CPU usage 100% = bottleneck?

[atlau]

I looked at my CPU usage and it appears that when playing AH one of the cores is pegged at 100% usage while the GPU is not hitting its performance limit according to GPU-Z. The other  Does that mean the CPU is limiting performance? (i5-6600).

thanks in advance

[Skuzzy]

That is a fair assumption, but not always true.  It depends on how the software is measuring the load.

[atlau]

I was simply using the task manager/resource manager
  Do you have a different program that youd recommend?

Also if i upgrade to a new cpu, is there a good reason to get one with more than 6-8 cores for AH?

[Bizman]

HWmonitor tells the current, max and min values: https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

[atlau]

Tried that one too. It does max to 100% for core 0 so i assume a stronger processor might be beneficial. Just not sure if price/benefit ratio is worthwhile!

[Bizman]

For AH I have understood that anything past 3 GHz should be golden.

For the record I just made a short test in the Mission arena. Both of the cores of my Core2Duo E8500 overclocked to 3.8 GHz reached the top. #0 started to climb faster, but when it topped #1 was also at 98%. According to a couple of benchmarks yours should be over twice as fast in single core operations and even faster in multi-core tasks. Yet I have no issues to feed the GTX970.

That said, even with the latest flagship processor you might still see the 100% usage. Your processor has 250% the performance of mine, an i7-9600k is only ~30% faster than yours. I wonder if that little extra power would make any difference in AH.

[atlau]

Yep i dont think an upgrade at this point makes sense financially for such a small relative gain.

[DaddyAce]

I use MSI Afterburner to monitor hardware usage.  I also use it to set a more aggressive cooling curve for my GPU fans.  I initially used and i3 6100 cpu in this puter, but discovered that there were times when it seemed to bottleneck my puter, like when close to the ground or when I was in a big FSO fight.  I upgraded the cpu to an i5 7600K a while back and have not been noticing any issues since.  I've been happy enough with the i5 - 3GB 1060 combo running my Rift, and have felt no real need to upgrade yet.  I'll try to remember to to review the Afterburner output when I fly AH next and report back.

[atlau]

Id be tempted to upgrade cpu. But id have to replace the motherboard too along with a cooler for a k processor and dont have energy to do that

[DaddyAce]

I went with the K version in part because it was on sale at the time ($199.89), and it also gives significantly better performance than the non-K version without overclocking, and I think it was also less $ at the time.    You can see a comparison here:  https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-7600K-vs-Intel-Core-i5-7600/3885vs3890

My Mobo is an MSI B-150 Gaming M3, and does not support overclocking.   But it does support all kinds of USB connections without having to go to an external hub.     

[DaddyAce]

Took a quick look at my graphs after flying a bit.  Frame rates on my Rift were generally between 45 & 90.  Both CPU 1 and GPU usage were up and down and spiked often approaching 100%. but generally were not that high, although GPU spikes closely approached 100% more often.    My conclusion is this cpu/gpu combo is balanced about right for AH3 running the Rift, at least for the in-game conditions I encountered earlier.

[atlau]

Do you dial back thr graphics settings to run smoothly?

Im.guessing my.slowdowns near busy fields with lots of ack and objects being generated is being caused by my cpu. When flying away from any action at higher alt im getting 120+ fps

How much ram do you have? Ive got 8 and as far as i can tell its never fully used.

[DaddyAce]

I did not dial back the graphics.  I recently noticed that I had the option to turn on reflections and shadows, and I enjoy the more immersive feeling of having those, and especially enjoy the reflections on the canopy, and off the wings, so if anything I goosed the graphics settings up from how they were set more than year ago.  My Rift was a surprise gift from one of my sons: it was unplanned for me.  I initially had mixed feelings because I was holding off waiting for the technology to mature more, and had committed to an upgrade without planning to add VR near-term.   I expected that I would need more CPU & GPU to run the Rift well.  But as it played out my system seems to run it fine, for my taste.  I have 8 GB 2400 DDR 4.  Looking at my Afterburner output it looks to me like I'm using about half of that while playing AH3, and about 2/3 of my 3 GB VRAM.

[atlau]

been playing with the graphical settings trying to figure out if certain ones impact the CPU more than GPU. Like detail range perhaps?

[DaddyAce]

been playing with the graphical settings trying to figure out if certain ones impact the CPU more than GPU. Like detail range perhaps?

Sorry, don't have a sense for that atlau.

I did go in and check my current settings:

I have Pilot mesh & Anti-aliasing both off, all else is on.

Environment mapping is 0.  I may try to bump this one up.

Sliders:
Object Detail  is in  the middle.
Terrain detail is set to max.
Both  ground and tree detail is set about 20% up from minimum.

My sense again is that my system is pretty well-balanced, but it appears I need more processing power for full graphics detail, best guess is that a better GPU would help the most.   Bottom line though is that I'm happy with what I have and am not sure it would be worth the $ to upgrade at this point, or that I'd get a significant gain in visual quality, especially given current VR technology.  If I were to upgrade I think I'd go with a 1070 & perhaps a more powerful CPU, but suspect I'd get the most from the GPU upgrade.