GTX 460 usage % and cpu usage %

[im_thinking123]

Phenom II 940 am2 (O.C. 3.450 from 3.0)
4gb kingston 800
650 bgf psu
evga gtx 460 768mb
230gb standard seagate 7200rpm


Just a question about the gpu usage during games and such. When moving from different areas within games such as crysis , crysis warhead/ far cry 2, GTA 4, The cpu usage goes up as it should for helping with the rendering of textures and such but the gpu usage takes a dramatic fall and the framrates crash like crazy. I'm not sure if it's normal or not but there's only three things that I can guess that would make this happen.

The cpu is draining the wattage needed to keep the gpu running at the higher usage during the rendering of the new area's and visuals. If this is even possible?

The Phenom II is bottlenecking.

Or the hard drive isn't loading the data fast enough during the texture updates as you progress from scene to scene within the games therefore decreasing gpu usage since theres nothing for the gpu to do since the hard drive isnt loading fast enough ( not sure if this is possible either).

If any of this strikes anyone as.. umm say absurd , it could be. I don't have a very high tech level.

But those are things I thought could be causing what's going on.

So anyways , if anyone has an information or suggestion's it would be highly appreciated.

Thanks a lot for all future reply's.

Oh yeah and if i run prime95 and kombuster at the same time cpu stays at 100%, kombuster hover's at 40-45% gpu usage , not sure if that's normal either. But it seems to me the cpu draining the wattage it needs to stay at 100% if you ask me but.. like i said i don't know much much.

 

[jryan388]

Probably the hard drive isn't loading fast enough. You could get a solid-state drive, but those are pretty expensive. Is it destroying the game for you?

 

[im_thinking123]

Honestly i get good frames most the time but.. there are patches of gameplay that makes it pretty bad, id love to have a solid 45 fps with no dipping below 25. Going from 45 or so to 17 just cause your moving along fast in some area's just dosent give you that smooth gameplay feeling. Just gotta figure out if it's just this outdated system or something specific holding it back.

 

[JDFan]

As jryan mentioned it is most likely caused by the game having to wait for info to be loaded from the HDD into RAM so either getting a faster HDD\SSD drive or setting up a RAMdisk if you have enough RAM to load the game contents into and using it in place of the HDD to store the game files would be the best bet.

 

[im_thinking123]

Thanks for info guys, guess ill put up with it till I start my new system.

 

[im_thinking123]

Best answer selected by im_thinking123.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey