Assassin's Creed: Revelations Performance Question

[Not Really An Apple]

While playing Assassin's Creed I've been getting some odd performance results from my GPU. Here's a list of my specs:

CPU: i7-2600 at stock
GPU: GTX 560 ti (I've been playing with the clock speeds to find something stable)
RAM: 8GB 1333Mhz
Motherboard: I don't know the exact name off the top of my head it's an MSI board with a P67 chipset
I'm also playing at 1280x720

While playing, my CPU and GPU will be running at about %50 but I'll only be getting somewhere from 60-70 FPS and down to somewhere near 30 FPS if I'm running around in areas with many buildings, people, and scenery in them. The GPU usage will stay constant most of the time, occasionally dip under heavy, sudden load, but I'm not worried about that. My CPU, however, will usually stay near %50, but sometimes go up to %80-%90, but I'll still have the same framerate, same GPU usage. I'm confused as to why both of these components aren't working to the best of their capabilities. This happens in other games such as Batman: Arkham City, but it's not as much of a problem as I get higher framerates in that game. I've also tried setting everything to the lowest they could go in the game, but there was no performance increase. I might have gotten a few extra frames, but the GPU would then be working at somewhere near %25-%30, which leads me to believe this has something to do with the CPU. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[Supernova1138]

By CPU usage do you mean 50% overall usage, or 50% usage on each individual core? The i7 has hyperthreading, which gives you 4 virtual cores, these virtual cores count as 50% of the overall usage according to Windows. Games do not use hyperthreading's virtual cores, only the physical cores, so if you are hitting 50% overall CPU usage, that means you are maxing out all 4 of your physical cores, and your CPU is causing a bottleneck because it can't provide data to the GPU any faster. The 560Ti is frankly, overkill for your resolution, unless you are trying to max out Crysis 2 or Metro 2033 you're not going to come anywhere close to maxing out its usage at your resolution. I would recommend getting a higher resolution display to allow your graphics card to spread its wings more. For now, all you can do is overclock your i7 to try to alleviate the CPU bottleneck.

 

[Not Really An Apple]

By CPU usage do you mean 50% overall usage, or 50% usage on each individual core? The i7 has hyperthreading, which gives you 4 virtual cores, these virtual cores count as 50% of the overall usage according to Windows. Games do not use hyperthreading's virtual cores, only the physical cores, so if you are hitting 50% overall CPU usage, that means you are maxing out all 4 of your physical cores, and your CPU is causing a bottleneck because it can't provide data to the GPU any faster. The 560Ti is frankly, overkill for your resolution, unless you are trying to max out Crysis 2 or Metro 2033 you're not going to come anywhere close to maxing out its usage at your resolution. I would recommend getting a higher resolution display to allow your graphics card to spread its wings more. For now, all you can do is overclock your i7 to try to alleviate the CPU bottleneck.

Believe me, I'd love a higher resolution monitor, but you've gotta get the graphics card before the monitor, otherwise what good does a higher resolution do you?

With the game off, there is about %15-%20 overall usage on the CPU (only thing running in the background are some Chrome tabs, Skype, the usual stuff that runs quietly in the background)

When I'm playing the game, overall usage jumps to around %70-%80 and stays there for most of the time unless I'm in an area that is not demanding at all, e.g. inside a small house.

It seems to be using all of the cores, though, as seen here. It's puzzling because I know some games don't even use all the cores on a quad-core CPU, let alone virtual cores.

EDIT: Wait a second, I just noticed that when I actually have the game open, it uses somewhere near %40-%50 of the CPU with most cores running at about %50 with the first core at about %80.

 

[Supernova1138]

It could also be a matter of the game not being all that well optimized, or it has issues with the multithreading not working right. Ubisoft has shown that they do not have a very high opinion of PC gaming, they believe everyone is going to pirate their stuff, so why bother putting any effort into it. I have run into stuttering and framerate drops in earlier AC installments, this series isn't exactly known for having the greatest PC ports. You have more than enough GPU horsepower to run the game well at your resolution, I can only suggest overclocking your CPU to try to squeeze more performance out, either that or wait for a patch or a driver update and see if that improves performance.

 

[Not Really An Apple]

It could also be a matter of the game not being all that well optimized, or it has issues with the multithreading not working right. Ubisoft has shown that they do not have a very high opinion of PC gaming, they believe everyone is going to pirate their stuff, so why bother putting any effort into it. I have run into stuttering and framerate drops in earlier AC installments, this series isn't exactly known for having the greatest PC ports. You have more than enough GPU horsepower to run the game well at your resolution, I can only suggest overclocking your CPU to try to squeeze more performance out, either that or wait for a patch or a driver update and see if that improves performance.

Yeah, I'll probably just wait for a patch, or if I get really impatient, just deal with it.

 

[dikkemuu]

Yeah, I'll probably just wait for a patch, or if I get really impatient, just deal with it.

Game is definitely not optimized!

I get stuttering when playing with everything maxed out with these specs:

Intel Core i7 2600K @ 3.4 GHz
ASUS EAH6990 3DI4S/4GD5 (running 12.1 preview)
Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR3-1866 CL9 kit


Things I have tried but did NOT work:

* Disable AA
* Disable Vsync
* Disable Hyperthreading
* Setting manual core affinity to cpu 0 and 1
* Reinstall
* Running in Windows XP compatibility mode

Created a support ticket with Ubisoft,
see if they can come up with something.