Where is the bottleneck in my system?

[sota81]

I use an E5450 CPU paired with an nVIDIA GTX 560 Ti (1 Gb) and 4Gb DDR2 system memory.
I would like to play World of Tanks in FullHD but on minimum detail settings i have only 15-20 FPS (and often less than 15). It is very silly this way.
What can be the problem?
Which upgrade would be useful? Should I buy a better video card (R9 270X, GTX 750 Ti, 660 Ti, etc.) or should i upgrade my CPU to an I5-3570 and the system memory to 8 Gb DDR3?

Does the amount of the video memory matter?

 

[Eximo]

Hmm. Not really sure actually. You can do some monitoring to find out.

A simple test for CPU would be to have task manager running, you can see a good minute of the CPU usage. Make sure the display is set to logical processors. You can also use this method to see memory consumption. (Task Manager in late versions of Windows 10 also will display GPU usage.)

MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision can be run in the background to get GPU usage.

This will slow you down slightly, but it will be worth it to know. My guess would be your CPU is biggest problem, the GPU is quite a bit newer. More ram won't hurt, but it probably isn't worth it to spend money on a DDR2 system.

If nothing else, look into a Ryzen 2200G + 8GB DDR4 3000Mhz and a nice B350/B450 motherboard. That should replace all your problem components, including graphics, until you can afford to upgrade again.

 

[sota81]

Thank you. I will make a monitoring with MSI Afterburner and I will bring the results here.

Anyway isn't this low FPS surprising at minimum detail settings even with this system?

Could it be better (more FPS) on a 1280x1024 monitor?

 

[Eximo]

As compared to what? Lower resolution means higher frame rates, yes, but it puts more burden on the CPU to feed the GPU with data. If your CPU is the problem it will make little difference.

 

[sota81]

GPU 36°C 0% 51MHz 20%
MEM 921MB
CPU1 51°C 31%
CPU2 56°C 49%
CPU3 55°C 31%
CPU4 58°C 48%
RAM 2972MB 4897MB
D3D11 13FPS

These were the most general measured values.

What do the 0% and the 20% mean at the GPU??? May some problem be with my video card?

 

[Eximo]

Well, that GPU measurement would be under idle conditions, so not useful data. You should see a temperature around 80C and the clock frequency to be much higher. 51Mhz indicates it isn't revved up at all. Not sure about the 20% part.

It does show your CPU being about half load, so it isn't really a problem. Though that doesn't mean much if the GPU wasn't really doing anything at the time.

If you haven't tried re-installing your graphics drivers or updating them lately?

 

[sota81]

Well, that GPU measurement would be under idle conditions, so not useful data. You should see a temperature around 80C and the clock frequency to be much higher. 51Mhz indicates it isn't revved up at all. Not sure about the 20% part.

It does show your CPU being about half load, so it isn't really a problem. Though that doesn't mean much if the GPU wasn't really doing anything at the time.

If you haven't tried re-installing your graphics drivers or updating them lately?

I will try to update the video driver.

Anyway how can I be sure that the video card is "alive" and is able to do what it has to?
Is there any chance that some functions of the GPU are dead?

 

[Eximo]

Usually all or nothing unless it is overheating instantly, the cooler might be detached.

 

[sota81]

Well, that GPU measurement would be under idle conditions, so not useful data. You should see a temperature around 80C and the clock frequency to be much higher. 51Mhz indicates it isn't revved up at all. Not sure about the 20% part.

It does show your CPU being about half load, so it isn't really a problem. Though that doesn't mean much if the GPU wasn't really doing anything at the time.

If you haven't tried re-installing your graphics drivers or updating them lately?

 

[sota81]

And that was the winner idea.
I guess my video card driver was not set properly. Now it is I think.

I changed the resolution back to 1920x1080 in the game and adjusted all possible detail settings to maximum (at least what is available in base graphics mode (not advanced)) and got the following results:

GPU 75°C 51% 823MHz 49%
MEM 652MB
CPU1 64°C 83%
CPU2 66°C 45%
CPU3 68°C 59%
CPU4 70°C 55%
RAM 3272MB 4301MB
D3D11 128 FPS (!!!) (that was a light replay, but in real game, where there are many vehicles moving and there are explosions and etc. general: between 30 and 60 FPS).

Thanks for help