980Ti low gpu usage

[Typhoon213]

I recently bought a 980 Ti and have noticed it rarely performs at or over 60fps in any game. I also recently purchased a 144hz Acer monitor and with Gsync and Vsync on it's still only getting around 30-60fps at 2k. I thought maybe I just wasn't able to tax the system enough in order to us the full GPU of the 980 Ti, so I went 2k and had no different results. When I run Furmark it will max on the GPU, but other benchmarks like Dirt 3, and Valley only make it to about 70% GPU usage. If I manually set DSR to run at a 4k resolution then I will start using 90-100% of the GPU, but around the 30fps mark which is from what I read normal for 4k and one 980 ti. My current setup is one 980 ti Kinpin, Asus crosshair iv extreme, 8 gigs ddr 1866mhz, 240gb kingston ssd, fx 8120 cpu, and a 1300w EVGA PSU. Is it the CPU that's holding this card back? I've put this same card in my friend PC with a new Asus board and a 8350 AMD, which will benchmark a little better, but not much. Also when putting his 970 into my machine I get similar numbers as I did with my 980 ti. I wouldn't figure that a 8120 would hold the 980 ti back that much, but I might be mistaken. Any ideas are greatly appreciated as I'm getting frustrated as to where my performance loss is. Thanks in advance!

 

[AreFlame]

It seems like it is the cpu, its a poor choice for such a high end graphics card although it would be "ok" for 4k. Anyways can you monitor your cpu usage ingame and post them?

 

[bjornl]

I'd say your CPU is almost certainly the bottle neck. I'd suggest something like an i5 4690k cpu. It will allow you to use your current RAM and so would save you a little bit over a skylake generation and is slower by a fairly trivial amount, but still hugely more power than your current one.

 

[sizzling]

The FX8xxx range can hold back a 970, in CPU intensive games they will seriously hold back a 980Ti especially when trying to achieve high fps for a 144Hz setup, higher fps equals higher CPU load. You really need an i5/i7 setup

 

[Typhoon213]

Intel Core i5-4590 Haswell Quad-Core 3.3 GHz LGA 1150 I have one of these sitting around is it time to get a board to support it and start over?

 

[Typhoon213]

Also I have a CPU meter and it's never maxing all 8 cpu threads at one single time. The most load I've seen is around 60-70%. Is it simply the fact that when it maxes one cpu core it bottlenecks? After doing the research that's what some say, and others say it will be just fine. I think it's time I use the i5-4590.

 

[bignastyid]

Also I have a CPU meter and it's never maxing all 8 cpu threads at one single time. The most load I've seen is around 60-70%. Is it simply the fact that when it maxes one cpu core it bottlenecks? After doing the research that's what some say, and others say it will be just fine. I think it's time I use the i5-4590.

Most games use 4 or less threads, the cores processing the game are likely maxed. The 8120 is a Bulldozer based cpu(also known by the nickname faildozer), these have very weak single threaded performance and you want strong core performance for gaming. Even the 4.7 GHZ FX-9590 will bottleneck a 980ti especially if you are trying to push 144hz.