Low GPU and(!) CPU usage, bad performance, please help!

[thecatwithahat]

Hello everyone!

I decided to start this topic because I just dont know whats wrong and what I can do. Ive been playing FC5 with a good friend of mine for around 25 hours now and I am getting bad performance across the board.

Here is my spec:

Intel i7 7700 (non k)
GTX 1080
16GB RAM
game installed on SSD
Latest video drivers.

I am running this game on Ultra settings, resolution is 1920x1080, resolution scale is 1, V-sync and framerate lock is turned off, FOV is at 90.

My problem is, my game does not want to use my PCs power and it results in bad FPS. Example: destroying a stationary roadblock while being stationary myself, that starts a fire, the fire on the road drops my fps to 43fps, meanwhile my GPU is at 55% load, my CPU at around 60-65%

Now, i know a bit about games and computers, playing without v-sync should max out either the gpu or the cpu, one or the other will always be the bottleneck. To confirm that, I started up another ubisoft game I have installed, The Division, here is the result

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1443022656

I ran a bit around with game settings maxed out, running with v-sync and framelock turned off and either my CPU or GPU will hit full load, as it should be, the game utilizes all the power it can and gives me good FPS

Then I started up Far Cry 5 and I get this

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1443040523

As you see, there is not even much happening on the screen and the fps already dropped all the way to 50s, meanwhile neither GPU or CPU are maxed out.

Please, fellow gamers, I need your help, what could be causing this? What can I do to solve this problem? Has any of you had a similar problem with this game or maybe some other game, how did you solve it?

P.S. Sorry for the long rant.

[EternallyHers]

Messaggio originale di Sashi:

CPU can be on "max load" with 50% due to core/thread usage. Thats not hard to understand, except for you

OC your CPU.

In addition to that:

You are asking for help, you are recieving some advices (DSR, Scaling) but you won't try it.

People like you are super annoying.

I disagree with that highly. First off if the max load was 50%, my computer would be freezing and having crazy stutters when it goes above 50% usage. 50-60% cpu usage in the woods runs fine at 80fps but it's when approaching unliberated outposts it has 50-60% cpu usage with 2 threads going into the 70's. As soon as that same outpost is liberated it shoots up to the 90's again. Too bad they couldn't have used the same ai from FC3 OR FC4, those ran perfectly fine.

Further more, Assassins creed origins which was made for 6 cores or more. It constantly runs 95% on an i7 4790k in Alexandria without many issues. But youre trying to say 50% is a bottleneck? Please explain the logic behind that. I know that they're different engines but still, it's a lack of optimization on Ubisofts part in FC5 that's the problem.

I tried the dsr suggestion and while it does make the gpu usage go up, it's an expensive way of getting antialiasing and isn't worth the 20 lower fps in the liberated outposts/woods. The gpu usage also still drops to the 80's when near enemy outposts as well.

[EternallyHers]

Messaggio originale di RedIndianRobin:

Uninstall your current graphics drivers with DDU and try something of an older version.

Does anybody have a graphics driver version they'd recommend for the gtx 10 series?

[FeilDOW]

Messaggio originale di EternallyHers:

Messaggio originale di Sashi:

CPU can be on "max load" with 50% due to core/thread usage. Thats not hard to understand, except for you

OC your CPU.

In addition to that:

You are asking for help, you are recieving some advices (DSR, Scaling) but you won't try it.

People like you are super annoying.

I disagree with that highly. First off if the max load was 50%, my computer would be freezing and having crazy stutters when it goes above 50% usage. 50-60% cpu usage in the woods runs fine at 80fps but it's when approaching unliberated outposts it has 50-60% cpu usage with 2 threads going into the 70's. As soon as that same outpost is liberated it shoots up to the 90's again. Too bad they couldn't have used the same ai from FC3 OR FC4, those ran perfectly fine.

Further more, Assassins creed origins which was made for 6 cores or more. It constantly runs 95% on an i7 4790k in Alexandria without many issues. But youre trying to say 50% is a bottleneck? Please explain the logic behind that. I know that they're different engines but still, it's a lack of optimization on Ubisofts part in FC5 that's the problem.

