Question Low FPS yet CPU, GPU, and RAM consumption remain between 30-40%.
Question Low FPS yet CPU, GPU, and RAM consumption remain between 30-40%.
I constructed my PC around two years ago, and it hasn't performed exactly as expected anymore. It operates at only 30-40% of the hardware capabilities, yet some games experience very low FPS even when not at maximum settings. I disable V-Sync and have the newest Nvidia driver installed. Anyone know what might be causing this?
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System specs: Ryzen 9 7950x, RTX 4080 FE, 64GB DDR5 Corsair Vengeance, Gigabyte B650M motherboard (approximate), 1000W Corsair power supply, iCue Liquid CPU cooler.
Additional information needed: full system specifications, including CPU cooler, motherboard details, RAM, SSD/HDD, GPU, PSU model, chassis, OS, monitor, and BIOS version.
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I highly doubt that a year-old chipset driver is the cause of your problem.
A 40% load in games with the 7950x is pretty high (it's a 16 core CPU and most games barely use 4 cores). You should be closer to 20% even in CPU demanding games with this CPU. On the other hand, 40% for the GPU is way too low. It should be at 98-99% most of the time. It looks like you are CPU bottlenecked but that shouldn't happen with a 7950x unless there's a problem.
You should monitor your CPU usage at idle to make sure you don't have too much stuff running in background. Also, use HWMonitor to check your temperatures (CPU, GPU, RAM, drives) to make sure you are not thermal throttling somewhere. Also, check the number of CPU cores used during gaming and what clock frequency they are running at.
If you are using a GPU utility software like MSI Afterburner and recently updated the Nvidia driver while it was running in background that could haved screwed up your system (happened to me a few years ago). If it's the case you will have to uninstall both the driver and the software and reinstall them.
And although the latest Nvidia driver seems to be slightly better, they have been struggling since January with a myriad of issues (including performance problems). To rule out this possibility, you could uninstall the current driver and try 566.36 and see if it improves anything. If not, then just go back to the latest version.
By the way, using a B650 motherboard with a 7950x is far from being ideal. A high-end CPU should not be paired with a low-end mobo.
And what is your RAM frequency and timing? Did you ever enable EXPO?
It might be due to having two CCD CPU units, which could be impacted by core parking if the chipset drivers are outdated.
This isn't accurate for most AAA games; they don't gain much advantage from more than four cores, but they do use them all, sometimes even every available core. They execute the same process across all of them and select the latest frame from the core that reached the frame rate sooner.
GPU performance is also strongly influenced by resolution. If a game runs at 1080p (the G3 supports this), a 40% usage rate seems reasonable, while less demanding titles will perform better even at higher resolutions like 1440p.
I think it's important to check the performance standards of certain games to ensure they match your system's capabilities.
I should have mentioned "barely fully use 4 cores". While all cores can be utilized to some extent, games seldom require more than four simultaneously. A 16-core/32-thread CPU won’t run at full capacity for long in most titles, and a game won’t load it to 50%. This is why users worry about GPU limitations because their CPU isn’t hitting 100%, but that’s unlikely unless there’s an actual issue. He claims low FPS, yet he should achieve very high frame rates with a 7950x and a 4080, particularly at 1080p (though resolution isn’t known). A 40% GPU utilization suggests the CPU is heavily constrained, even though the 7950x is strong. Performance is subjective, but if he consistently sees low FPS, something needs to be addressed.