How to make Minecraft run faster on a great PC

[QuestionableUsername]

I want to make Minecraft run more efficiently but it barley runs with shaders...
PC specs: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/X27WTW

So, I have a good computer and my Minecraft runs worse than my friend with a 5 year old laptop... Something is wrong. I just need help finding out what it is.

 

[Slurpee12]

Do you have your GPU drivers installed? You may be running onboard graphics.

 

[QuestionableUsername]

Do you have your GPU drivers installed? You may be running onboard graphics.

They are installed, I have the latest nVidia drivers

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

Is your display plugged into the motherboard or your graphics card?

Your system should be able to run Minecraft at the maximum refresh rate of your display.

 

[QuestionableUsername]

Is your display plugged into the motherboard or your graphics card?

Your system should be able to run Minecraft at the maximum refresh rate of your display.

It's plugged into my GTX 980, I don't think my mobo even has onboard graphics.

 

[Slurpee12]

Is your display plugged into the motherboard or your graphics card?

Your system should be able to run Minecraft at the maximum refresh rate of your display.

It's plugged into my GTX 980, I don't think my mobo even has onboard graphics.

Your CPU provides the onboard graphics.
Is this just occurring in minecraft or other games as well?

 

[QuestionableUsername]

Is your display plugged into the motherboard or your graphics card?

Your system should be able to run Minecraft at the maximum refresh rate of your display.

It's plugged into my GTX 980, I don't think my mobo even has onboard graphics.

Your CPU provides the onboard graphics.
Is this just occurring in minecraft or other games as well?

Mostly Minecraft, I run other games well. I mean I run minecraft at a decent 150 frames with no shaders at 10 chunks render distance. However my friend is running a smooth 60 at double my render distance and he is using a 5 year old laptop. I feel like my entire rig isn't running all games THAT efficiently, but it works. I thought it was a problem with Java but I'm still not sure.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

Could be any number of things. Are you running the 64-bit version of Java? My understanding is that if Minecraft has to install Java during install, it'll stick you with the 32-bit version.

 

[Slurpee12]

Is your display plugged into the motherboard or your graphics card?

Your system should be able to run Minecraft at the maximum refresh rate of your display.

It's plugged into my GTX 980, I don't think my mobo even has onboard graphics.

Your CPU provides the onboard graphics.
Is this just occurring in minecraft or other games as well?

Mostly Minecraft, I run other games well. I mean I run minecraft at a decent 150 frames with no shaders at 10 chunks render distance. However my friend is running a smooth 60 at double my render distance and he is using a 5 year old laptop. I feel like my entire rig isn't running all games THAT efficiently, but it works. I thought it was a problem with Java but I'm still not sure.

Download MSI Afterburner, boot up minecraft, and report the GPU usage. I wonder if the usage is so low, it's not boosting up. I've this problem before.

 

[QuestionableUsername]

Is your display plugged into the motherboard or your graphics card?

Your system should be able to run Minecraft at the maximum refresh rate of your display.

It's plugged into my GTX 980, I don't think my mobo even has onboard graphics.

Your CPU provides the onboard graphics.
Is this just occurring in minecraft or other games as well?

OH! Could it be that Minecraft is only run with one core? That might be it? (Also I've realized there's an update for nVidia drivers, I'm one update behind.)

 

[Slurpee12]

Is your display plugged into the motherboard or your graphics card?

Your system should be able to run Minecraft at the maximum refresh rate of your display.

It's plugged into my GTX 980, I don't think my mobo even has onboard graphics.

Your CPU provides the onboard graphics.
Is this just occurring in minecraft or other games as well?

OH! Could it be that Minecraft is only run with one core? That might be it? (Also I've realized there's an update for nVidia drivers, I'm one update behind.)

I'm not sure. What's it installed under, SSD or HDD? How much RAM do you have?

 

[QuestionableUsername]

Is your display plugged into the motherboard or your graphics card?

Your system should be able to run Minecraft at the maximum refresh rate of your display.

It's plugged into my GTX 980, I don't think my mobo even has onboard graphics.

Your CPU provides the onboard graphics.
Is this just occurring in minecraft or other games as well?

OH! Could it be that Minecraft is only run with one core? That might be it? (Also I've realized there's an update for nVidia drivers, I'm one update behind.)

I'm not sure. What's it installed under, SSD or HDD? How much RAM do you have?

32 GB DDR4 RAM (~1 gb allocated to minecraft) 1 TB SSD. (no hdd)

BTW, I'm trying to run MC at max settings. (not including render distance)

 

[Slurpee12]

Is your display plugged into the motherboard or your graphics card?

