High CPU consumption during older gameplay indicates potential performance issues.
High CPU consumption during older gameplay indicates potential performance issues.
Hey everyone, I recently upgraded my PC from the 9900K to the 13700KF and everything has been smooth so far. But two days ago I tried playing Far Cry 4 again and saw my frame rate drop while the GPU usage stayed around 40%. The advanced overlay showed CPU usage at 25%. It seems Far Cry 4 is a game that only uses 4 cores, which makes sense since it was released before multi-core CPUs became common. I've adjusted the settings to their lowest levels, but it didn't help much. I also disabled E-cores on my CPU without any improvement. It looks like Borderlands 2 is experiencing the same issue too. Do you have anyone else facing this problem with older games? I didn't encounter this when I was on my 9900K, but it's hard to believe my CPU change caused this...
The problem lies in how the game utilizes your CPU. With 8 processing units, using 25% of it means the game should be running on 4 cores. You mentioned it uses 4 cores, which seems consistent. However, the resolution and settings matter greatly. Lowering the settings might help if your system is older, but it could also reduce performance if background tasks compete for the cores. It’s wise to check your current resolution and adjust accordingly, as using low settings on older games can often lead to suboptimal performance.
Honestly, maybe it's just a minor thing. I ran it on two cores, each getting half the load, at 600 frames per second. For me, that shouldn’t be a big problem—it feels normal. I suspect something else might be affecting your system, but without knowing the exact settings or behavior, it’s hard to say. What would the experience be like if it didn’t use all cores? I don’t see why overall usage would matter in that case.
Well lets break this down. A. Its a old game so its based on OLD hardware that used LESS to make MORE. So clearly a newer CPU is gonna run faster and use less.As to the 25% useage most games run SINGLE COR'd. ESPECIALLY THE OLD GAMES. Why? cause old games aren't that computing intensive. You aren't LOADING the whole open world but rather segments.That load and unload as you hit "triggers" to conveniently load the space that you are currently in. B. Lower graphical settings is offloading the stress of loading onto the CPU meaning your GPU isn't gonna have to work nearly as hard hence the useage is 40%. C. E cores are another way of saying efficiency cores. Less energy and less power. (Kinda why gamers avoid them) They are made with sustainability in mind and not gaming. Hence why most PC gamers don't really talk about it but what you want are P cores or processing core, these are cores in a cpu that are designed for ironically processing. (These use more power but utilize and initialize games more aggressively. What does C. mean then well you basically bought a weaker cpu. with a higher core count from what I'm seeing the 13700KF is basically a daily driver hybrid CPU meant for "workstations" not gaming. More modern newer games will be able to take advantage of the E cores. But with older games chances are the e cores are just redundant cores that don't know what to do as they aren't being queried to compute. Intel e cores are a relatively new tech as in they are LITERALLY like 1.75 years old O...O. So most old games probably don't know what to do with the ecores. 50% of your CPU never existed when old games existed. As such there isn't code for half the CPU to read and compute. (A 2021 CPU that 8 Pcore and 8 Ecore, but ecores never existed for games pre 2021 hence pre 2021 games probably will only at most get to 50% utilization. I was a professional QA tester that worked with multiple builds. And play multiple games and this is kinda the secret sauce that few know cause not many got to mess around with so much hardware. BUT newer games like Dead Space 2020 and Cyberpunk 2077 and open world intensive games that are clearly multicore based are gonna love the 13700KF.
The 13700K(F) stands out as one of the quickest gaming CPUs available today. Games don’t dictate which cores the OS scheduler assigns to programs based on their requirements. Microsoft improved this scheduler together with Intel to better utilize these E and P cores, allowing both types to be used efficiently. This means the age of a game doesn’t affect core allocation since it’s unrelated to how the CPU is assigned. The main benefit of E cores is reduced power usage for tasks that don’t demand much processing, such as RGB lighting effects. Consequently, P cores remain idle for non-power-intensive activities and are typically reserved for heavy computation tasks like gaming.
In the conclusion of my remarks, it's beneficial for new-generation titles but older games weren't built with multi-core processing in mind. They depend on single-core systems because that's the setup they were originally designed for. Running a massive supercomputer could lead to underutilization or complete lack of use if the software doesn't support those cores or their commands.