CPU usage not even

[The Artist]

I have a 3.1ghz dual core AMD 64 athlon whatever..

Anyway, running games now on my pc it becomes really slow and stutters. My graphics card can take it easily. I use to run the game on much higher settings. Now, even on low it stutters sometimes. When I look at my CPU usage of the 2 cores, one is at 90-100% and one just sits at 20-30%.

I have downloaded AMD's dual core optimiser but no change.

Any ideas what to do?
All the processes in task manager are set to use both cores.

Cheers

[divuk83]

What game. what graphics card, what settings/res are you running the game at and whats the rest of the system.

Dave

[Scotsman37]

If it's an Nvidia based graphics card you maybe restricted to what version of driver you can use beyond the one that came with it, even when Nvidia says it's latest driver is backward compatible and so sometimes it's trial & error to find out truly what is the latest driver your card can use that is stable for gaming, etc. Sometimes upgrading to the latest driver is not always the best option with Nvidia and so try an earlier driver or even further back, if necessary, to when it ran normally.

Another possibility that remnants from the old graphics driver is still remaining on your system which maybe causing you problems, and therefore you need to completely remove the graphics driver and install fresh as that may help overcome your problem with this graphics driver sweeper from Guru3D. Do use this also to remove ATI drivers, if necessary, if you've got one of their cards instead as it may help with a clean install of graphics driver.

https://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=driversweeper


Depending how much memory you've got installed 2Gb+ is the best setup if you're using Windows Vista, otherwise with Windows XP then 1GB+.

Depending how full is your hard drive and if you've got limited space available remaining, plus it could be badly fragmented, your windows & games is caching in that situation is not good. So, you need to add another internal/external HDD so as to better manage the space your data occupies and not leave a limited space remaining

Have you checked to see if there is an updated BIOS for your motherboard which overcomes such problems as you've described in your post for improved compatibilty/stability, and possibly too with the manufacturer of your graphics card. If not clogged check to see if the fan is even working properly under load.

Another thing to check if the fan, that's if there is one, to see if it's clogged up with dust or not and so get a can of compressed air from an electronics store and even use it on a heatsink if it appears to be smothered with dust! Otherwise use a small nozzled vacuum to clean it out. Cards will stutter/stay slow as it cannot get up to speed due to overheating.

Have you checked your system for possible malware?

[Welshd1k]

basic ....

games arent optimised for multi cores yet ....

hence why a faster dual core will give betetr preformance that a slower quad core . hell my old amd 939 4000 since core will chuck out better fps than my amd 4600dual with identical setup. due to better cache and more FSB .


hence why i sold my Q6600 to get a e6850 ...



quad runnign @ 3.6 (9x400fsb) with a 8800gtx was 79fps average in cod4 ( shitty settings )

e6850 @ 4ghz (8x500fsb) same ram same mobo 106 fps average ...


its not all about Quads etc. look at the single core speed for most games TBH

quads are overrated for gaming
(e8600 @ 4.6 now )
____________________
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Sold >,zxr400 h2 (33bhp kit) rd350 n1 rd350 lc2<

[Seb]

2 things to check right off the bat.

You likely either have a rogue process guzzling cpu time.

Or the machine is overheating and thermal throttling is ramping the CPU back causing that stutter under load.

Use task manager and sort the process list by CPU load, also keep an eye on the CPU load indicator at the bottom of the task manager window as hardware interrupts can sometimes cause problems too.

As for overheating, it's generally just a case of fan intakes being blocked. I'd say 1 in 3 of the PCs that I buy to refurbish are running slower than they could be due to dust and hair blocking airflow through the case and coolers. Pop the case open and see how dusty it is. Be sure to check all the fans and pay particular attention to any filters they might have.
____________________
2010 Triumph 1050 Sprint ST

[C.Gray]

mm. Maybe the game doesn't support multithreading properly, meaning that it doesn't use both cores effectively. This is why people prefer one powerful core, or two. Opposed to a quad.

Is it a newish game, or an old one?

[Welshd1k]

[C.Gray]

ns125rk90, sorry. I didn't read all of the replies properly.

