I5 4460 Bottlenecking gtx 970? :(

[DannyDorito]

Ive been having this issue for almost a year now. Pretty much any game i play gives me 100% cpu usage and around 65-90% gpu usage. I was planning on buying a new cpu but i kept reading all over some forums and everybody keeps saying the i5 4460 should be perfect for the 970 (I play on 1080p only btw) So I have no idea if this is normal and literally everyone in the forums is misinformed or I just have some huge incompatibility with my build that does this.

Full specs:
GPU: MSI GTX 970 Armor OC
CPU: Core i5 4460 3.2 ghz
PSU: Corsair CX600
HDD: Seagate ST1000DM003
Motherboard: Gigabyte H81M-S2H

Any help is much appreciated but do keep in mind im not a total newbie, i update my drivers regularly, check if all my stuff is compatible, monitor my temps and ive never attempted overclocking or doing something dumb in my bios.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

The 4460 should have no issues handling the 970.

 

[clutchc]

There's no way the i5-4460 should bottleneck a GTX 970. And definitely not at that rate! I suspect something else is going on. Malware hogging CPU time and resources? Virus? Too much crap running at Win boot in the background?
You might see if running CCleaner to clean up software conflicts, registry errors, etc will help: https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner
Give Malwarebytes a run too.

What in-game settings do you play at? What screen rez?

 

[DannyDorito]

The 4460 should have no issues handling the 970.

Well clearly something is wrong because im getting mad cpu usage in all my games

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

It's a great combo it shouldn't struggle like you stated.

 

[DannyDorito]

There's no way the i5-4460 should bottleneck a GTX 970. And definitely not at that rate! I suspect something else is going on. Malware hogging CPU time and resources? Virus? Too much crap running at Win boot in the background?
You might see if running CCleaner to clean up software conflicts, registry errors, etc will help: https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner
Give Malwarebytes a run too.

What in-game settings do you play at? What screen rez?

Ive completely wiped my hard drive about 3 weeks ago and its still pretty clean, no junk files or too many start up apps (only stuff like steam, discord, nvidia share) and ive scanned my whole computer with windows defender AND malwarebytes less than 2 weeks ago for about 3 hours straight so no malware. And as i said before, i run games only in 1080p and i modify my settings for the best performance and visual balance possible yet i still have horrible bottlenecking. I have been looking all over the internet since i bought the gtx 970 and have found nothing close to a solution or hint to this problem.

 

[DannyDorito]

It's a great combo it shouldn't struggle like you stated.

I don't mean to offend but you aren't really helping at all. There IS a clear problem no matter what you say.

 

[clutchc]

Run Firestrike and post your results. Maybe we can tell if it is a CPU issues or something else. Unless it's a hardware issue like the board or the PSU, I can't think of why the GPU usage would be so low vs the CPU usage.
I've had several CPU/GTX 970 combos. Maybe I can compare with your results.

 

[DannyDorito]

Run Firestrike and post your results. Maybe we can tell if it is a CPU issues or something else. Unless it's a hardware issue like the board or the PSU, I can't think of why the GPU usage would be so low vs the CPU usage.
I've had several CPU/GTX 970 combos. Maybe I can compare with your results.

Heres the results: https://gyazo.com/450d6aefad94ebdcb228259adeb2aa5d

 

[DannyDorito]

Run Firestrike and post your results. Maybe we can tell if it is a CPU issues or something else. Unless it's a hardware issue like the board or the PSU, I can't think of why the GPU usage would be so low vs the CPU usage.
I've had several CPU/GTX 970 combos. Maybe I can compare with your results.

Oh, and i forgot to mention that i have 8 gigs of ram if thats of any use.

 

[clutchc]

Run Firestrike and post your results. Maybe we can tell if it is a CPU issues or something else. Unless it's a hardware issue like the board or the PSU, I can't think of why the GPU usage would be so low vs the CPU usage.
I've had several CPU/GTX 970 combos. Maybe I can compare with your results.

Heres the results: https://gyazo.com/450d6aefad94ebdcb228259adeb2aa5d

Yeah, that's quite a bit low. And your physics score is even worse.
My FX-8350 @ 4.7GHz gets 88xx scores. My old Xeon W3670 manages a 9636 score. Both with a GTX 970. But the 12 threads boost the Xeon score.


Did you happen to check CPU usage while running Firestrike? It should have hit ~100% usage sometime during the benchmark. One test does gfx using just the CPU. Also...
Do it again and run HWinfo in the background. It will tell if the CPU is throttling.
I presume your core temps are OK?

