Low CPU utilization & Low FPS

[dzrealkiller 11]

...Non of that makes sense as this morning it was running perfectly and for no reason its started acting like crap, I have checked everything Is correctly seated and everything is fine... According to Intel the temps for this processor are fine bear in mind I use the stock cooler that comes with the chip... I have canned air that I clean everything out once a month and everything inside is dust free... As I said In the first post it was working great as normal and then all of a sudden boom... it turns to poo I play on the computer non stop and had played this morning for like 6 hours straight and decided to take a rest I then come back and go back on my game and it no longer runs like it did... its like the evil pc fairies broke in and switched my pc for something from the 1980's...

I just reran another virus scan and there's nothing I just brought AVG tuneup and tuned up the computer and fixed issues that It found but same problem... I have checked background schedule tasks and there are non as I hate those things I like to update when I am ready hate the auto rubbish...

I am not a computer noob but this has really got me lost...

This also happened a few months back on an older machine and it ended up sorting itself out but I would just love to find out what causes this so I can put a stop to it happening again.

---------- Post added at 19:20 ---------- Previous post was at 19:19 ----------

I think you misread the post dude I don't hit 100 I max out at 80... I said the MAX temps able for this chip are 100 and then it down clocks to protect itself.

[Sandy* 10]

Haswells indeed run quite hot, I was a bit surprised when I upgraded from a relatively cool-running AMD machine to a 4790k. However, going 70-80 celsius in Arma doesn't sound right. I've got mine overclocked to 4,4GHz with an aftermarket cooler, it goes a bit over 60C in CPU-intensive games, while it's possible to hit ~80C with prime95 or video rendering but that's pushing it.

Does your mainboard come with some fancy software to control fan speeds? I got a ROG mainboard, with the default settings the CPU was overclocked yet the fans were in "Extreme Quiet Mode" where they barely even did anything at high CPU load. And one of the software updates reset all my custom fan speed settings back to the quiet mode all of a sudden one day.

When was the last time you cleaned your comp including taking out GPU etc?

His GPU temps are fine.

[chrisb 196]

Comes with 4*** series gpu inbuilt (mine did anyway, so that's disabled), are you sure its not gone over to using that instead of your main gpu. I run the same 4790k not OC'ed (4.0-4.4ghz) and it has no problems running anything (as yet).

Mine doesn't run that hot either, but of course it would depend on many factors heat wise, your room, tower location, air circulation etc.

[dzrealkiller 11]

Haswells indeed run quite hot, I was a bit surprised when I upgraded from a relatively cool-running AMD machine to a 4790k. However, going 70-80 celsius in Arma doesn't sound right. I've got mine overclocked to 4,4GHz with an aftermarket cooler, it goes a bit over 60C in CPU-intensive games, while it's possible to hit ~80C with prime95 or video rendering but that's pushing it.

Does your mainboard come with some fancy software to control fan speeds? I got a ROG mainboard, with the default settings the CPU was overclocked yet the fans were in "Extreme Quiet Mode" where they barely even did anything at high CPU load. And one of the software updates reset all my custom fan speed settings back to the quiet mode all of a sudden one day.

His GPU temps are fine.

Nope no fancy program as far as I know :( but If you say your chip is only hitting around 60 then I would maybe start thinking it could be a temp thing... I came from AMD this is my first Intel chip and tbh my AMD cheaper machine ran better than this higher end one.. makes no sense... I am actually running ArmA 3 as I right this I am back up to my solid 60fps so far so good I will pull the temps up on the other screen and see what they are currently as I have stopped streaming with OBS (Open Broadcast software) so it is literally just ArmA 3 Wastelands running and will report back with the temps.

I think you have the right idea my old AMD fx6300 had amd cool'n quiet running and that from what I guess slowed the fans and such, Is there anything I should turn off / disable for intel chips in the bios? As I stated I am new to intel to I am betting I have missed something that should be disabled for max performance.

@ChrisB, Yeah I checked the graphic settings and the computer is using my 780 not the built in graphics with intel... tbh the only option i see is the 780 there is nothing that gives another option cant see no intel graphics device :S sure my chip has it?

