Lag even with 'light' gaming

[Insomniator]

Hey everyone - I play mostly Dota 2, Diablo III and Starcraft 2 at 1440p. My system is as following:

i5 2500k @4.4
R9 390 Stock
256GB Seagate 600 ssd
24GB DDR3 1600
Win 8.1 Enterprise

Individually, each of those games run flawlessly. The issue comes if I have more than one open (not both playing, but an old session open on one), or even if I have just a twitch stream open on my second monitor (1080p) I notice obvious FPS drops.

Sometimes just minimizing and re-maximizing the game fixes the issue, or other times I just have to close the other programs. I know my 2500k is going on 5 years old now but I would think it could handle playing a streaming video and Dota 2 at the same time without drops.

Is this somewhat normal behavior for this CPU at this resolution?

 

[DigDog]

I would think it could handle playing a streaming video and Dota 2 at the same time without drops.

for sure; whatever problem you have, is not with the cpu. i would guess, some weird setting in the OS - unfortunately, i don't know more. i had mouse lag from the start with 8.1 and i downgraded to 7 immediately (with great success i might add).

unless ... well, if you are encoding the stream on the fly, and have very high settings .. maybe that could weight. try lowering some of the render settings (for example, scale down to 720)

 

[XavierMace]

A) How do you know it's the CPU?
B) Have you checked task manager?

 

[Insomniator]

A) How do you know it's the CPU?
B) Have you checked task manager?

I didn't really think about it until making this post, have just randomly noticed/put up with the slow downs. CPU seems like the most obvious cause -- certainly not hitting memory limits.

I just checked out task manager and am hovering around 85-100% CPU with D3 and Dota 2 open + some chrome tabs. Plus Lots of crap that just comes along with everything these days -- Razor Synapse (for mouse), Steam, Battle.net, Radeon Settings, Asus monitoring suite (motherboard)... never ends. Not that the slowness is anything close to making me upgrade, but I wonder if an i7 Skylake would fix it.

 

[DigDog]

protip - you CAN find the drivers for the deathadder without synapse - they are just buried somewhere in the razer website.
you lose the useless ability to have different dpi for X and Y axis, but the mouse actually performs better without synapse; it's snappier and tracks perfectly.

http://drivers.razersupport.com/ind...147&_m=downloads&_a=view&parentcategoryid=147

find the one closest in date to the DA you own and use it. synapse is shit, and pretty much all DA drivers are interchangeable.
source: i'm a DA owner and quake player.

 

[TheELF]

Streaming while playing a online game will mess with your ping/upload which will result in slow downs.

In task manager right click on the game and go to details, right click on it again and go to set priority,put it on above normal or even high so that software in the background won't mess with it.

 

[XavierMace]

I have to say I've never tried having multiple games running at once but I can't picture that working well regardless how much CPU you throw at it.

 

[TheELF]

I have to say I've never tried having multiple games running at once but I can't picture that working well regardless how much CPU you throw at it.

As long as the game is well behaved it will drop to below 1% usage when not focused,as long as you have enough memory you can do this on any CPU no matter how weak.

 

[JeffMD]

look at your memory speed/timings and see if there is a slower speed you can try out. This checks that your memory can run at its rates speed.

Also a lag situation that clears up momentarily when you toggle apps may be a sign of something leaking and eating up all your memory. what does task manager say when it is happening?

 

[Ketchup]

Most older games take all cpu power available. So as TheELF mentioned, giving the lower priority may help. Another idea would be to put together a little vm for older games (xp would work if you still have a copy) and you can give it just one core.