 

[DJDeCiBeL]

This really isn't the fairest comparison, but my Firestrike score is ~10,500 depending on the GPU OC at the time. My physics score is ~10,300 on its own, though, mostly because of my CPU OC. GPU score is roughly 12,500, but as I said, I OC that, too.

In any case, yeah, your scores don't really meet the expectations for the hardware you have.

 

[madmatt30]

What your OS ?? Cant see it stated anywhere.
What's your cpu usage like when idling or doing non intensive everyday tasks.

 

[DannyDorito]

What your OS ?? Cant see it stated anywhere.
What's your cpu usage like when idling or doing non intensive everyday tasks.

Windows 10 Pro 64bit
My cpu usage hovers in between 20-35% in idle 10 minutes after launch
UPDATE: Im replying to you guys right now and im seeing regular spikes to above 50% usage.

 

[DannyDorito]

Run Firestrike and post your results. Maybe we can tell if it is a CPU issues or something else. Unless it's a hardware issue like the board or the PSU, I can't think of why the GPU usage would be so low vs the CPU usage.
I've had several CPU/GTX 970 combos. Maybe I can compare with your results.

Heres the results: https://gyazo.com/450d6aefad94ebdcb228259adeb2aa5d

Yeah, that's quite a bit low. And your physics score is even worse.
My FX-8350 @ 4.7GHz gets 88xx scores. My old Xeon W3670 manages a 9636 score. Both with a GTX 970. But the 12 threads boost the Xeon score.


Did you happen to check CPU usage while running Firestrike? It should have hit ~100% usage sometime during the benchmark. One test does gfx using just the CPU. Also...
Do it again and run HWinfo in the background. It will tell if the CPU is throttling.
I presume your core temps are OK?

I wasnt paying attention to the cpu usage while firestrike was running but I installed HWinfo but I dont understand how to use it.
Btw, my gpu core clock tends to add on about 200 Mhz when I start up a game. Is this normal? And another thing is that my gpu is factory overclocked to 1304 Mhz, could that be something worth taking note of?

 

[madmatt30]

What your OS ?? Cant see it stated anywhere.
What's your cpu usage like when idling or doing non intensive everyday tasks.

Windows 10 Pro 64bit
My cpu usage hovers in between 20-35% in idle 10 minutes after launch
UPDATE: Im replying to you guys right now and im seeing regular spikes to above 50% usage.

Theres some issue in your system mate,30% cpu usage while browsing & spikes to 50% are not normal - while Im typing this on a ivy bridgy minipc with a cutdown 22w dualcore cpu look at my cpu usage in task manager - a massive 12% (40 tabs running at that)

 

[DannyDorito]

What your OS ?? Cant see it stated anywhere.
What's your cpu usage like when idling or doing non intensive everyday tasks.

Windows 10 Pro 64bit
My cpu usage hovers in between 20-35% in idle 10 minutes after launch
UPDATE: Im replying to you guys right now and im seeing regular spikes to above 50% usage.

Theres some issue in your system mate,30% cpu usage while browsing & spikes to 50% are not normal - while Im typing this on a ivy bridgy minipc with a cutdown 22w dualcore cpu look at my cpu usage in task manager - a massive 12% (40 tabs running at that)

Well, could that be because you are running a better cpu than I am? Is there any way of solving this?
UPDATE: I just came back from shopping with my PC running for about 4 hours and the cpu usage is changed, it now hovers below 20% without spikes. Bare in mind I do have quite a few background apps running like battle.net, steam, chrome, discord, nvidia share, razer synapse, adobe update service, origin etc.

 

[madmatt30]

In a word
Battlenet

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/20742986321

Open task manager, open resource manager
Check those 2 files for CPU usage
They may also be pushing heavy disk usage.

 

[clutchc]

I wasnt paying attention to the cpu usage while firestrike was running but I installed HWinfo but I dont understand how to use it.
Btw, my gpu core clock tends to add on about 200 Mhz when I start up a game. Is this normal? And another thing is that my gpu is factory overclocked to 1304 Mhz, could that be something worth taking note of?

Open HWinfo64 and select sensors only. If it the updating dialog box pops up, check the appropriate box so you don't get beta updates. You should be ready to use it now. You'll see various temps, usages, voltages, and such for most of the components in your system. You want to take note of the results in the "maximum" column after running games, stress testing apps, etc.
The clock-looking button at the bottom resets it for another run.