Your system should be able to run Minecraft at the maximum refresh rate of your display.

It's plugged into my GTX 980, I don't think my mobo even has onboard graphics.

Your CPU provides the onboard graphics.
Is this just occurring in minecraft or other games as well?

OH! Could it be that Minecraft is only run with one core? That might be it? (Also I've realized there's an update for nVidia drivers, I'm one update behind.)

I'm not sure. What's it installed under, SSD or HDD? How much RAM do you have?

32 GB DDR4 RAM (~1 gb allocated to minecraft) 1 TB SSD. (no hdd)

Try allocating 16Gb.

 

[QuestionableUsername]

Is your display plugged into the motherboard or your graphics card?

Your system should be able to run Minecraft at the maximum refresh rate of your display.

It's plugged into my GTX 980, I don't think my mobo even has onboard graphics.

Your CPU provides the onboard graphics.
Is this just occurring in minecraft or other games as well?

OH! Could it be that Minecraft is only run with one core? That might be it? (Also I've realized there's an update for nVidia drivers, I'm one update behind.)

I'm not sure. What's it installed under, SSD or HDD? How much RAM do you have?

32 GB DDR4 RAM (~1 gb allocated to minecraft) 1 TB SSD. (no hdd)

Try allocating 16Gb.

Better, now I had shaders and everything maxed out. It looks great except for the fact I'm running 30 FPS stable. Is that what I should expect from my build running everything with shaders maxed out and 16 GB of ram allocated?

 

[Slurpee12]

Is your display plugged into the motherboard or your graphics card?

Your system should be able to run Minecraft at the maximum refresh rate of your display.

It's plugged into my GTX 980, I don't think my mobo even has onboard graphics.

Your CPU provides the onboard graphics.
Is this just occurring in minecraft or other games as well?

OH! Could it be that Minecraft is only run with one core? That might be it? (Also I've realized there's an update for nVidia drivers, I'm one update behind.)

I'm not sure. What's it installed under, SSD or HDD? How much RAM do you have?

32 GB DDR4 RAM (~1 gb allocated to minecraft) 1 TB SSD. (no hdd)

Try allocating 16Gb.

Better, now I had shaders and everything maxed out. It looks great except for the fact I'm running 30 FPS stable. Is that what I should expect from my build running everything with shaders maxed out and 16 GB of ram allocated?

What is your GPU usage?

 

[QuestionableUsername]

Is your display plugged into the motherboard or your graphics card?

Your system should be able to run Minecraft at the maximum refresh rate of your display.

It's plugged into my GTX 980, I don't think my mobo even has onboard graphics.

Your CPU provides the onboard graphics.
Is this just occurring in minecraft or other games as well?

OH! Could it be that Minecraft is only run with one core? That might be it? (Also I've realized there's an update for nVidia drivers, I'm one update behind.)

I'm not sure. What's it installed under, SSD or HDD? How much RAM do you have?

32 GB DDR4 RAM (~1 gb allocated to minecraft) 1 TB SSD. (no hdd)

Try allocating 16Gb.

Better, now I had shaders and everything maxed out. It looks great except for the fact I'm running 30 FPS stable. Is that what I should expect from my build running everything with shaders maxed out and 16 GB of ram allocated?

What is your GPU usage?

How do I check? It's not in task manager.

 

[Slurpee12]

Is your display plugged into the motherboard or your graphics card?

Your system should be able to run Minecraft at the maximum refresh rate of your display.

It's plugged into my GTX 980, I don't think my mobo even has onboard graphics.

Your CPU provides the onboard graphics.
Is this just occurring in minecraft or other games as well?

OH! Could it be that Minecraft is only run with one core? That might be it? (Also I've realized there's an update for nVidia drivers, I'm one update behind.)

I'm not sure. What's it installed under, SSD or HDD? How much RAM do you have?

32 GB DDR4 RAM (~1 gb allocated to minecraft) 1 TB SSD. (no hdd)

Try allocating 16Gb.

Better, now I had shaders and everything maxed out. It looks great except for the fact I'm running 30 FPS stable. Is that what I should expect from my build running everything with shaders maxed out and 16 GB of ram allocated?

What is your GPU usage?

How do I check? It's not in task manager.

MSI Afterburner

 

[QuestionableUsername]

Is your display plugged into the motherboard or your graphics card?

Your system should be able to run Minecraft at the maximum refresh rate of your display.

It's plugged into my GTX 980, I don't think my mobo even has onboard graphics.

