Low CPU usage

[Hexpert07]

I use a Ryzen 5 5500, 16gb RAM ddr4, RTX 2060 6gb.

 

The problem is  When I am playing in any server, the CPU usage wont pass the 50%, staying most of the time at 15-25%. While GPU usage is at 99%. I want to know how to to use more %

Edited May 17, 2024 by LukeFF
no all CAPS, please

[Aapje]

That's not really how it works. Of course the ideal is that you will always maximally use your hardware, so that you have no wasted potential, but different games put different demands on your system, different settings put different demands on your system and different situations within the same game puts different demands on your system.

 

In other words, realistically you will always have an unbalanced system and there is nothing you can really do to change that. You can reduce it by picking hardware that is reasonably well balanced and perhaps you can change the game settings a bit to put a bit less load on one part of the system (some settings put more load on the CPU and others on the GPU), but it is never actually going to be balanced. Just less or more unbalanced.

 

It can even be rather hard to figure out to what your exact bottleneck is, especially if it may be the CPU, since the CPU usage figure is not actually reliable and is typically too low. The reason is that CPUs have multiple cores, but games often can't use all cores optimally. So they can for example max out one core and then be limited by that core, while the other cores are not doing as much. Then you can have a overall usage way below 100%, which measures how all the cores are being used, but still be bottlenecked by the CPU, because one core is actually at 100% for that specific core and is holding things back.

 

For example, it's not unlikely that with typical usage of 15-25% and jumps to 50%, you are fairly close to bottlenecking your CPU and if you upgrade to a 4060, you will be CPU bottlenecked at least sometimes.

 

There are a bunch of reasons why you would generally prefer to have a stronger CPU:

- You typically get relatively high performance from a relatively cheap CPU, compared to the performance you get from a relatively cheap GPU. So in other words, it's typically cheaper to have an underused CPU than an underused GPU.

- It's often easier to upgrade the GPU, but if you buy a perfectly sized CPU for your current GPU, then you can't upgrade the GPU without also upgrading the CPU. And that can mean also replacing the motherboard, RAM, etc. Although with longer longevity platforms like AM4 and AM5, this can be less of an issue depending on when you build your system.

- A CPU bottleneck is more likely to result in stuttering, which is worse than simply having a bit lower FPS.

- Even when your max out your GPU, you will still improve performance of the system up to a point if you have a fast CPU that is not fully used, but that can deliver data to the GPU faster than a slower CPU that would be more fully used. And as mentioned before, it is relatively cheap to get more performance this way, by having a CPU that is fast enough to not be the bottleneck.

 

So the short answer is to just play the game and don't worry about it, or upgrade your GPU. But in the last case you might learn that your CPU headroom is less than you thought.

Edited May 16, 2024 by Aapje

[dgiatr]

15 hours ago, Hexpert07 said:

I use a Ryzen 5 5500, 16gb RAM ddr4, RTX 2060 6gb.

 

The problem is  When I am playing in any server, the CPU usage wont pass the 50%, staying most of the time at 15-25%. While GPU usage is at 99%. I want to know how to to use more %

Unfortunately il2 game engine works such as it loads too much each time only one core of your cpu and very little some others.

And its not the same overloaded cpu core over the time but it "jumps" from core to core. So cpu usage index won't tell you much about your cpu strength. Only solution to that, is to get a new cpu with high single core performance or to overclock your existing one if low cpu performance causes any stuttering.

Edited May 17, 2024 by dgiatr

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

You should look at each core, not on one metric which is an average. If you utilse the GPU to 90% it's a good thing,since that CPU do not bottleneck your GPU.

[Hexpert07]

I see, I also noticed yesterday that my DDr4 RAM was at 2666 MHZ instead of 3200 Mhz so I changed it. The experience improved but I have the problem that sometimes the game freezes like half a second or an entire second.

[Aapje]

Did that issue start when you enabled XMP?

[Hexpert07]

Nah, it is a problem since I played IL2 sturmovik for first time

Edited May 17, 2024 by Hexpert07

[Gambit21]

Resource utilization has always been a problem with IL2.