Low FPS - Older Hardware....Confusing Issue (GPU/CPU only 60% usage but low FPS)

[flexy]

Specs: Win8.1, 4GB, very old Q6600@3.5 and a GTX 660 TI OC, latest NV drivers.

I am playing the game "The Secret World".

My FPS pretty much *never* hit 60 FPS but are normally hovering around 45, depending.

My "issue" is that according to MSI Afterburner, my 660 TI most of the time is only at 55% or so GPU usage and only occasionally gets up to 75% or 80%.

So..one would think that my rather old system is a bottleneck so it cannot deliver fast enough for the 660 TI...but then my CPU USAGE on the four cores is also around 50%-60% (about the same usage as the GPU)....means I do not understand why the game is not running the FULL 60 FPS.

How can the game run rather "meh" in terms of FPS but still plenty of headroom for the GPU and CPU? If my system is bottlenecking..wouldn't the CPU be fully used? (I checked the 4 separate cores also using MSI Afterburner and each sits at 55%-ish while gaming)...or something like 30% - 50% - 20% - 55%..... while I only run in the lower 40FPS in game.

Edit: Vsync is forced via NV Inspector and also set at adaptive. Disabling Vsync forced doesn't really solve anything.

 

[SPBHM]

if you can't hit 60FPS disabling vsync might be a good thing but, you are probably bottlenecked by the CPU, CPU usage is reported in a strange way by windows, so if very likely that this game is limited by the single thread performance of your CPU, perhaps it's optimized for 2 cores and that's why you see 50% usage (could mean 2 cores fully loaded),

a game can be bottlenecked by CPU performance without ever showing 100% CPU usage or anything near on your muti core CPU.

 

[BrightCandle]

Exactly the above, mostly likely the game is dual threaded (like most games).

 

[Cerb]

but then my CPU USAGE on the four cores is also around 50%-60% (about the same usage as the GPU)....means I do not understand why the game is not running the FULL 60 FPS.

Task Manager shows you a graph per each CPU core, and a total. Are all of them about 50%? A single core at 100% on a quad is only 25% total.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

drop the CPU back to stock and see what happens

 

[aaksheytalwar]

CPU usage is irrelevant to whether you are bottlenecked or not. It does seem related to those who don't know better, but for practical purposes it is unrelated. Anything less than a core i5 or especially core i5 SB, isn't good enough today. The min need is a core i5 SB.