OCed E5300 bottlenecking 5770?

[Bluescreendeath]

In one of my PCs, I have a P2D E5300 (stock 2.6GHz) OCed to 3.5GHz. It runs stable at 1.31v and maxes out at 54'C core temp.

I thought an ATI 5770, which performs the same as the 4870/GTX260 would not be significantly bottlenecked by the E5300, let alone one OCed to 3.5GHz.

However, I believe I am getting a bottleneck...and in a GPU game of Crysis no less... weird huh?

I'm playing Mechwarrior: Living Legend, the Crysis mod. It has custom settings that is mostly at "high." I am also playing at 1280x1024, with AA turned off.

In a lot of maps, my FRAPS records me lagging at around 10-15fps during battles. It usually averages in the high 20s and low 30s. (this still seems very low)

I suspect is is a CPU bottleneck because:
1. In task manager, my CPU usage is at 95+%
2. In GPU-Z, it says the max GPU load is only around 30-40%


I feel this is very strange, since Crysis should run no problem on any dual core, and is mostly a GPU-intensive game. And I was sure that a 45nm dual core, let alone an OCed one would have no problem and not bottleneck a ATI 5770.

Any thoughts?


Specs info:
E5300 @ 3.5GHz
ATI 5770 1GB
4GB DDR2 800MHz RAM
OCZ 500watt PSU
7200 rpm 320GB HDD
Vista 64bit

 

[Lmeow]

I wouldn't have thought an E5300 would bottleneck an HD 5770 either... What do you mean 'averages' though? FRAPS is ridiculously CPU intensive, and I'd understand the low framerates... but how was it better before? As in a different CPU?

 

[jyjjy]

A Wolfdale at 3.5ghz should be quite capable. Perhaps it is Fraps that is the issue although it may just be a poorly coded mod that is to blame if you aren't having similar issues with the main game. Crysis has a built-in command to show frames per second. Just open the console(with ~) and enter;
r_displayinfo 1
I'm not sure if it will help your current issue but in general you may want to consider using Rivatuner in place of Fraps. The Rivatuner Statistics Server can give you an in game display of not just frames per second but CPU/GPU usage/temps and system/card memory usage among other things.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Nvm, I see GPU load at 90% now. GPU-Z wasn't reading it correctly.

I'm guessing both my CPU and my GPU can't handle the Crysis mod with good fps in certain maps... =(