---------- Post added at 20:43 ---------- Previous post was at 20:30 ----------

Just tested it and when the computer is idle the cpu temp is 37c but when In ArmA 3 it sky rockets to 80c ... Its crazy how fast the temp jumps up to 80c ... literally takes like 2 minutes

---------- Post added at 22:31 ---------- Previous post was at 20:43 ----------

I have just recorded a video with an overlay of all the temps, task manager performance window and Intel's Extreme tuning utility that shows a fair amount of information If anyone would be willing to view it... May take me awhile to upload tho its 30 minutes long but no need to watch the full 30 minutes just skip here and there and you will see the temps are almost hitting 90c while recording :O

Also is this normal... I have ArmA 3 Installed to an SSD (C:) but it was saying the usage was at like 0-1% surely that cant be correct can it? new to SSD's also.

Anyway If somebody think it may help I will upload it and maybe somebody could view it and shed some light on what the problem is.

[naizarak 4]

sounds like you're using the stock CPU heatsink. never use the stock heatsink.

also never disable thermal safety features

[St. Jimmy 272]

Have you overclocked? You should check the clocks (multiplier and BCLK) from BIOS. I had mine overclocked for 0,5 year without even knowing it but after noticing it I found that in the BIOS there was O.C Tuner button that I had accidentally pressed without knowing it just straight overclocked the chip.

But if you're also new to SSDs then there might be some bad configuation there also hmmm.

[d4ni3l3 10]

I'm mostly playing in SP but the game it's almost unplayable, I get low fps with less than 100 single ai units. I've tried everithing but this game is unplayable most of the time. Why don't you optimize this engine? The game is great but has terrible performances, I can't play this way.

Please BIS, work hard on some optimization!

My PC:

INTEL i7 3770K

16Gb RAM G.Skill Sniper Sr2

GTX 780 Windforce Rev 2.0

Win 8.1 Pro 64

[dzrealkiller 11]

Well for the ssd setup I followed LinusTechTips and I doubt he does it wrong :) and Nope the cpu Is not overclocked I have already looked, also for the thermal paste I thought It could be that so I brought some Arctic MX-4 or Mx-5 cant remember which but I know there good I have used them for ages... I am also looking into getting a water cooler for it instead of using the stock cooler but before I do that I want to make sure its not messed up as 80-90c I am pretty sure is not what Intel would call their normal temp for this chip... Anyway I have done the video I am uploading it but its going to take ages and prob wont be ready until tomorrow but I will post the link when Its good to watch as that shows all sorts of info that I may just be missing.. :)

[Jackal326 1181]

Probably a daft question but how is the airflow in the general case? I ask because I used to have an Alienware rig, and the air flow on the case itself was rubbish (the original setup had watercooling which packed up after the one year warranty had just ran out, so ended up with running just a bog-standard fan in the case). The air circulation was terrible and caused multiple components to catastrophically fail. Since rebuilding (in a brand new case which is more vent than it is case), I get very little temperature variation within the case itself.

[Jackal326 1181]

My PC:

INTEL i7 3770K

16Gb RAM G.Skill Sniper Sr2

GTX 780 Windforce Rev 2.0

Win 8.1 Pro 64

Something seriously wrong, as your system spec. leaves mine in the dust (apart from RAM where we are on par) but I can get a consistent 40-50fps, even in MP (server dependant obviously).

Intel i5 2500K CPU @ 3.3GHz

16GB RAM

GTX 670 SC

Windows 7 Home 64bit

I suppose it boils down to if you're trying to run the game on max'ed settings or if you've tried to auto-detect and adjust from there. Also take into account any other background processes that may be running and causing CPU drain.

Edited February 10, 2015 by Jackal326

[dzrealkiller 11]

I believe my airflow is good, I have 5 fans and space for one more... On the side of the case of have 2 blowing cool air in and on the back of the case I have one blowing in also... On the top I have 2 pulling hot air out... I put the ones that pull hot air out on the top as heat rises and logically that should be better than pulling the hot air out from the back... The weird thing with the cpu is that how fast the temps go up to 80c... I have never seen a cpu get to 80c under a minute... Its like the fan is not actually working at all... I have opened the case and the fan is indeed spinning but how fast, I do not know... Would anyone happen to know a program I can download to see the fan speeds?

---------- Post added at 10:26 ---------- Previous post was at 09:07 ----------

Here is the video maybe somebody can spot something... the temps get pretty high on here but its only at 80c when it can go to 102c so surly that wouldnt cause the stuttering and fps to lock down below 20fps would it?

[tonschuh 3]

- 1000+ characters AI characters on screen.