I tried the dsr suggestion and while it does make the gpu usage go up, it's an expensive way of getting antialiasing and isn't worth the 20 lower fps in the liberated outposts/woods. The gpu usage also still drops to the 80's when near enemy outposts as well.

Again, Far Cry 5 will only use 4cores so that is 60-70% usage with 4c/8t and your GPU limited. Not really that hard to understand.

[RedIndianRobin]

Messaggio originale di EternallyHers:

Does anybody have a graphics driver version they'd recommend for the gtx 10 series?

Try 388.13. Gives me an average of 15 fps on almost all games. Maybe Nvidia started gimping already?

[Tim]

Try! set priority to high in task manager.

[EternallyHers]

388.13 and setting task manager to high didn't have any effects. Thanks for the suggestions though. Tried disabling fullscreen optimization and that didn't do anything either.

[thecatwithahat]

Okay, I reinstalled the game and gonna test some things out, funny thing I have to point out right away, when I boot up the game, during those first several screens with warnings and logos, before hiting the main menu(that is always locked at 60fps no matter what), the CPU usage actually goes up to 100% on several cores and fps shoots up in the hundreds ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[EternallyHers]

Messaggio originale di FeilDOW:

Messaggio originale di EternallyHers:

I disagree with that highly. First off if the max load was 50%, my computer would be freezing and having crazy stutters when it goes above 50% usage. 50-60% cpu usage in the woods runs fine at 80fps but it's when approaching unliberated outposts it has 50-60% cpu usage with 2 threads going into the 70's. As soon as that same outpost is liberated it shoots up to the 90's again. Too bad they couldn't have used the same ai from FC3 OR FC4, those ran perfectly fine.

Further more, Assassins creed origins which was made for 6 cores or more. It constantly runs 95% on an i7 4790k in Alexandria without many issues. But youre trying to say 50% is a bottleneck? Please explain the logic behind that. I know that they're different engines but still, it's a lack of optimization on Ubisofts part in FC5 that's the problem.

I tried the dsr suggestion and while it does make the gpu usage go up, it's an expensive way of getting antialiasing and isn't worth the 20 lower fps in the liberated outposts/woods. The gpu usage also still drops to the 80's when near enemy outposts as well.

Again, Far Cry 5 will only use 4cores so that is 60-70% usage with 4c/8t and your GPU limited. Not really that hard to understand.

Buddy, the GPU only runs 70% around outposts which is the problem and the CPU is only pushing 60% with a couple threads in the 70's. The issue isn't with the cpu or gpu being the bottleneck.

What I'm saying is that sure DSR increases the GPU usage but it doesn't fix the frame rate problems. That's with 32gb 2400mhz ram(overkill for gaming but I need it for 3d modeling) and it's installed on an ssd.

To the OP, let me know how it goes.

[thecatwithahat]

Messaggio originale di Tim:

Try! set priority to high in task manager.

It wont let me do it, I get acces denied error, both uplay and far cry 5 running as admin, quick google search revealed I am not the only one, some say it has to do with fc5 anti-cheat, some guy on reddit got a workaround by messing with the registy, but i am too dumb and scared to do that.

https://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/1860976-FarCry5-exe-process-priority-set-at-Below-Normal/page2?s=3817c78a97cbb8b4cee510d85282deda

https://www.reddit.com/r/farcry/comments/8b0p6q/trying_to_identify_the_source_far_cry_5_low_fps/

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/89z0dt/wtf_far_cry_5_cant_at_cpu_priority_to_high_access/

https://www.reddit.com/r/farcry/comments/8c9n48/for_those_of_you_trying_to_increase_the_cpu/

[↑↑↓↓←→←→BASelect]

Why worry about a few fps drop if the game still runs good even with the few frame drops who cares. Stop worrying about a few frame drops and enjoy the game. If you never used the fps counter you would never ever know it was dropping a few frames.
The only way you would be able to tell any major difference is if it started acting like a slide show. But for pete sake stop watching the counter and watch and enjoy the game so what it drops a few frames as long as the game is playable nothing else matters.
My game drops from 60 down to 55 57 fps so what it still runs good and i wouldn't of known that if i didn't have a counter. But so what it's only a few frames. and with out the counter i wouldn't even known at all. So stop watching the counter and start watching the game.