Your CPU provides the onboard graphics.
Is this just occurring in minecraft or other games as well?

OH! Could it be that Minecraft is only run with one core? That might be it? (Also I've realized there's an update for nVidia drivers, I'm one update behind.)

I'm not sure. What's it installed under, SSD or HDD? How much RAM do you have?

32 GB DDR4 RAM (~1 gb allocated to minecraft) 1 TB SSD. (no hdd)

Try allocating 16Gb.

Better, now I had shaders and everything maxed out. It looks great except for the fact I'm running 30 FPS stable. Is that what I should expect from my build running everything with shaders maxed out and 16 GB of ram allocated?

What is your GPU usage?

How do I check? It's not in task manager.

MSI Afterburner

92% GPU, 20% CPU

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

92% GPU, 20% CPU usage sounds about right, as what I've heard is Minecraft is heavy on the CPU side. If it's not properly multi-threaded, with a single CPU thread maxed out on a 6-core CPU you would be looking at around 16 - 25% CPU usage, which essentially says, one core is being used 100% with a little extra work being done by the CPU on the side.

Your GPU being under 100% says your CPU is your bottleneck in this case.

Change your settings to change the performance.

 

[Slurpee12]

No, you're CPU is not a bottleneck
You're CPU only bottlenecks if usage is above 90% on one core. You are at 20% usage, so you are nowhere near a bottleneck.
It seems that minecraft is just unoptimized for what you want. You can try allocating more ram, going up to 25 and see how it performs. But other than that, you're going to have to play with the settings to get the best performance you want.
You're friend may also be lying, so you have not been able to replicate his settings and performance on better hardware.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

Slurpee12, a 6-core CPU, which according to the build list the OP linked to, is what we're dealing with, and will be showing 16.6% usage total, with one core at 100%. 20% total CPU usage looks very much like a single core bottleneck. Also, the game is written in Java, which is very CPU heavy. If the CPU were not the bottleneck, the GPU would be showing higher usage.

Edit: forgot to mention that with Hyper Threading, the usage will be half the 16.6%.

 

[QuestionableUsername]

Slurpee12, a 6-core CPU, which according to the build list the OP linked to, is what we're dealing with, and will be showing 16.6% usage total, with one core at 100%. 20% total CPU usage looks very much like a single core bottleneck. Also, the game is written in Java, which is very CPU heavy. If the CPU were not the bottleneck, the GPU would be showing higher usage.

Edit: forgot to mention that with Hyper Threading, the usage will be half the 16.6%.

(CPU has 6 physical cores and 12 logistical)
Just checked with resource monitor, I'm utilizing 2 (logistical) cores at around 50% and all other cores are ranging from ~5-35%.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

The two logical cores hovering around 50% usage could be one of the quirks of Windows CPU scheduler bouncing your task between two cores really quickly. If you want to check, set the processor affinity of your task that is using the highest percentage to a single core, and see if the usage moves to a single core rather than hitting up two cores. Whether this will change the performance of your task much is something you'll have to check on a per task basis. There is a slight overhead on moving a task between cores, but there is probably a congestion benefit to keeping two cores half-loaded over keeping one fully loaded, but the pay off may not be there until most cores are under load.

 

[QuestionableUsername]

The two logical cores hovering around 50% usage could be one of the quirks of Windows CPU scheduler bouncing your task between two cores really quickly. If you want to check, set the processor affinity of your task that is using the highest percentage to a single core, and see if the usage moves to a single core rather than hitting up two cores. Whether this will change the performance of your task much is something you'll have to check on a per task basis. There is a slight overhead on moving a task between cores, but there is probably a congestion benefit to keeping two cores half-loaded over keeping one fully loaded, but the pay off may not be there until most cores are under load.

I'm not exactly sure that that means or how to do it.... Can you please elaborate?

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

Setting affinity for a task in Windows basically tells the process which CPU and core it can run on. If set to a single core, you'll see a more accurate per core usage, but it isn't useful unless you are experiencing reduced performance due to the overhead in switching the task from core to core. If you only have a single high priority task, this probably won't affect performance much at all, but if you have multiple high priority tasks spread across multiple cores, having your task shuttled to a busy core may result in your tasks getting starved for time when they needn't be. It's really up to the program creator to deal with the optimization of their software, not Windows.

If you want to play around with the affinity of a running task, open Windows Task Manager, switch to the Details tab, select the task you wish to modify and right mouse-click it. Select Set affinity from the context menu and set which core or cores you wish the task to run on.

This change is only temporary. As soon as you restart the task, the affinity goes back to normal.