why is my cpu usage is only 40% - 60%

[BigTang_R500_IRELAND]

why is my cpu usage only at 40 - 60 percent. sometimes core 1 hit 80 - 90 but cores 2 and 4 sit at like 20 always. would i not get better fps if all cores use full 100%?

[Omega]

The CPU will only calculate what it needs to, it running at 40-60% is great.

As long as the GPU is running at 100% there is nothing to worry about since the GPU is the component that is actually going to render your frames.

[Azza ☠]

What CPU is it?

Intel i7 (has hyper-threading), for example, will stack multiple processes on a core at a time.

It also depends on your game/app coding. A game could be coded to use multi-cores or otherwise it just uses one. Same deal for hyper-threading, it could be coded in or not.

The Operating System processing also occurs on the first core.

What is your graphics card? Most gaming performance comes down to the graphics processing rather than CPU.

[BigTang_R500_IRELAND]

and yesterday when i said i was getting low fps in euro truck sim, i meant euro truck sim 2

i5 6400k

[Hare+Guu!]

Generally means a gpu bottleneck. You need to get a better gpu.

Ram speed bottlenecks are also possible, but highly unlikely. Either way, the cpu isn't working as hard because it has to wait for one or more component.

[BigTang_R500_IRELAND]

but a gtx 1070 is good isnt it?

[Omega]

Originally posted by Hare+Guu!:

Generally means a gpu bottleneck. You need to get a better gpu.

Ram speed bottlenecks are also possible, but highly unlikely. Either way, the cpu isn't working as hard because it has to wait for one or more component.

Umm. no. A GPU bottleneck is good. That is how it's supposed to be.

[BigTang_R500_IRELAND]

i thought a bottleneck of any kind was bad...no?

[Omega]

Originally posted by gamehunter09:

i thought a bottleneck of any kind was bad...no?

Only when the CPU is the bottleneck.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

What about RAM and Drive(s)?
What all are you using for that?
Should have 16GB RAM and an SSD + high performance HDD, otherwise yea you're going to have issues.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Originally posted by 0000000:

Originally posted by gamehunter09:

why is my cpu usage only at 40 - 60 percent. sometimes core 1 hit 80 - 90 but cores 2 and 4 sit at like 20 always. would i not get better fps if all cores use full 100%?

Games are a GPU intensive application. If you want to tax your CPU, do some maths.

It all depends on the game at hand. Some are CPU intensive, while some can run very well on a cheap dual core CPU and mostly rely on being GPU intensive. Not all games are demanding for both CPU & GPU.

Overall, you don't want 100% loads, you want breathing room so the PC can multi-task.

[Aliquis Freedom & Ethnopluralism]

Originally posted by gamehunter09:

why is my cpu usage only at 40 - 60 percent. sometimes core 1 hit 80 - 90 but cores 2 and 4 sit at like 20 always. would i not get better fps if all cores use full 100%?

The game isn't very multi-threaded and isn't capable to spread the work-load over all your CPU cores and if limited by the CPU it's limited by the single-core performance rather than multi-core performance.

For the game in question maybe something like an unlocked i3 of similar generation even if just dual core would had been better because the cores would be clocked higher and that's that it need.

AMD added the six and eight cores with 12 and 16 threads and Intel stepped up with 6 core 12 threads main-stream this generation and will go 8 and 16 the next one so maybe more games will be done ... not necessarily better threaded to limit the / core demand but at-least start taking usage of the additional cores and threads because they are there.

[hawkeye]

I'll explain this in detail for the people who think it is gpu related.

Games are written in threads of code usually with one main thread. A typical game would have 50-100 threads but just one that controls the others. Run resmon to view the number of threads in the game exe.

An exe thread runs in a cpu thread. Cpus have a number of cores e.g. 4. Each core has a number of cpu threads. An i5 usually has 1 cpu thread per core. An i7 has 2 (called hyper-threading). A cpu in a business computer might have 30 threads per core.

A cpu thread can only run 1 exe thread at a time. So the exe threads have to take turns in the cpu, with all the other stuff that is running on the pc (operating system, directx, antivirus, browsers etc).

The main exe thread and possibly other closely associated threads in the game will hog one thread in a cpu core. That is why the usage of that core is 80-90%. The lesser threads don't need as much cpu so they get sent off to other cpu threads, which explains why the other cores have lower usage.

Assuming you have an i5-6400, the single-thread speed of the cpu is 1830. That is an indicator of how fast the game can run. An i7-6700k has a speed of 2351. An i7-8700k - 2725.

There is a second score called the multi-thread speed which is becoming increasingly important. Games are being programmed with more main threads than 1. Ryzen and consoles are partly the reason as they have more cores but with slower single-thread speeds.

Also games are being written so that each active object in the scene has its own thread. This allows the game to adjust the game world based on the ability of the cpu. Weaker cpu, less animated objects like npc bystanders in the world.

The multi-thread speed of an i5-6400 is 6743. The i7-8700k is 16249.

The main benefit of overclocking is that it increases the single thread speed of a core. Only on k cpus with z mobos. Overclocking adds roughly 10% to the speed.

Benchmark scores are obtained from

www.cpubenchmark.net

[MancSoulja]

Originally posted by gamehunter09:

i thought a bottleneck of any kind was bad...no?

Every PC has a bottleneck and the cause of that bottleneck will depend on the task your PC is currently performing.