[thecatwithahat]

Messaggio originale di Trump came out of the closet:

Why worry about a few fps drop if the game still runs good even with the few frame drops who cares. Stop worrying about a few frame drops and enjoy the game. If you never used the fps counter you would never ever know it was dropping a few frames.
The only way you would be able to tell any major difference is if it started acting like a slide show. But for pete sake stop watching the counter and watch and enjoy the game so what it drops a few frames as long as the game is playable nothing else matters.

Oh trust me, for the first 15 hours I did not use any FPS counter, but gaming at locked 60fps for years made me sensitive to such things, I can feel even FPS dropping from 60 to say 50, but its not my situation, its dropping to high 30s low 40s at times! That is like what? 2/3 of normal fps? That is a severe and trust me very very noticeable FPS drop, I would not be here if it was bereable. I enjoy the game, it must tell you something that I clocked 25 hours in it before creating this topic, but the issues has been so annoying i got fed up with it and decided to try and solve it, please if you dont have any actual help or advice on solving this games performances on my machine besides "turn off fps counter", please refrain from posting.

[↑↑↓↓←→←→BASelect]

Messaggio originale di thecatwithahat:

Messaggio originale di Trump came out of the closet:

Why worry about a few fps drop if the game still runs good even with the few frame drops who cares. Stop worrying about a few frame drops and enjoy the game. If you never used the fps counter you would never ever know it was dropping a few frames.
The only way you would be able to tell any major difference is if it started acting like a slide show. But for pete sake stop watching the counter and watch and enjoy the game so what it drops a few frames as long as the game is playable nothing else matters.

Oh trust me, for the first 5 hours I did not use any FPS counter, but gaming at locked 60fps for years made me sensitive to such things, I can feel even FPS dropping from 60 to say 50, but its not my situation, its dropping to high 30s low 40s at times! That is like what? 2/3 of normal fps? That is a severe and trust me very very noticeable FPS drop, I would not be here if it was bereable. I enjoy the game, it must tell you something that I clocked 25 hours in it before creating this topic, but the issues has been so annoying i got fed up with it and decided to try and solve it, please if you dont have any actual help or advice on solving this games performances on my machine besides "turn off fps counter", please refrain from posting.

Oh i know everything about fps and how it works been a gamer since i was 6 playing on the atari 2600 (only console i ever owned) and started pc gaming when windows 95 came out.
Also it's a public fourm you can't tell people who can write or not write on a public forum.
Reinstall windows and all drivers fresh and start out fresh that will fix any problem with fps's. Some crap is running in the background causing you problems a fresh install of windows will fix that right up. And get you gaming in the 100fps area like me. More then likely it is a back ground process causing you problems. I have nothing running in the background and only got 15 processes running on my machine.

[thecatwithahat]

Messaggio originale di Trump came out of the closet:

Oh i know everything about fps and how it works been a gamer since i was 6 playing on the atari 2600 (only console i ever owned) and started gaming when windows 95 came out.
Also it's a public fourm you can't tell people who can write or not write on a public forum.
Reinstall windows and all drivers fresh and start out fresh that will fix any problem with fps's. Some crap is running in the background causing you problems a fresh install of windows will fix that right up. And get you gaming in the 100fps area like me.

Its common forum courtesy not to derail the thread, in this case into the argument of "you would not notice it anyway", I am asking for technical help here, not help me change my worldview or something, I am not telling you what you can or can not post, I am kindly asking you to stay on topic and refrain from trying to change the subject.

There is no "crap running in the background" and this is the only game giving me this trouble, if you read the topic, you would see I already adressed the subject. On idle my PC has 1% CPU load, 16% ram usage, 0% hard drive usage, 0% gpu usage, 0% network usage.

