Processing demands spike during gameplay. Check system performance for bottlenecks.
Processing demands spike during gameplay. Check system performance for bottlenecks.
For a few months now I've noticed that my CPU is always at high CPU usage while playing games. I'm having trouble addressing or understanding the issue so I'll try listing down the facts so far: It's i5 6600K that's overclocked to 4.5Ghz on an Asus Z170a motherboard. The GPU is a MSI GTX 970. It's not a cooling problem, the highest its gotten to is 75 Celsius while processing videos in Sony Vegas. I downloaded the free version of Driver Booster in order to update all my drivers. I've updated Windows whenever possible. I recently moved my OS to a new M.2 SSD while keeping the old hard drive for games (I think I partitioned the disks weirdly because I have a recovery and local disk that have 400 MB in them along side my Hard drive and SSD) I upgraded to 3200 MHz 16GB RAM WMI Provider Host usually takes around 10% at all times, even when I'm doing nothing. (I checked online for solutions on this but I found none worked) It commonly will spike to 100% CPU usage in games like Overwatch, Borderlands 2, and Saints Row 4 at low settings. I downloaded QuickCPU and unparked my cores while maxing out a lot of the values to attempt at getting better performance. I view the usage in Task Manager and sometimes QuickCPU The reason I'm asking this now is that I heard from my friend that he was getting 8% CPU usage on Saints Row 4 while I was getting 88-100%. His computer was around the same price as mine and built 8 years ago. I built mine 5 years ago. I'm wondering if this is normal or if I have to just wipe my pc and reinstall windows. Before my PC could run Overwatch low quality 144 Fps no problem but now it keeps frame dropping, my only assumption is that it's my CPU's problem because it reaches 100% while my GPU is at around 30%. Maybe it's the poor optimization of the games themselves but I feel like that isn't right either. If you guys could give me a way to diagnosis the problem that would be nice. A solution would be even better! Anyways if there's no other way I guess you can link me some videos with steps on how to reinstall windows while keeping my old programs. To be honest, it would be very annoying redownloading all those drivers, I don't think I have the disks anymore, but I'll get them online if I have to. Thank you in advance if you read this super long post and help.
The only way to achieve 8% CPU usage is with something like a 12-core processor. Modern games typically use more cores, which makes its normal (my 6600K had similar usage when I played GTA).
Thanks for your responses. I believed the games would perform better given their age, but seven years feels short. I suspect frame drops stem from something other than my GPU, which is currently operating at 30-50% usage based on fight intensity in Overwatch. I’ll keep exploring further. That’s the only other possibility I’ve considered. Perhaps a Windows reinstall is the best solution. My last guess is that Overwatch has undergone numerous updates, causing performance issues compared to a couple of years ago. I recently watched a video from two years back showing the GTX 970 consistently achieving 160-180 fps, whereas my game runs at 144 fps and experiences drops to 80-50 during intense moments. I’ll figure this out eventually. Again, thank you all!
You might connect your GPU to a friend's machine using a faster CPU, and if you see higher FPS then your CPU is limiting performance