My CPU might be underperforming

Jun 16, 2018
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Hey. I've recently upgraded to 1070 Ti and 16 GB RAM, but I feel like my CPU is seriously underperforming and behaving weirdly. Firstly, my specs:

MSI 1070 Ti 8 GB
i5-4670K + stock Intel cooler
16 GB RAM 1600 MHz
ASUS Z-87K Motherboard


So I tested my new PC in different games like GTA V, Hitman 2016, Assassin's Creed Origins and in almost all modern games, the CPU usage is always at 100%. Is that normal? In AC Origins, it just hits the limit during the launch and never goes back to normal %usage unless I turn off the game. In all these games, my GPU is used by 50-70%, so it can't be GPU, right? I used to have 8 GB RAM, but now I upgraded to 16GB and the system rarely uses more than 9 GB, so it can't be RAM too.

In BIOS, I have the ASUS Turbo (or whatever it's called) active, which boost the frequency from base 3.4GHz to 4GHz. I have the voltage set to automatic. When I tried switching it to a stable 1.25V, the processor was extremely overheating during games up to 90C. So I switched the voltage back to automatic and when I was in BIOS, that setting was aroung 1V.

There's something wrong happening to my CPU frequency though. When I'm in Windows and only use some program like Chrome, Steam and Discord, the frequency is set to aroung 4.1-4.2GHz and the usage is ~10%. When I open up a game, the frequency drops to 3.9-4GHz and the usage, as I mentioned above, is almost always at 100%.

I should also mention that I recently performed a Windows 10 reset, so it removed all apps except for my personal data, so that shouldn't be a software issue either, right?

And finally, the reason why I'm asking this is that in some crowded areas in games, for instance in GTA V, when my PC has to render a lot of cars, pedestrians, particles, the FPS sometimes goes down to 40, while I usually game at stable 60 FPS. Once I leave that area, it gets back to stable 60 FPS. There's also this Hitman 2016 level where there are a lot of pedestrians on the street and that causes FPS drops too. When I look at those pedestrians, FPS goes to around 40-50, while the GPU usage is at around 70%.

What do you think can cause this problem? Is it the stock Intel cooler than I should trash and buy a new one? Or is there something else that could cause the problem? Thanks in advance for any responses.
 
Many modern games will use a lot of, or even all of, a quad core's resources. Open world games with a lot of NPCs, which are CPU intensive, are prime offenders.

Some easy tests to try are to reduce the more CPU demanding settings in a particular game. See if framerate goes up. Which settings to experiment with will depend on the game.

I would also look for benchmarks with a similar setup to yours and see if your numbers are at least in the ballpark.
 
Jun 16, 2018
7
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Downloaded Cinebench and the score is in the range of others' i5-4670Ks, but the temperature of CPU got as high as 90C. Do you think buying a new cooler is good idea? That would mean I could overclock my processor even further. Would that have a big impact on performance in games?