FPS below 60, and CPU/GPU not reaching 100% in games

nathan.w.gehman

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Jan 1, 2018
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So this issue I am noticing mainly in Islands of Nyne. The issue is that I have low FPS (ranging anywhere from 30-50 FPS), which is very annoying. I went into MSI Afterburner so I could see my CPU/GPU usage and temps, and usage is staying relatively low. GPU and CPU both on average stay below 70% usage, although there have been spikes in certain cores of the CPU that go as high as 90%. The temp for my GPU is flat-lining at about 86° C, while my CPU seems to be doing very well, never going above 40° C, but usually stays at about 36° C.

The possibly the strangest bit of all, is that it only has issues using all of the GPU and CPU when I'm actually in game. when I am in lobby (where I see my character, can buy/open crates, etc.) the GPU usage is at full, while CPU usage drops to about 30%.

For the CPU side of things, it could be a power draw issue, as my motherboard is crap (see system specs below). For GPU it wouldn't be a power issue unless my PSU simply couldn't dish out enough power, correct?

Any help is appreciated!

Specs:
Mobo- Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3
CPU- fx 8320
RAM-16 GB DDR3
GPU- Gigabyte R9 390
PSU- EVGA 750W bronze BQ
CPU Cooler- Corsair H60
Windows 10 Home 64 bit

EDIT:
I meant to mention this, but forgot. I would like to see what the core voltage is on my GPU (the actual voltage it is getting, not just the max that I have allowed), because if it is reaching the max, that could explain the GPU side of things. However Even though I have checked the "Unlock voltage monitoring" option in MSI Afterburner, I still have no option to monitor voltage. I would also like to do this for the CPU, but have no idea where to even start for that.

EDIT 1:
I have tested this out on a few more games, like League of Legends and PUBG. I still get poor performance, and the CPU and GPU are still not maxing out. On League, I imagine I should be getting above 100 fps all the time, yet there are times when I struggle to get above 50 (that said, average would probably be high 60s or 70s). For PUBG, where poor performance should also be expected, it is still maxing out at the same spot, and I am getting about 50-70 frames on average. I cannot think of ANY scenario where League performs similarly to PUBG.
 
Solution
Download 3DMark benchmark, run it on extreme. If it doesn't max your system, you probably have power issues.

Also, your GPU is running hot. Change it thermal paste or put a fan near it.
Your cpu has very weak cores and may not be performing well on your particular motherboard.

I suspect that your games are being limited by your single thread core performance.

Be careful how you interpret task manager cpu utilizations.
Windows will spread the activity of a single thread over all available threads.
So, if you had a game that was single threaded and cpu bound, it would show up on a quad core processor as 25%
utilization across all 4 threads.
leading you to think your bottleneck was elsewhere.
It turns our that few games can usefully use more than 2-3 threads.
How can you tell how well threaded your games or apps are?
One way is to disable one thread and see how you do.

You can do this in the windows msconfig boot advanced options option.
You will need to reboot for the change to take effect. Set the number of processors to less than you have.
This will tell you how sensitive your games are to the benefits of many threads.
If you see little difference, it tells you that you will not benefit from more cores.
Likely, a better clock rate will be more important.
 

nathan.w.gehman

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Jan 1, 2018
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I know I didn't quite make this clear, but all my cores are being used by Islands of Nyne. They range (on average) between 50% and 70% usage.
 
What I think is happening is that your master thread is 100% utilized and limiting what you can do.
The other threads may be only partially utilized.
Windows spreads the cpu activity over all of the available threads to even out temperatures.

If you can overclock your FX-8320 you will get faster core speeds and improve performance.

If you can't overclock because of your motherboard, you are stuck.

For a backhanded test to see how important core performance is to your games, try this test.
Limit your cpu, either by reducing the OC, or, in windows power management, limit the maximum cpu% to something like 70%.
Go to control panel/power options/change plan settings/change advanced power settings/processor power management/maximum processor state/
This will simulate what a lack of cpu power will do.
Conversely what a 30% improvement in core speed might do.


 

nathan.w.gehman

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Jan 1, 2018
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If by master thread you are referring to one of the cores, I can assure you that none of them are reaching 100% except in spikes. All the cores on my CPU are between about 50% and 70% most of the time. Here are some screenshots to show you the MSI Afterburner graphs after one gaming session. Polling was done every 300 ms. The start where it is at 100% then dipping (on the GPU %) is when I am in the title screen. Where it drops to 0% is when I am in the loading screen, and then from there on out is just what it was doing while playing the game. And I know that the GPU temp isn't reaching what I said it was. I think that is because when I took the GPU temp, it had been in the title screen for like 5-10 mins so it was running at 100% for a while.
lwIvf7B.png

WZQnygs.png
 

nathan.w.gehman

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Jan 1, 2018
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520


It isn't the fact that I'm getting bad performance that is bugging me most (yes its annoying, but also early access, as you said). What bugs me the most is that my system is capable of getting better performance, and isn't doing so.