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100% GPU load in game

S

Smoblikat

Diamond Member
So I decided to give GTA IV one final try to get it working right, and it actually did. My FPS ranges anywhere from 50 to 60 FPS (vsync on) but my GPU usage is at 100%. Does this mean that im GPU bottlenecked? I thought GTA IV was a CPU game. Would overclocking help me (OC my GPU's) or isnt it a big deal, my FPS are consistently good, Its just weird that im pegging 100% all the time on both GPU's while my CPU is at 25% on cores 1 2 3 and on core 0 its around 75% usage.
 
Gordon Freemen said:
Don't Bump it P.O.s the Mods. GTA 4 is a very demanding and optimized game it will eat up a buch of GPU power and CPU so your GPUs running at there max is a good thing.
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actually that is wrong its just GTA IV is very badly coded so it pushes gpus harder ? recommended GPU for GTA 4 is a HD 3870 ?
 
Durvelle27 said:
actually that is wrong its just GTA IV is very badly coded so it pushes gpus harder ? recommended GPU for GTA 4 is a HD 3870 ?
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The recommended hardware is always much lower than in reality so it seems. Also I agree GTA 4 is a poor console port in typical Rockstar games fashion but good thing the curse was broken with MP3.
 
he has the game modded but the unmodded game is 100% cpu bound on max settings for large parts of the game even with a 2500k at 4.4. there are many places that drop into the 40s and even 30s and even putting the res at 800x600 will not change that. anyone claiming to never drop below 60 or even 50 fps in GTA 4 on max settings is a liar.
 
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Overclocked both cards to 700 core and my FPS stayed much higher, though my minimum was the same. My CPU usage also doubled, before most of my cores stayed at or below 25% usage and now they are at least 50%, kinda weird. My GPU's are averaging 97% usage but its fine now that my CPU usage is higher and my average FPS is much better.
 
You can test for CPU bottlenecking by lowering your resolution. If the FPS doesn't increase in the particular situation you're testing, you're CPU bound. Otherwise you're GPU bound.
 
lehtv said:
You can test for CPU bottlenecking by lowering your resolution. If the FPS doesn't increase in the particular situation you're testing, you're CPU bound. Otherwise you're GPU bound.
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Thanks, ill do that. I want a reason to overclock my 2500K 😛
 
GTA IV is traditionally a very CPU hungry game, but it's not so demanding that an i5 @ 3.7Ghz can't provide a good experience.

The problem when the game launched wasn't that you needed a crazy awesome CPU, because you didn't it's just that when you didn't quite have enough CPU power there was nothing you could do about it, you can't turn down the CPU requirements for a game like you can the graphics requirements, if you're GPU limited you can trim down the resolution, the AA and AF, the draw distance, the shadows and lighting and a million other things to improve FPS, with CPU you're more or less shit out of luck, maybe the amount of peds/traffic mattered a little.

You can always confirm where the bottleneck is by simply altering video settings, if you lower or raise the load on the GPU and the frame rate changes you're GPU bottlenecked. Theoretically if you're CPU bottlenecked lowering the graphics wont give you a significant increase in frame rate.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
GTA IV is traditionally a very CPU hungry game, but it's not so demanding that an i5 @ 3.7Ghz can't provide a good experience.

The problem when the game launched wasn't that you needed a crazy awesome CPU, because you didn't it's just that when you didn't quite have enough CPU power there was nothing you could do about it, you can't turn down the CPU requirements for a game like you can the graphics requirements, if you're GPU limited you can trim down the resolution, the AA and AF, the draw distance, the shadows and lighting and a million other things to improve FPS, with CPU you're more or less shit out of luck, maybe the amount of peds/traffic mattered a little.

You can always confirm where the bottleneck is by simply altering video settings, if you lower or raise the load on the GPU and the frame rate changes you're GPU bottlenecked. Theoretically if you're CPU bottlenecked lowering the graphics wont give you a significant increase in frame rate.
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Yup, just did that. Went to night time in the middle of a very busy bridge. FPS @ 1080P = Mid 30's to low 40's, FPS @ 1360x768 = Mid 30's to low 40's. Needless to say I will be bumping up the clocks (yay). Ive always wanted to but have never needed to, my chip boots into windows at 5.4 on air with less that 1.5v 😛
 
PrincessFrosty said:
GTA IV is traditionally a very CPU hungry game, but it's not so demanding that an i5 @ 3.7Ghz can't provide a good experience.