DX12 Can Handle 600K Draw Calls, Increasing AMD GPU Performance by 600%

DirectX 12 early tests: 400% performance increase on AMD GPUs, 150% on Nvidia

So just wait and everything will become awesome, or maybe not ?

:bounce3:

Edited February 10, 2015 by TONSCHUH

[Greenfist 1863]

Disk usage seems high on some stutters. But the game's on SSD, so there should be plenty of bandwidth available. :confused: (can't really see if the fps is low for the whole video, only the drops. On this shitty work PC every video stutters more or less. :) )

How big is your page file?

Edited February 10, 2015 by Greenfist

[dzrealkiller 11]

Umm well basically the OS is on C:\ and I was advised to set the Pagefile onto E:\ and currently It's system managed Min allowed 16mb Recommended 4595mb and Currently allocated is 8192mb

[R3vo 2654]

Umm well basically the OS is on C:\ and I was advised to set the Pagefile onto E:\ and currently It's system managed Min allowed 16mb Recommended 4595mb and Currently allocated is 8192mb

Why would you put your pagefile from a faster to a slower drive ? Leave the pagefile as it was. In addition, did you notice any driver updating ? Maybe that's causing an issue. Also, you can check you Event Viewer if anything happend during the last days.

[Horus 83]

Try to disable core parking and see if that helps you https://bitsum.com/parkcontrol/

[Greenfist 1863]

I asked because I've seen that high disk usage related to fps drops before, but don't remember if it actually was the cause or how it was fixed. I think I had the same problem before but it disappeared after windows reinstall. (Might be coincidental of course)

Why would you put your pagefile from a faster to a slower drive ? Leave the pagefile as it was. In addition, did you notice any driver updating ? Maybe that's causing an issue. Also, you can check you Event Viewer if anything happend during the last days.

His OS and the game are both on SSDs.

Try to disable core parking and see if that helps you https://bitsum.com/parkcontrol/

The cpu seems to be running full speed the whole time. I don't know what parking looks like speed/usagewise though. Could be worth a try.

[St. Jimmy 272]

Why would you put your pagefile from a faster to a slower drive ? Leave the pagefile as it was. In addition, did you notice any driver updating ? Maybe that's causing an issue. Also, you can check you Event Viewer if anything happend during the last days.

Samsung recommends to set Initial size 200MB and Maximum size 2GB. but Windows says something about the Initial size that it should be set at 400MB so it's maybe better at 400MB. But I don't have any issue when I've set-up my page file on the other drive than my SSD so that shouldn't cause those bottlenecks. But my pageing file is on a different drive than where my recordings go so I dunno if that can have a positive effect. But overall page file in the SSD shouldn't really be a problem.

I see that not all cores are active all the time if that "Active Core Count" means that. Everytime you stutter it shows you've only one active core and not all the cores seem to be active all the time even when you are recording which is bit weird.

It would be interesting to see your Core clocks per core in gaming. Best program to monitor pretty much everything is HWiNFO you can see all the fan speeds, temps everywhere, voltages, clocks drive, GPU, CPU usages etc.

You can log things with that and view them afterwards with http://www.hwinfo.com/forum/Thread-LogViewer-for-HWINFO-is-available Also you can combine that with MSI Afterburner and RTSS to show everything you like On-Screen Display for easy monitoring.

Also maybe you should go for manual clocking so you should set-up some things in BIOS if you haven't already. Here's a nice guide for your Motherboard http://overclocking.guide/z97-pro-4/

Multi Core Enhancement - disable

CPU Ratio - All Core

All Core - 40 (you can increase this later if you're confident with the temps)

BCLK Frequency - 100

Overall it seems like your reason for the stuttering is that the CPU usage goes down bad. Temps aren't too big of a problem there because it isn't thermal throttling (but it's pretty close to that) so currently it's somethig else making the CPU crawl.

So this is how I'd go:

Check for the Event Viewer to see all kinds of errors etc. on the time when you're playing the game.

If this happens when you're recording and E: drive is the drive where your recordings go then set the paging file on other drive even on the SSD and set it manually Initial size 400MB and Maximum size 2GB.

If that doesn't help then triple check that every setting on both of the SSDs are alright. Interested bit what is your Arma 3 SSD drive letter is it E or D or what?

Download HWiNFO and maybe other things like HWiNFO Generic Log Viewer, MSI AfterBurner with RTSS monitor thing better. With HWiNFO you can see the fans if they aren't working enough full.

