CPU bottlneck?

[noorerino]

Hi, I was just wondering if my gpu's are being bottlenecked by my cpu....
While playing batman arkham city, i sometimes get lags while the frame rates are at 50-60fps...
I heard the developers of Batman AC screwed up with the DX11, I have the latest patch of Batman AC which I presume they fixed most bugs. So, is it the game or is it my cpu ?

Specs :

- AMD Phenom II x4 965 BE oc'd at 4GHz (stable)
- EVGA GTX 480 SLI
- MSI NF750-G55
- 8GB DDR3 1333MHz G-Skill ram
- 1000W cooler master silent pro PSU

I checked the gpu usage for both cards and I get 40-70% each, rarely 90%+ usage for each.

thank you for your time!

 

[Gman450]

The patch actually didn't do too much to make the game run better. So if you're experiencing issues, don't bother. The patch still did not fix most of the DX11 issues. Play it at DX9.

 

[xtreme5]

your both GPU's are bottlenecking.

 

[jessterman21]

Probably - I wouldn't run a dual-card config on anything less than an i5-2400. Btw with Batman AC, everyone gets stuttering at some points. http://techreport.com/articles.x/23150/8

Lots of latency spikes with any configuration.

 

[Guest]

Resource monitor may help determine if CPU is maxed.

 

[geekapproved]

You can answer the question yourself. Downclock your cpu to 3.8ghz and benchmark. Then clock it to 4ghz and benchmark again. If your graphics scores higher at 4ghz, then you know the cpu is holding back the gpu's.

 

[Gman450]

Don't know why I did not read a PIIX4 965BE.... :/

I agree with the guys, your CPU could be bottlenecking your GPUs. If your CPU is at 100% usage, while playing a game, it means that the GPUs are a bottleneck. You might get better frames with just a single card.

 

[noorerino]

I just checked the cpu usage: it never goes above 60% (total cpu usage) while playing Batman AC
I did what geekapproved suggested, so I ran Unigine benchmark 3.0 . Here are the results :

@ 4GHz

FPS: 60.2
Scores: 1515
Min FPS: 19.4
Max FPS: 133.0


@ 3.8GHz

FPS: 59.9
Scores: 1509
Min FPS: 19.7
Max FPS: 131.0

The difference is quite small, but there is one... What do you guys think? What can you conclude after seeing those results? Is it a bottleneck? Do you recommend me running single card ?

Thanks for you time, much appreciated.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Looks like a framerate cap or Vsync is on.

 

[Gman450]

Looks like a framerate cap or Vsync is on.

+1

 

[noorerino]

vsync was off :O
I apologize for my ignorance, but what is a framerate cap?

 

[Mousemonkey]

vsync was off :O
I apologize for my ignorance, but what is a framerate cap?

It does the same thing and is usually written in a config file somewhere.

 

[mactronix]

I just checked the cpu usage: it never goes above 60% (total cpu usage) while playing Batman AC
I did what geekapproved suggested, so I ran Unigine benchmark 3.0 . Here are the results :

@ 4GHz

FPS: 60.2
Scores: 1515
Min FPS: 19.4
Max FPS: 133.0


@ 3.8GHz

FPS: 59.9
Scores: 1509
Min FPS: 19.7
Max FPS: 131.0

The difference is quite small, but there is one... What do you guys think? What can you conclude after seeing those results? Is it a bottleneck? Do you recommend me running single card ?

Thanks for you time, much appreciated.

You should never bench/check anything using only one game or application.
I recommend you run the 4GHz - 3.8GHz test again but use at least 3 games to bench. Personally I would use 5 games of differing types, so not all first person shooters for example.
This way you will get a better representative example of any restriction your CPU may be putting on your Graphics.

Realistically unless the difference doing it this way will be minimal anyway. What resolution are you running at ?
Running some tests then dropping the resolution down and testing again will give you a better idea of any restriction. This is how the hardware sites test for CPU bottlenecks.

Mactronix

 

[noorerino]

Ok, I have a cpu bottleneck... I didn't know at 4GHz a quad core cpu would be a strain to my gpu's.. Can't wait till haswell comes out!

 

[akamrcrack]

Yea my 965BE strained my two 6950s in several games

glad I got my 2500K and 670s now