The problem when the game launched wasn't that you needed a crazy awesome CPU, because you didn't it's just that when you didn't quite have enough CPU power there was nothing you could do about it, you can't turn down the CPU requirements for a game like you can the graphics requirements, if you're GPU limited you can trim down the resolution, the AA and AF, the draw distance, the shadows and lighting and a million other things to improve FPS, with CPU you're more or less shit out of luck, maybe the amount of peds/traffic mattered a little.

You can always confirm where the bottleneck is by simply altering video settings, if you lower or raise the load on the GPU and the frame rate changes you're GPU bottlenecked. Theoretically if you're CPU bottlenecked lowering the graphics wont give you a significant increase in frame rate.
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um nearly every setting in GTA 4 is relying on cpu power. in fact the cpu plays a huge role for many settings in most modern games.

for GTA 4 if you run full max settings, it is 100% cpu limited in many spots even with my 2500k at 4.4. shadows and draw distance alone kill the framerate and those seem to be mostly cpu related NOT gpu related as lowering the resolution does almost nothing but lowering those settings will bring the framerates right up. so the fact is even my 2500k at 4.4 cannot provide a nice experience in this game on max settings especially if trying to use vsync.
 
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Smoblikat said:
Overclocked both cards to 700 core and my FPS stayed much higher, though my minimum was the same. My CPU usage also doubled, before most of my cores stayed at or below 25% usage and now they are at least 50%, kinda weird. My GPU's are averaging 97% usage but its fine now that my CPU usage is higher and my average FPS is much better.
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^ that is a sure tell sign that you where GPU bottlenecked before you overclocked your GPUs,
and still are. Esp when factoring in that you are always at the 95-100% taxed GPU usage.

Think of it like this:

at 30 fps, your CPU needs to do only 30 x workload, so CPU usage is low.... around 25%.
at 40 fps (after you OC your 470), your CPU needs to do 40 x workload, so CPU usage is now around 50%.

It just means your OC from your GPU did what it was supposed to, it payed off in frames pr secound incrase.
And it still looks like your main problem is being GPU bottlenecked.


Are you sure your SLI is working properly in that game?
 
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toyota said:
um nearly every setting in GTA 4 is relying on cpu power. in fact the cpu plays a huge role for many settings in most modern games.

for GTA 4 if you run full max settings, it is 100% cpu limited in many spots even with my 2500k at 4.4. shadows and draw distance alone kill the framerate and those seem to be mostly cpu related NOT gpu related as lowering the resolution does almost nothing but lowering those settings will bring the framerates right up. so the fact is even my 2500k at 4.4 cannot provide a nice experience in this game on max settings especially if trying to use vsync.
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I find it all this hipster talk about how a ultra fast CPU makes games run faster/better hardly believable being I have had no problem running games at 60fps on my golden moldy OCed Phenom II x4 CPU. I guess if you are after 120Hz game play then an i5 or i7 is the only option in some cases. As for GTA4 on my Phenom II x4 955 @ 3.6Ghz and 560SE @ 1680x1050 I am seeing 45 to 50fps with some ass dips down into the low 30s intermittently on occasion.

A GPU is not about conserving electricity it is about playing games LOL.
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toyota said:
um nearly every setting in GTA 4 is relying on cpu power. in fact the cpu plays a huge role for many settings in most modern games.

for GTA 4 if you run full max settings, it is 100% cpu limited in many spots even with my 2500k at 4.4. shadows and draw distance alone kill the framerate and those seem to be mostly cpu related NOT gpu related as lowering the resolution does almost nothing but lowering those settings will bring the framerates right up. so the fact is even my 2500k at 4.4 cannot provide a nice experience in this game on max settings especially if trying to use vsync.
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Stuff like shadows should have almost zero impact on the CPU, these are things calculated by the GPU, anything graphics related is. The CPU tends to control physics and animation and in GTA IV the blending of the 2 using the euphoria engine, and AI routines. The amount of cars and peds tend to effect that the most and so to some degree the draw distance as that decides how many are being calculated.

The rest such as resolution, texture quality, shadow quality, post processing effects, AA and AF are entirely GPU calculated, there is some nominal CPU overhead for driver functions but basically 99% of the work for these things is GPU bound.

