CPU hit's 100% and games then start to lag

ULookPrettyGood · Sep 19, 2015

Build
http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/DFBcyc
CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($359.00 @ PCCaseGear)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($39.00)
Motherboard: Asus Z97M-PLUS Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Memory: G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($89.00 @ PCCaseGear)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($179.00 @ PCCaseGear)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 4GB Video Card
Case: Fractal Design Core 3000 USB 3.0 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($89.00)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 600W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($115.00 @ PCCaseGear)
Optical Drive: LG GH24NSB0 DVD/CD Writer
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 OEM (64-bit) ($115.00)

So basically i would play games like Minecraft or GTA. I monitor the cpu, gpu etc, and i realized every time my cpu hits 100% usage my game starts to stutter and lag. For example in minecraft when i load the world, it lags BAD. And when i get shot by the police in GTA it lags bad aswell, like 60fps strait down to 30%.

I have done a hard reinstall of windows, reinstalled Minecraft and GTA. Reinstalled GPU drivers and still get the same problem. My temps seem to be fine aswell, i dont think its a cooling problem, and i'm pretty sure its a cpu problem.

Could i get a resolution to this problem because i have been dealing with it for a long time.

techgeek · Sep 19, 2015

Well the first thing to do is find out what process is causing your CPU usage to go to 100%. Minecraft isn't very CPU intensive, so it certainly can't be MineCraft. GTA will be more CPU intensive, but it wouldn't run your quad core i5 anywhere near 100% either.

So the first thing to do is bring up the Task Manager and find out what process is using most of your CPU time when you are running your games.

Ra_V_en · Sep 19, 2015

As the task manager only shows chart of total usage this might be more suitable to find out the more about the process consuming CPU power in specific time:
https://bitsum.com/processlasso/

Otherwise it would be advised to get MSI afterburner and check the related graphs of CPU/GPU usage and temps.

ULookPrettyGood · Sep 19, 2015

techgeek :

I don't really know what i'm looking at but i got this. I don't know if this is what you want to look at.
Temps
CPU Core 1: 39c
CPU Core 2: 39c
CPU Core 3: 41c
CPU Core 4: 37c
Load
CPU Core 1: 54.7%
CPU Core 2: 46.9%
CPU Core 3: 53.1%
CPU Core 4: 42.2%
CPU Total: 49.2%
Utalization - 100%
Speed - 3.68 GHz
Processes - 93
Threads - 1898
Handles - 48458

techgeek · Sep 19, 2015

ULookPrettyGood :

Was this taken while in MineCraft? This says that your total CPU usage is slightly less than 50%. Not sure why Utilization is showing 100%. There should be a Process tab in Task Manager, go to it. Then click the CPU column, this should sort the processes by usage. See what processes are using the most CPU time.

The Task Manager should look something like this:

ULookPrettyGood · Sep 19, 2015

techgeek :

ULookPrettyGood :

Was this taken while in MineCraft? This says that your total CPU usage is slightly less than 50%. Not sure why Utilization is showing 100%. There should be a Process tab in Task Manager, go to it. Then click the CPU column, this should sort the processes by usage. See what processes are using the most CPU time.

The Task Manager should look something like this:

Sorry about that. It is in GTA V and utalization should be 61%

synphul · Sep 19, 2015

I would also suggest looking at the processes running to see what else is using your cpu. That aside, minecraft is extremely cpu intensive. Do you have any mods installed? They can slow things up if there's a problem with one or more mods interfering with one another. If both of these games are games you're playing online, it could be your internet connection or the game server having issues. If standalone (offline single player), then it points to a problem with your pc but I'd suspect a software issue rather than hardware.

In terms of gta v, people with anything from quad core amd cpus to i5's and i7's and every video card imaginable have had stuttering and lag issues. Dates of discussions in forums go back to may and there are still complaints in july. People waiting on updates for the game to fix it from stuttering during high action scenes like driving where fps drops from 60fps to 30fps.

For minecraft, have you tried pressing f11 and running in full screen? Also it may be worth checking your nvidia gpu controls and see if there's a way to disable 'threaded optimization' in 3d settings. There are a multitude of things people have tried over the years to sort out minecraft spiking and lag, including using programs like optifine. I don't think chunkster works for all maps anymore.

https://www.spigotmc.org/wiki/lag-types-and-how-to-fix-them/

Others have mentioned much fewer problems if they download and install the 64bit version of java since most of the time the version associated/installed with browsers is the 32bit version.

https://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp

There is an offline 64bit version and if using chrome, the standard 'install' button on the main page will probably inform you of a warning that chrome uses its own version of java therefor it may not be compatible.

techgeek · Sep 19, 2015

Are you saying that under the Process tab, GTA 5's executable is running at 61%? If so, that doesn't seem to bad, unless something else was using up the other 39%.

If the total usage was 61%, then you should be OK as far as CPU usage.

Going back to your original post, does CPU usage go to 100% right away? Or does it get there occasionally right from the beginning? Or does it slow climb to 100% over time? If this is the case, it's important to find out, first if it's the game taking up that much CPU time. And if it's not the game, what is taking up the remaining CPU time.

Sorry, I didn't see your screenshot when I posted this. You need to look at the Process tab. It itemizes what is taking CPU time.

