Question Low GPU usage and high CPU usage

[driftninj4]

So, I recently installed a Dark Rock Pro 4, and now my PC is performing worse. Temps are great, cinebench, Heaven Engine, and userbench scores are above average; however, I am encountering fps issues in every game, some worse than others. When reinstalling my gpu, one of the power connectors wasn't pushed in all the way when i turned my pc on causing it to freeze, and another time the pcie clip got stuck, but I was eventually able to push it back freeing my gpu. However, even though my installation wasn't the smoothest, my computer is performing so well in these benchmarks, which makes me assume it is a driver issue maybe? The most notable is in Ori and the Will of the Wisps, which will have tons of frame drops and averages around 180 fps when it was easily above 230 before. All other games are below average by around 20 fps. I DDU my drivers and did a fresh reinstall of windows, which still didn't help. Out of desperation, I updated my bios with no avail. It arguably made it worse cause now my gpu usage is low and my cpu usage is high. My frames are worse in some games more than others now too. I am just so confused because the PC ran flawlessly before I installed the cooler with the same drivers, etc, but now it performs well below what it should be reaching. Any help is much appreciated!

Specs are:

CPU: i5-9600k -

CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 -

GPU: Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 XT 8GB GDDR6 -

Motherboard: ASRock - Z370 Extreme4 -

RAM: Team - T-Force Delta RGB 16 GB DDR4-3000

PSU: Corsair - TXM Gold 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply

 

[Oussebon]

1) Using something like MSI Afterburner and the included Rivatuner Statistics Server, what is you CPU frequency during gaming when you are getting these issues?

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linustechtips.com

Check frequency, temperature, and load per core, not just the overall %.

Also check the overall GPU load, frequency, and temps.

Essentially it's to check if the CPU is downclocking in some way.

2) After updating the BIOS did you check if the RAM's XMP profile is still set up?

Don't go tweaking multiple random things in the BIOS though - just check the XMP. profile

 

[driftninj4]

@Oussebon

1) I just checked in a game of Rainbow Six Siege, and, in HWINFO, the cpu frequency is at 4.3Ghz on all cores during gaming, and the cpu load was at ~100% usage on all cores the whole time. Also, the GPU did run at around 80%-98%, which is an improvement, and it was at 1875Mhz mostly and max temp was 75C. I did overclock it a tiny bit (by that i mean lowering voltage levels and turning up VRAM frequency), which i dont know if that helped the issue. I logged a session in HWINFO, which I'll look over and see if there is anything out of the ordinary

2) I set XMP on after resetting the bios. I did try Multi Core Enhancement, but it didnt have any affect, so i switched it off

 

[Oussebon]

Bearing in mind that framerate will always vary between multiplayer matches, did you get the sort of framerate you'd expect?

4.3GHz is what you'd expect under full load at full boost clocks for the CPU.

It's best to get a baseline, and then change things. Because otherwise you don't know what it is that had an effect. Maybe try again with the GPU at stock settings and see if you still get similar performance.

Also check Task Manager to see whether something other than the game is using the CPU.

I have an issue where not minimising the Uplay client can easily take 10% off my framerate due to excess GPU load (google says it's a thing some people have...). So you never know what might be eating performance behind the scenes.

I'm assuming you're running R6S at 1080p ultra, uncapped framerate?

You could try running the Timespy benchmark (which is free under the Demo of 3Dmark) as that gives benchmarks that are at least fairly consistent and easy to compare to other results.

 

[driftninj4]

@Oussebon I played in Terrorist Hunt to ensure it wasnt a ping issue, and while I am getting around 250 fps in siege in 1080p Ultra no frame cap, i am more concerned with the stability and usage, where siege and all other games i play take up at least 90% of cpu usage. I had a similar issue in Apex Legends a while back, but I cannot remember how I fixed it. The performance decrease is the most notable in BFV where I am getting around 75 fps in 1080p ultra no cap, where before i would get 160fps. I'll try the timespy benchmark, but I have used other GPU benchmarks, such as heaven engine and gotten good scores. I'm also gonna swap out my 5700 xt with my old rx 580 and see if it works w no usage issues.