Whether or not you're GPU or CPU limited depends on a few things, you can take even the most GPU hungry game and if you dial down the graphics settings sufficiently so your running at higher frame rates (thousands of FPS) you can switch the bottleneck to the CPU, so it can change depending on your expected/target FPS, I don't know what sort of frame rate you're after, but either way a 2500k @ 4.4Ghz is way more than enough for a reasonable frame rate at 1080p
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Stuff like shadows should have almost zero impact on the CPU, these are things calculated by the GPU, anything graphics related is. The CPU tends to control physics and animation and in GTA IV the blending of the 2 using the euphoria engine, and AI routines. The amount of cars and peds tend to effect that the most and so to some degree the draw distance as that decides how many are being calculated.

The rest such as resolution, texture quality, shadow quality, post processing effects, AA and AF are entirely GPU calculated, there is some nominal CPU overhead for driver functions but basically 99% of the work for these things is GPU bound.

Whether or not you're GPU or CPU limited depends on a few things, you can take even the most GPU hungry game and if you dial down the graphics settings sufficiently so your running at higher frame rates (thousands of FPS) you can switch the bottleneck to the CPU, so it can change depending on your expected/target FPS, I don't know what sort of frame rate you're after, but either way a 2500k @ 4.4Ghz is way more than enough for a reasonable frame rate at 1080p
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I agree +1^ and well said I could not have said it better.
 
Ya, Just OCed my 2500K to 4.3 and in conjunction with my SLI OC'd My minimum nightime framerates increased by 15 FPS!! At night I almost never drop below 45FPS and my average is in the 50's.

My settings are 100% max with Icenhancer active as well and ultimate texture pack. Except AA which is at 4X. My average daytime FPS is 60 (vsync on) so I think your problem might be that you are using the latest patch. Roll back to patch 1.0.4.0, tis alone tripled my FSP, used to max at 20fps at 1.0.7.0 and now im all good.
 
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PrincessFrosty said:
Stuff like shadows should have almost zero impact on the CPU, these are things calculated by the GPU, anything graphics related is. The CPU tends to control physics and animation and in GTA IV the blending of the 2 using the euphoria engine, and AI routines. The amount of cars and peds tend to effect that the most and so to some degree the draw distance as that decides how many are being calculated.

The rest such as resolution, texture quality, shadow quality, post processing effects, AA and AF are entirely GPU calculated, there is some nominal CPU overhead for driver functions but basically 99% of the work for these things is GPU bound.

Whether or not you're GPU or CPU limited depends on a few things, you can take even the most GPU hungry game and if you dial down the graphics settings sufficiently so your running at higher frame rates (thousands of FPS) you can switch the bottleneck to the CPU, so it can change depending on your expected/target FPS, I don't know what sort of frame rate you're after, but either way a 2500k @ 4.4Ghz is way more than enough for a reasonable frame rate at 1080p
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EVERY setting that keeps me from staying at 60 fps in GTA 4 on max settings with a gtx670 is cpu related NOT gpu related. I have probably spent more time testing this game then most people have playing it. shadows and view distance are a big problem for the cpu NOT just the the gpu and that is a fact. I already told you that I can lower the res in those cpu dependent spots and my framerates remain the same yet I can lower shadows and they go way up. that alone would tell that it is a cpu intensive setting.

EDIT: just tested it again at a very cpu intensive spot. at 1920x1080 with shadows on very high, I am at 26-27 fps and if I lower the res to 1280x720 then I am still at 26-27 fps in that same spot. heck I even lowered the res to 800x600 and I was still at 27 fps. shadows on very high kill my cpu NOT my gpu.
 
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PrincessFrosty said:
Stuff like shadows should have almost zero impact on the CPU, these are things calculated by the GPU, anything graphics related is. The CPU tends to control physics and animation and in GTA IV the blending of the 2 using the euphoria engine, and AI routines. The amount of cars and peds tend to effect that the most and so to some degree the draw distance as that decides how many are being calculated.

The rest such as resolution, texture quality, shadow quality, post processing effects, AA and AF are entirely GPU calculated, there is some nominal CPU overhead for driver functions but basically 99% of the work for these things is GPU bound.

Whether or not you're GPU or CPU limited depends on a few things, you can take even the most GPU hungry game and if you dial down the graphics settings sufficiently so your running at higher frame rates (thousands of FPS) you can switch the bottleneck to the CPU, so it can change depending on your expected/target FPS, I don't know what sort of frame rate you're after, but either way a 2500k @ 4.4Ghz is way more than enough for a reasonable frame rate at 1080p
Click to expand...

Everything can be rendered using the CPU. So, saying that it's a graphic setting, therefore it has to be GPU limited isn't always true. Since a lot of the calculations are highly parallel, the GPU is the best device to use, but they can have the CPU do it.
 
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