Ra_V_en · Sep 19, 2015

Now time to whine to those who said i5 is enough for current games..... :S

Its not 61% you can clearly see from the graph is hitting 100%, 61% is the very last moment of the snapshot taken.
Get Process Lasso and check is it really GTA 5 consuming it, maybe its not , from this graph we know CPU is fully utilized but it might be some background process.

ULookPrettyGood · Sep 19, 2015

techgeek :

I recently just went into the advanced power settings and changed my plan from balanced to maximum, gta seems to be working fine. I thought it was weird seeing that it wasn't at 100%. If anything happens i will make sure to notify you.

techgeek · Sep 19, 2015

Ra_V_en :

He doesn't need a separate program to do this, the Process tab is sufficient for the purpose. He missed where I told him to look in the Process tab.

Ra_V_en · Sep 19, 2015

Process tab shows you the value from last refresh not the historical graph, when you are alt- tabing you will get that value down thus it wont tell you nothing. If you want to catch the thief on hot you need whole CCTV video not the frame when he is outside of the shop already...

techgeek · Sep 19, 2015

Possibly in that rare instance. It is unlikely that the actual game executable is running the CPU up to 100% though. It's more likely that another process is causing this. When he ALT-TAB's out, that process will still be using CPU time. If any process other than the game executable is using any substantial CPU time, that is the culprit.

In my experience I've always been able to determine what is sucking up CPU time with just the Process tab.

However it's really up to the OP, what Ra_V_en is saying is valid. In the rare instance when the process that's grabbing CPU time drops back down when you ALT-TAB out, then a program likes he's suggested is the way to go. Though I would first attempt to narrow it down with what you have first.

synphul · Sep 19, 2015

One user having issues with their setup doesn't constitute an entire cpu line being incapable of playing the games mentioned. Especially when countless sources have quite proven otherwise. I5's are more than plenty for games, recent or otherwise. It also doesn't explain in the case of gtav, page after page of complaints on too many forums to list regarding frame drops, lags, spiking etc including systems with i7's and 16gb of ram. Shoddy software isn't the hardware's fault. If it were only happening on i5's there may be a point but it's simply not the case.

Using resource monitor under the performance tab in task manager will allow the user to focus on the cpu (or other systems like storage) and has a graph with a 60sec history on it, not just a snapshot of the immediate current status. They can also sort the list to show which is using the most cpu time.

Ra_V_en · Sep 19, 2015

I didn't say it will do a snapshot only, but OP said it was 61% of usage total which is the usage of him making the screen shot. You can clearly see it was 100% usage in few moments. Now I'm not debating about usefulness of the win resource monitor nor the i5 performance but the fact that we still don't know a crap about the details of that 100% CPU usage which certainly did happen, but Process Lasso which is free trial can show you exactly the same graph + the graph of the CPU usage by any process you choose and imo that's the next step he should do to eliminate anything besides the GTA5. Call it whatever software issue, hardware issue, driver issue, DX11 issue.

" Shoddy software isn't the hardware's fault." I do agree with that considering we are facing the fact that AMD is punished with a damn horrible utilization of their hardware under DX11, I'm not gonna debate about it now tho, its not the main topic.

We are facing an issue and OP needs the solution, my sentence about i5's was straightly showing an irony of the situation which probably wouldn't happen if he had HT on a i7.

This way or another if we want more details we need to focus on what actually make that 100% CPU usage spike, because task manager cannot distinct which process was strictly involved in such thus my idea about using Process Lasso.

synphul · Sep 19, 2015

The additional threading of ht on an i7 will make it appear as though the threads spread out over 8 rather than 4 are working less, but think of it this way. When you have an i7 windows reports 8 cores. Obviously it's still a quad core, only 4 physical cores processing data. Ht enables each cpu to handle 2 threads and shows 'load'. If 8 threads are at 50% (win showing 8 cores at 50%), 2 per core doesn't 2x50=100%? If threads (mislabeled as cores in win) are at 80% each across all 8, how exactly is each core doing 160% processing?

My point was these kind of issues have happened on i7's so ht isn't the answer. On systems with 16gb ram, so 8gb ram isn't their issue. The common denominator appears to be the game which is why I blamed shoddy software. With so many having similar issues on comparable or better hardware, the solution may be to wait for the game co to release an update to their problem software. This isn't an isolated case where everyone but the op is gaming fantastic, pointing to an obvious problem with their setup in these games. It's these games.

Things like antivirus, weather apps/widgets, harddisk prefetch indexing going on the background could all certainly have an impact. So far they said changing their power options seems to have improved performance, hopefully it remains that way. I don't happen to play these particular games so unfortunately I can't test them personally. I've had no issues with games I do play, far cry, crysis2, cod ghosts, fallout 3 etc and my power options are on 'moderate' allowing the cpu to drop to 5% at min and up to 100% power on max.

Ra_V_en · Sep 19, 2015

And the point of that epos is? We are not considering a CPU swap for the OP... getting out of topic mate.

ULookPrettyGood · Sep 21, 2015

OK so i have noticed the problem again play gta v. It happens mostly when alot of stuff happens, like explosions, alot of shooting, etc. It doesn't happen at any other time. I have put all the graphics to low and it does the exact same thing. Any ideas?

CPU hit's 100% and games then start to lag

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