To break it down to make it a bit more clear and close the subject of "you got crap in the background"

The 1% CPU load comes mostly from my monitoring tool, MSI Afterburner, its using 0,7-0.8%.
The 0.1%-0.2% is Steam app itself.

The Ram is used largely by the uplay app and steam app, both taking up around 190mb each, the rest is system itself.

Everything else is not being used at all. I reinstalled my video drivers, I am not doing a windows reinstall, because this is a new system that has been running for less than a year (first boot up being November 2017) and it runs perfectly fine and with games that are actually optimized all of my system resources are being used up properly and the performance is great literally everywhere aside here. But thanks for advice, Ill go check background activity during the game itself now.

[thecatwithahat]

Okie, just monitored background activity during the game itself, which was not easy to do, thanks to game going into pause menu whenever its window is out of focus, does not matter if I used windowed mode or borderless, but I tried it anyway, the only thing I found is Desktop Window Manager taking up exactly 1% of CPU load, that is it, thats the only change in computer load from when its idling. So I guess its not background processes, has to be something else. To drive the point home even more, games that are optimized for 4 cores and 8 threads, like say Division can max out my CPU to 100% at times and when the CPU is not maxed, the GPU gets maxed out, as it should be, far cry 5 however hovers around half of load on both gpu and cpu most of the time, so if there was something in the background, I think there would be no way for other games to draw more computer power and deliver better performance.

Now back to the topic of CPU bottleneck, here is a thing I can definently confirm now, having run more monitoring, when FPS goes up the CPU aaaaaand GPU load go up, when FPS goes down the GPU aaaand CPU load goes down, we are talking 10-15% load difference, sometimes even 20%. If it was either one of them bottelenecking, that simply should not be the case. I wonder if it could be harddrive streaming data? I am running it on the SSD though, is that still possible?

[↑↑↓↓←→←→BASelect]

Messaggio originale di thecatwithahat:

Messaggio originale di Trump came out of the closet:

Oh i know everything about fps and how it works been a gamer since i was 6 playing on the atari 2600 (only console i ever owned) and started gaming when windows 95 came out.
Also it's a public fourm you can't tell people who can write or not write on a public forum.
Reinstall windows and all drivers fresh and start out fresh that will fix any problem with fps's. Some crap is running in the background causing you problems a fresh install of windows will fix that right up. And get you gaming in the 100fps area like me.

Its common forum courtesy not to derail the thread, in this case into the argument of "you would not notice it anyway", I am asking for technical help here, not help me change my worldview or something, I am not telling you what you can or can not post, I am kindly asking you to stay on topic and refrain from trying to change the subject.

There is no "crap running in the background" and this is the only game giving me this trouble, if you read the topic, you would see I already adressed the subject. On idle my PC has 1% CPU load, 16% ram usage, 0% hard drive usage, 0% gpu usage, 0% network usage.

To break it down to make it a bit more clear and close the subject of "you got crap in the background"

The 1% CPU load comes mostly from my monitoring tool, MSI Afterburner, its using 0,7-0.8%.
The 0.1%-0.2% is Steam app itself.

The Ram is used largely by the uplay app and steam app, both taking up around 190mb each, the rest is system itself.

Everything else is not being used at all. I reinstalled my video drivers, I am not doing a windows reinstall, because this is a new system that has been running for less than a year (first boot up being November 2017) and it runs perfectly fine and with games that are actually optimized all of my system resources are being used up properly and the performance is great literally everywhere aside here. But thanks for advice, Ill go check background activity during the game itself now.

Common knowledge when running windows is that it needs refreshed from all the junk it don't get rid of during uninstall of programs or updating of programs and not getting rid of it's temp files not to mention all the left over reg entrys that could cause havok on a system. Windows needs refreshed about every 6 months due to it's way of doing stuff the crappy way. Run a reg cleaner and look at all the unneeded reg entrys just taking up space doing nothing and making your pc run harder. After 6 months of use i ran one and it found over 1000 bad reg entrys from games and programs updating or me unistalling a program i didn't use any more. Like i bought used sony vegas one time for a project and uninstalled it it left behind over 100 reg entrys after it uninstalled.