler and get it to 4.2

Also the temperature question can be answered here in this section of the forum. One of the most helpful articles for Kaveri CPU/APU owners.

An Understanding of Temperature on AMD CPUs and APUs
 
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IgorNew

IgorNew

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I play skyrim maxed out on a4 5300 and hd 5570 (without mods for graphic) and it run on solid 40-45 fps so i dont realy belive 860k should bottleneck unless they sold me i3 in amd box for 50$
 
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convertedconsolegamer_92

convertedconsolegamer_92

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Is your GPU overclocked, if so, do you have good balance between the core and memory clocks? Whenever the core clock is overclocked extremely high without compensating for this on raising memory clock high enough it can create bottlenecks on the top end.

I own an 860K and the guy who answered before me used to own one. I play Skyrim with 18 mods! No bottleneck 60ps hard capped by vsync.
 
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Cryio

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Skyrim: A game that is aware of only 2 threads, and the 860K is using 2 cores while sharing the cache. So yeah, AMD's Bulldozer architecture is in the worst case scenario here. Phenom II CPUs should actually perform better than the 860K, even if the 980 is running 4.2 GHz and say the 860K is running 4.4.

GTA V: One of the most intensive CPU games, close to maxing out i5 CPUs and hitting 70-80% of i7s. No wonder the 860K struggles.

SWTOR: An MMO. Again, it can be one of the worst case scenarious for CPUs, especially since most MMOs don't properly use DX11 for CPU optimization.


All in all, you pretty much listed 3 of the worst case scenario games for the 860K. In game that are more GPU limited (read, the majority of games). your GPU should do just fine. It's just that you struck a really, really unfortunate trio this time around.

No matter. Things should improve dramatically with the advent of DirectX12.
 
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convertedconsolegamer_92

convertedconsolegamer_92

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860K is Steamroller and the single core performance is the best AMD has to offer at the moment. It's actually not that bad, but of course it lags behind Intel no question. When the CPU is overclocked it performs extremely well. I will admit again that overclocking this thing is a must. I know the OP is expecting performance from the stock 3.7 clock, but with those CPU intensive games that could be a problem. He could also have a dodgy OC on his GPU as well. Trying to rule that out as soon as he can get the numbers.
 
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IgorNew

IgorNew

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Swtor i played to level 37 did some 4man daily dungeons and some 2 and 4 man quests with my a4 5300 everyting maxed out smothly actuly i played on this exact hardware skyrim, wow mop, poe, lol, dota, tera, swtor, every game was maxed out and was giving above 30 fps still one thing that could play masive role is my monitor is caped at 60 fps and 720p
 
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