Question i7-6800k, one thread does all the work in games

[joheker]

Hello. I have a question regarding the workload of my CPU when playing games. I have a i7-6800k and whenever i play games (more or less every game i've tried), one of the threads almost always instantly gets 100% workload, which seems to bottleneck my gpu (most of the time my GPU works at ~60-80%). For me this feels strange since the choice of game doesnt seem to matter and its mostly the same thread (cpu #10) that does all the heavy lifting. In some games the thread gets tanked instantly before i even reach some kind of menu, and stays at 100% until i exit the game. I have overclocked the cpu to 4.2 ghz but this issue existed before i started to overclock as well. Its not unusual that cpu #10 has 100% workload while many other threads are at ~10-20 %.

I am not very familiar with things as bottlenecks etc. but when watch benchmark videos on youtube with similar or lower spec components the CPU workload seems much more balanced.

Does anyone recognize what could be going on here and if it's a solvable issue?

Here is a link to my latest benchmark from userbenchmark: https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/45776755

This is a screenshot from hwmonitor when being idle in the main menu of witcher 3 with fps capped at 60: https://imgshare.io/image/bench.pkSULn (the numbers are the same when playing the game as well and changing graphics settings has no effect).

 

[Deleted member 1560910]

Im sure its running fine. The user bench scores looked great. That witcher photo doesnt work try going into Novigrad

 

[rgd1101]

new build or upgrade?
malware scan the system?

 

[joheker]

new build or upgrade?
malware scan the system?

This is an upgraded system. I added RAM and GPU about six months ago the rest is about 3 years old but i havent really been monitoring performance thoroughly until now.
Malware scan did not find anything suspicious.

 

[joheker]

Im sure its running fine. The user bench scores looked great. That witcher photo doesnt work try going into Novigrad

Yes the games are mostly running fine, but im still interested in whether or not this is something that can be improved or fixed. Even if the games are running fine it seems as if there is always a bottleneck from my CPU because of this thread doing all the work (even on much less demanding games such as gunfire reborn or borderlands 2).

 

[Bob.B]

Hello. I have a question regarding the workload of my CPU when playing games. I have a i7-6800k and whenever i play games (more or less every game i've tried), one of the threads almost always instantly gets 100% workload, which seems to bottleneck my gpu (most of the time my GPU works at ~60-80%). For me this feels strange since the choice of game doesnt seem to matter and its mostly the same thread (cpu #10) that does all the heavy lifting. In some games the thread gets tanked instantly before i even reach some kind of menu, and stays at 100% until i exit the game. I have overclocked the cpu to 4.2 ghz but this issue existed before i started to overclock as well. Its not unusual that cpu #10 has 100% workload while many other threads are at ~10-20 %.

I am not very familiar with things as bottlenecks etc. but when watch benchmark videos on youtube with similar or lower spec components the CPU workload seems much more balanced.

Does anyone recognize what could be going on here and if it's a solvable issue?

Here is a link to my latest benchmark from userbenchmark: https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/45776755

This is a screenshot from hwmonitor when being idle in the main menu of witcher 3 with fps capped at 60: https://imgshare.io/image/bench.pkSULn (the numbers are the same when playing the game as well and changing graphics settings has no effect).

This seems to have to do with the windows scheduler.
If you want to dig into that it's some weenie stuff.

You seem to be running a beta bios did it do that before you installed that bios?

 

[joheker]

This seems to have to do with the windows scheduler.
If you want to dig into that it's some weenie stuff.

You seem to be running a beta bios did it do that before you installed that bios?

I don't really want to get too deep into wierd stuff to do something about it since it actually doesnt bother me on a pure perfomance level.
Yes the behavior was there before i got the beta bios.

 

[joheker]

I just tried to not allow the game application to use thread #10 with the "set affinity" setting in task manager . And interestingly this alone seems to spread out the workload much more evenly among all the other threads. Now it looks more like this https://ibb.co/0FbqKpG. Though i cant understand why this would work.

 

[Bob.B]

I just tried to not allow the game application to use thread #10 with the "set affinity" setting in task manager . And interestingly this alone seems to spread out the workload much more evenly among all the other threads. Now it looks more like this https://ibb.co/0FbqKpG. Though i cant understand why this would work.

Just curious does the game run any better?
Affinity is not something I have ever played with.

 

[joheker]

Just curious does the game run any better?
Affinity is not something I have ever played with.

Its hard to say. Performance wise this was not really an issue before, but it did seem to unlock some extra utilization from the GPU. I may need to test this on some more demanding game and see if i can notice any obvious difference.

 

[TerryLaze]

with fps capped at 60:

Well, there's your problem.
If you give modern games a limit they will only use as much CPU as they need to reach that limit, try unlocking FPS and see the CPU usage sore. (Performance will not necessarily increase as well)

As for only core 10 being used, as was already said, it's a feature the CPU knows which core has the best performance/efficiency and will use prefer to use that core.

 

[joheker]

Well, there's your problem.
If you give modern games a limit they will only use as much CPU as they need to reach that limit, try unlocking FPS and see the CPU usage sore. (Performance will not necessarily increase as well)

As for only core 10 being used, as was already said, it's a feature the CPU knows which core has the best performance/efficiency and will use prefer to use that core.

It did not seem to be any difference in the cpu usage for thread #10. Some of the other threads increased their load with ~5%. The game runs in ~110 fps uncapped with the difference that there are more frequent noticeable drops/stuttering. If i however play with unlimited fps and disable thread #10 the stuttering seems to disappear completely.