Question CPU utilization under 5% ingame, works at 100% in benchmark tests

[Daniel Ek]

Hi! This is my first post here so I apologize if not all info needed is included.

I build my pc yesterday and everything seems to work fine except for the CPU when trying to play games. When playing the total CPU Utilization is usually around 5% +-1 with only one core carrying the heavy load at 20-40% utilization and the rest essentially ideling at 0-3%. In the resource manager the games uses 80 threads while my browser open with three tabs uses 75. It's not thermal throttling either since the temperature is stable at 40-50 celsius. I've ran userbenchmark and while testing during the CPU part it does reach 100% utilization so it should be able to be utilized, it's like it just doesn't want to when playing games. I've updated drivers from Intel, Gigabyte, Nvidia aswell as regular windows updates and everything should be up to date.

Specs:
CPU: Intel Core i5-12600k
Motherboard: Gigabyte B660 DS3H DDR4
RAM: 32gb (16x2) Corsair 32GB (2K) DDR4 3200MHz Vengea
GPU: ASUS TUF RTX 3060ti O8G V2
Power supply: Corsair RM750 750W (2019) Gold
OS: Windows 11 Home 22H2
Case: Fractal Design Meshify 2 Compact
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12A Chromax Black
SSD: Kingston KC3000 M.2 NVMe SSD 1024Gb

 

[TerryLaze]

I've ran userbenchmark and while testing during the CPU part it does reach 100% utilization so it should be able to be utilized, it's like it just doesn't want to when playing games.

Benchmarks are made to use all of the cpu to show what all of the cpu is capable of.
Games are made to do what they need to do and not more.

Tell us the game you have issues with and what kind of FPS you get in it.
It could be that you have vsync enabled, in that case all games will be cut off at 60FPS (or whatever your monitor is set to) resulting in much less cpu usage, which isn't a bad thing if the game still runs fine.

 

[Dragos Manea]

Most of the games relies heavily on a single or 2 cores depending on the game, just lately they started using more cores and not all games.

 

[Daniel Ek]

Benchmarks are made to use all of the cpu to show what all of the cpu is capable of.
Games are made to do what they need to do and not more.

Tell us the game you have issues with and what kind of FPS you get in it.
It could be that you have vsync enabled, in that case all games will be cut off at 60FPS (or whatever your monitor is set to) resulting in much less cpu usage, which isn't a bad thing if the game still runs fine.

For instance when i try to play Cyberpunk I get 20-30 fps with VSYNC off on both ultra and low settings