[SOLVED] Help understanding GPU utilisation

[dom_kai]

Hey folks,



So this is a strange one that I'm sure has an easy answer but I'm not savvy enough to find it so I thought I'd reach out here.



I put together my own machine on a super budget. Started with an AMD Athlon 200g as I wanted to atleast turn the machine on before I could afford a gfx card. I got the new card then my system looked like this;



ASRock Steel Legend b450

AMD Athlon 200g

Sapphire Rx590 8g Nitro+

Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200 16GB



I have a new CPU in my Amazon basket I just dont have the funds right now to buy it.



I have the Radeon Perfomance Software on my machine and had never really looked at it before. I mainly play MMO's and since the machine was built Ive been using it for WoW and FFXIV. I can play both on near ultra settings with isnt an achievement in the grand scheme but given the CPU its not bad. I then got nostalgic for Star Wars The Old Republic so I installed it and set everything to high as I assumed an 8year game wouldnt trouble me too much and here in lies the rub.



I got jerky animations and choppy frame rates. For the first time really I looked at the Radeon overlay and saw FPS of around 30-40 so sadly I had to lower settings ,which was annoying cause FFXIV is a much more demanding game I can play fine at near ultra, but what struck me as odd was looking at the performance metrics that were running in the background and seeing my GPU frequently jump to 100% utilisation but my CPU never going above 60%. And this was spread out over hours of gaming,



My limited understanding was that since the CPU is so awful it would be the bottleneck sweating out at 100% while the GPU just did what it needed with the slow drip of information it was getting from the CPU.



Am I wrong? Isnt the more inferior piece of hardware the bottleneck that should hold up the better component?



As you can see I know very little about PC gaming, I'm just struggling to understand the above points.

 

[logainofhades]

The 200ge is a 2c/4t cpu, and is fairly weak. That game is probably only uses 2 cores, so 60% makes sense. The game and Windows are using 60% of your 4 available threads. FFXIV is able to leverage all 4 threads, so fewer issues there. That older title is more dependent on faster single core performance, as it is not well threaded. Blizzard improved the multi-threaded performance, of WoW, with 8.1. It's not as good as it should be, but far better than earlier patches/expansions.

 

[dom_kai]

Thanks for your replying. I have just bought a Ryzen 7 2600X so I'm hoping that should allow me to return the game to ultra settings. You mentioned the game only uses 2 cores, what is the advantage I'll have no that I'm using an 8c cpu? I'm just trying to wrap my head around why the GPU would be running at 100% when the CPU is only on 60%

 

[logainofhades]

Are your drivers up to date? Will you be using an R5 2600x or an R7 2700x? The Ryzen 7 cpu is a more powerful chip. The cores, of either, are more powerful, than that of a 200ge. They have more cache, and support faster ram speeds. The 200ge is 1st gen ryzen based, and only supports up to 2666 ram speeds. You should be able to run your ram, at a full ddr4 3200 speed, with a 2nd gen Ryzen CPU. Ryzen is very ram speed sensitive. Lowering the settings might actually not help you CPU side, as that puts more of a strain on the CPU, than GPU. That title is wanting more single threaded performance, than your 200ge can provide. It also is probably heavily Intel/Nvidia biased.

 

[dom_kai]

I've bought the Ryzen 7 2700x it should be here in a couple of days. I looked at the performance tab in my task manager and it said my ram speed was 3200. Is that telling me the speed is currently set to use or the speed it is capable off just?

All drivers up to date and even added the DX9 library alongside my DX12 which gave me a little smoother gameplay. I also just bought some more space so by next week my system will look like;

ASRock Steel Legend b450
Ryzen 7 2700x
Sapphire Rx590 8g Nitro+
Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200 16GB
Samsung 970 Evo NVMe M.2 500gb
Corsair Cx 550M

Which I hope will solve the issues I having currently with performance. I'll just need to learn how to get everything to play nicely with each other. Sadly I bought my RAM hastily cause I saw it on offer and its not on the motherboards QVL list. But seems to be running fine regardless so I may need to upgrade that too eventually.

 

[Third-Eye]

Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200 16GB


I got jerky animations and choppy frame rates. For the first time really I looked at the Radeon overlay and saw FPS of around 30-40 so sadly I had to lower settings ,which was annoying cause FFXIV is a much more demanding game I can play fine at near ultra, but what struck me as odd was looking at the performance metrics that were running in the background and seeing my GPU frequently jump to 100% utilisation but my CPU never going above 60%. And this was spread out over hours of gaming,

Is your ram 2x8GB or 1x16GB and if 2x8GB, did you install the ram in slots A2/B2? It might explain some of the "jerky" and "choppy" movement and fps. If you installed the 2x8GB in the wrong slots you may be running single channel mode and one module will always be single channel mode.

 

[dom_kai]

Is your ram 2x8GB or 1x16GB and if 2x8GB, did you install the ram in slots A2/B2? It might explain some of the "jerky" and "choppy" movement and fps. If you installed the 2x8GB in the wrong slots you may be running single channel mode and one module will always be single channel mode.

Its 2x8 and they are in A2/B2 yea I was able to enable XMP and apperently they are unlocked at 3200 but I dunno, thats what it says in bios anyway I'm not sure how given how bad the CPU is

 

[Third-Eye]

Its 2x8 and they are in A2/B2 yea I was able to enable XMP and apperently they are unlocked at 3200 but I dunno, thats what it says in bios anyway I'm not sure how given how bad the CPU is

The new CPU should fix the issue with jerky and choppy gameplay.

 

[logainofhades]

I am surprised it worked, at 3200 speeds, with that 220ge. I believe the reviews, that I have seen, couldn't get it to play nice with ram speeds beyond 2666.