After those I'd start to doubt about your CPU setiings and I recommend to go through BIOS and tweak things there. That guide I linked earlier is a nice start to see what things do.

I really don't see anything wrong with the GPU so that's fine.

[Horus 83]

...The cpu seems to be running full speed the whole time. I don't know what parking looks like speed/usagewise though. Could be worth a try.

Look OP video again and see the value of Active Core Count :rolleyes:

[jumpinghubert 49]

I'm mostly playing in SP but the game it's almost unplayable, I get low fps with less than 100 single ai units. I've tried everithing but this game is unplayable most of the time. Why don't you optimize this engine? The game is great but has terrible performances, I can't play this way.

Please BIS, work hard on some optimization!

My PC:

INTEL i7 3770K

16Gb RAM G.Skill Sniper Sr2

GTX 780 Windforce Rev 2.0

Win 8.1 Pro 64

your ingame settings?

[dzrealkiller 11]

So much info to take on board :D Well I just got another new SSD arrived today and an Avermedia LGP lite but that dont work and that's a story for another time...

I will go ahead and change the page file... Now I could place it back onto C:\ which is the OS and ArmA 3's drive or place it onto the brand new ssd I once was told by a very wise person to always place the paging file on a different drive if possible not sure why but yeah... But I will place it back to the C:\ for now and see if that helps... Also I do believe I was told to change the paging file inital size to the same amount as the ram you have so mine would be 8192mb and then the max as double you're maximum ram so 16384mb and this wasnt from just one person this is all over the internet in sooo many forums... not sure why they do this but then I dont really get what paging file is... I know its a swop storage thingy and from what I bvelieve thats for if your ram is been used it can then use hdd drive as virtual ram or something... not really really clued up on that soo...

I could make another video with HWiNFO active as an overlay If people would rather see info from that, that's not a problem.

Also about unparking cores right now that would be asking for more problems... think about it unparking cores will force them cores to stay active and that would actually increase my temps once I can get those temps down I will happily unpark and see the results but right now I am kinda worried about doing that.

Also I have A-Tuning that allows me to adjust my fan speed of the cpu but I have never played with things like this so I might upload a screen shot and see if you can see a fault there... I have not touched it so if its buggered it wasn't me :P

And finally... Overclocking I am not a big fan of overclocking first and last time I done that I buggered up my old AMD fx-6300 cpu... this chip cost way more and don't want to risk it... lets be honest here... I run

ArmA 3 normally at 90fps I dont need to overclock it... It will just cause more heat and more issues :)

[Greenfist 1863]

Look OP video again and see the value of Active Core Count :rolleyes:

Yeah, I saw that. But I thought the load is just so low that the program considers them inactive.

Edited February 10, 2015 by Greenfist

[dzrealkiller 11]

Why was my thread moved.. now shits a right mess and have no idea where I am and there are 380 pages instead of my 3 good job... fuck this I'm going else where.... to the guys that where helping thanks for your patience and help up to this point its very appreciated. BI what's not appreciated is you moving shit around confusing people and shoving a nice 3 page chilled out thread into a 380 page random thread... I'm done with this. ALSO BI you put me in an uncorrect place this is for Low CPU utilization AMP? Low fps my topic was mainly to do with my hardware and temps... good placement there :)

[Jackal326 1181]

Why was my thread moved.. now shits a right mess and have no idea where I am and there are 380 pages instead of my 3 good job... fuck this I'm going else where.... to the guys that where helping thanks for your patience and help up to this point its very appreciated. BI what's not appreciated is you moving shit around confusing people and shoving a nice 3 page chilled out thread into a 380 page random thread... I'm done with this. ALSO BI you put me in an uncorrect place this is for Low CPU utilization AMP? Low fps my topic was mainly to do with my hardware and temps... good placement there :)

Moderators =/= BI

Also, nice attitude, glad to have been of help.

[St. Jimmy 272]

Why was my thread moved.. now shits a right mess and have no idea where I am and there are 380 pages instead of my 3 good job... fuck this I'm going else where.... to the guys that where helping thanks for your patience and help up to this point its very appreciated. BI what's not appreciated is you moving shit around confusing people and shoving a nice 3 page chilled out thread into a 380 page random thread... I'm done with this. ALSO BI you put me in an uncorrect place this is for Low CPU utilization AMP? Low fps my topic was mainly to do with my hardware and temps... good placement there :)

Lol yeah this should've been in its own thread in troubleshooting section...