[SOLVED] CPU Single core high usage when gaming

[Nem1x]

Specs(Setup) :
AMD Athlon II x4 640
8GB RAM Dual Channel @1600MHz
GT 630 OEM (QUADRO K420)
Asus M5A78L-M LE

The rest of parts are from previous build:
500GB+250GB HDD
Intel Celeron G1820
LGA 1550 AsRock H81M

I gave this setup to my brother (except GPU), since I thought it would perform better in games than Celeron G1820, which is true because I used it with my GTX 750 and older games. But performance is worst then it was. For some reason games run worse and it's not GUP's fault.

Let's take PayDay 2 as example . GPU usage is low around 50-70% . CPU usage is around 50% meanwhile 4th CPU core is maxing at 100%, for some reason. That didn't happened when paired with GTX 750. I also tested few other games and results are similar.

Now when I ran Cinebench R15 I got around 270 multi-threaded and 68 single threaded score, which is pretty much same as when I used it.

Maybe it's because of Windows doing something with CPU, since I don't know what else could be causing this behavior.
I tried reinstalling GPU drivers, changing RAM speed, checking if something is using CPU in background but no luck.


EDIT:

BEFORE YOU SAY THAT CPU IS OLD FOR GAMING, I AM GOING TO REPEAT AGAIN . It is used for playing lite and older games. No AAA titles .

 

[Karadjgne]

Payday 2 only uses 1 thread. It doesn't have multi thread support. So when the cpu hits 100% usage on that core, it's done, and you'll get funky results with fps as everything that gets added, gets told to wait until there's room.

The Athlon has @ 60% of the IPC of the G1820, so fps is going to suffer on the Athlon, cpu usage per core will be higher. Weaker cores.

 

[Nem1x]

True, but, as I said , performance is worse in games even though they prefer single core performance. I used to have 60+ FPS in Pay Day 2 now I get around 30 while GPU usage is at 50%.

 

[Karadjgne]

Because fps is Not a gpu thing, it's a cpu thing. The cpu takes all the info, data, objects, Ai etc and pre-renders that into a frame. The amount of times the cpu can do that in 1 second is the fps, frames per second.

That then gets sent to the gpu which first renders a wire frame, then adds colors etc and final renders that frame according to resolution and detail settings. If it can match or beat the cpu fps input, cool. If it can't, then you get less fps onscreen. That usually means you need to lower the detail levels to bring fps upto closer to what the cpu can send.

Usage is deceiving. It's not the amount of cpu/gpu Used, but the amount of time it isn't. A cpu at 100% has no time to process anything extra, anything added gets to wait its turn, and fps output drops.

So an easy scene, few objects, little motion, no scripts, no npcs or Ai etc might see 50% usage and 300fps, but same game in a town with lots of Ai, npcs, and a wall getting blown up by a tank and having all those particle vectors to process will jump to 100%, and fps goes in the toilet.

Nothing to do with the gpu.

The G1820 has considerably stronger cores than the Athlon, much higher IPC, so can process far more info into a frame in the same amount of time, 1 second. That means the Intel will have higher fps to the gpu for less usage than the Athlon, and it's then upto the gpu as to whether or not any of that gets onscreen

 

[Nem1x]

What I am trying to say is that CPU is performing worse than before and GPU is not bottlneck. I mean sometimes I get half of FPS I had before in some games. Some games perform same , but others noticeably worse.

 

[rgd1101]

fresh os install for the build?

 

[Nem1x]

fresh os install for the build?

No. That's my main suspect. Still when idle cpu usage is around 3%.