Newbie - i5-4690 is maxed out 100% is that normal?

[Ollie Guest]

Hi all, I'm quite new into pc gaming (convert from playstation). I built a pc recently with i5-4690 3.50ghz quad which I was lead to believe was a good cpu to handle most top games. I also have a amd Radeon R9 280 3gb and 8gb ram. Is this not a good enough system to run top games, I cant even run far cry on Low settings.

I get micro stuttering, sound delays and cpu maxed out. If anyone could help me with this it'd be great.

And please be honest if you think my system just isn't good enough and any possible suggestions upgrade wise.

Thanks

[Sparhawk122]

Well I'm having the same issue and I'm using an i7-4960x@4.1GHz OCd and a GTX 780Ti so go figure... If CPUs like mine are already having issues minus the cores that aren't being utilised. Well if devs don't start to utilising all cores soon we will need CPUs that hit the 5.0GHz barrier and beyond for each core very soon. And when the bloody hell is DirectX12 going to be released? How long.

Edit> Note: I don't have intergrated graphics in my Rig.

[the velvet hammer]

No the enitre CPU shouldn't be maxed out. Core 0 through 4 might all have something running on it and core 0 may be maxed out but all eight cores should not be running at 100%. The micro stuttering happens to small degree still(software issue was real prevalent at launch but much better now if not gone for some configurations) and Idk about the sound delays.

Again though, your entire CPU should not be maxed. Maybe a one of your CPUs but not all of them. If so, then something else is going on. Most games don't use more than two cores, the highest they can use is four. So CPU issues are a "made-up" problem. Companies do this so a wider array of systems can play their games.

TL;DR Entire CPU shouldn't be used, look at what other processes and apps are going on, along with if you truly put it together yourself make sure that you enabled all cores in your BIOS.

[Chesty La'Rou]

Originally posted by the velvet hammer:

No the enitre CPU shouldn't be maxed out. Core 0 through 4 might all have something running on it and core 0 may be maxed out but all eight cores should not be running at 100%. The micro stuttering happens to small degree still(software issue was real prevalent at launch but much better now if not gone for some configurations) and Idk about the sound delays.

Again though, your entire CPU should not be maxed. Maybe a one of your CPUs but not all of them. If so, then something else is going on. Most games don't use more than two cores, the highest they can use is four. So CPU issues are a "made-up" problem. Companies do this so a wider array of systems can play their games.

TL;DR Entire CPU shouldn't be used, look at what other processes and apps are going on, along with if you truly put it together yourself make sure that you enabled all cores in your BIOS.

It's an i5...It's only got 4 cores and 4 threads. If I turn off hyper threading on my i7 3770k core usage goes from ~50% to ~85%. Depending on what he has running in the background as well it is entirely possible to have 100% on i5 running Far Cry 4.

[Teun2408]

your cpu is good enough to run this, and your gpu too. if your cpu is 100% you should look in the taskmanager what takes all the cpu power, because its probably not this game. maybe you got a virus or malware etc. or it can be the case that you run the game on the onboard graphics from your cpu instead of your R9 280. you can look at this video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCh9Eob0mNY which shows you how to switch from your intel hd to your gpu.

[bigbenisdaman]

Originally posted by Chesty La'Rou:

Originally posted by the velvet hammer:

No the enitre CPU shouldn't be maxed out. Core 0 through 4 might all have something running on it and core 0 may be maxed out but all eight cores should not be running at 100%. The micro stuttering happens to small degree still(software issue was real prevalent at launch but much better now if not gone for some configurations) and Idk about the sound delays.

Again though, your entire CPU should not be maxed. Maybe a one of your CPUs but not all of them. If so, then something else is going on. Most games don't use more than two cores, the highest they can use is four. So CPU issues are a "made-up" problem. Companies do this so a wider array of systems can play their games.

TL;DR Entire CPU shouldn't be used, look at what other processes and apps are going on, along with if you truly put it together yourself make sure that you enabled all cores in your BIOS.

It's an i5...It's only got 4 cores and 4 threads. If I turn off hyper threading on my i7 3770k core usage goes from ~50% to ~85%. Depending on what he has running in the background as well it is entirely possible to have 100% on i5 running Far Cry 4.

Uhh I don't that's quite accurate, i'm running a 3570k and my 3rd core tends to go to 80% at times, the other 3 stay <50% most the time. Like in cities and all where there's lots of people I see 65-70% use max.

OP, as mentioned check your task manager and sort it by cpu to find out what's up. It may be like a antivirus or something that keeps wanting to scan.

Also make sure you have your monitor/tv plugged into your gpu, and not the motherboard to ensure as mentioned above that your 280 is running the game and not the igpu.

Check your ram usage too, with 8 gigs that leaves you about 6.5-7 of usable before it starts eating into the virtual memory (your hard drive). With the memory leak still present after a few min mine easily uses that amount. I wish ram was cheap still cus that used to be a easy $30 for 8 gig fix...

[Ollie Guest]

Thanks for the feedback, all 4 cores are in use and jump from 85% to 100% rapidly.
Task manager states the game is using all of that up, I have gamebooster installed which gets rid of any unwanted tasks.

Ram usage is tiny, out of 8gb there is 6gb at least left