I didn't mean to reiterate exactly what you said

[Seb]

[Welshd1k]

my first choice would be reformat . somethign is slowing it down and if not might eb worth lookign into running mem test on your ram see if it is playing up
____________________
Current >Cb600fx hornet, ns125rk90 21.7bhp@wheel<
Sold >,zxr400 h2 (33bhp kit) rd350 n1 rd350 lc2<

[The Artist]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl is the game.
Graphics card is 9500gt, Palit.

I used the cd that it came with. used to work fine.
No other graphics cards on this pc
2gb ram, xp pro.
100's of gb free
Not checked bios upgrade yet. Will do that.
Cooling is fine. Everything is normal temp. 35-50c processor.
Plenty of scans done for malware and anything like that.

My processor is 3.1ghz dual core and it used to play the game fine on high settings.

I have checked all the processes and even ended everything apart from things to let windows run!

I built the pc not long ago. It has one massive fan at the front, one at the back, one on the side, one exhaust type fan sucking air off the graphics card and the cpu fan. All speed controlable and are on full when playing games.

Game used to work fine on high.

Just completely wiped my hard drive and reinstalled xp to try and sort this out.

To me that says its either a driver/bios issue or hardware.

I will upgrade my bios now, see what happens. I remember doing this before some time.

Thanks

[Scotsman37]

Here's a note from Nvidia's documentation regarding it's latest driver which is of an interesting read about NOT being an Nvidia driver issue but either an application itself or the application not tested properly on a dual core cpu (there is many versions of dual core cpus out there now and that's probably why?).

Not NVIDIA Issues
This section lists issues that are not due to the NVIDIA driver.


Application Issues
All GPUs

• Dual Core CPU: Counter Strike 1.6 hangs if you play Cheating Death 4.33.4 at same
time.
This application does not properly recognize dual-core CPUs.

• Counter‐Strike Source frame rate is jumpy.
Jittery/lagging movement has been seen when starting a game after running the Video
Stress Test.
Smooth movement is restored after exiting and then restarting the application. The issue
does not appear when creating a new game, disconnecting, and then creating another new
game.

• HQV DVD playback is bobbing when running in overlay mode.[272289]
This is not an NVIDIA bug, but rather an issue with the Intervideo decoder in WinDVD 8.

• During DVD and HD DVD/Blu‐ray playback, a white screen may appear over video
when toggling from windowed to full‐screen mode. [263449]
This issue was reported in driver v96.94 as an NVIDIA driver issue, but now appears to be
an application issue with PowerDVD. NVIDIA is working with the application developer to
provide a fix.

• Sims 2–“Smooth Edges (AA)” option is not available with Release 100
drivers.[272477]
This occurs because of an incorrect driver version check in the application.
NVIDIA has worked around this issue in the operating system by changing the way the
driver version is reported to this application.

• Warhammer 40k Dawn of War (all versions) does not run with Release 100
drivers.[273154]
This occurs because of an incorrect driver version check in the application.
NVIDIA has worked around this issue in the operating system by changing the way the
driver version is reported to this application.

• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl: This application is not compatible with the
Override any application setting or Enhance the application setting antialiasing modes
from the NVIDIA Control Panel Manage 3D Settings page.
Please use the in‐game antialiasing options.

• Splinter Cell Double Agent crashes when loading a single player game.[270517]
This is an application issue. You can work around this issue by creating a shortcut to launch
the game as follows:
1 Navigate to the game install directory, then change to the sub‐folder
\SCDA‐Offline\system.
2 Create a shortcut to splintercell4.exe.
3 Add ʺ‐llʺ to the command line of the shortcut.
4 Use this shortcut to launch the single player version of the game.

• HQV DVD playback is bobbing when running in overlay mode.
[272289]
This is not an NVIDIA bug, but rather an issue with the Intervideo decoder in WinDVD 8.

• Age of Empires 3: Setting application to 1600x1200 with shader quality set to ‘very
high’ causes menus and game to become corrupted.
This issue can be fixed by installing the v1.07 game patch.

• Company of Heroes: Dark transparent band appears when running the in‐game
performance test.
This is an application issue and can be reproduced on NVIDIA GeForce 7900 and ATI
Radeon X1950 GPUs.

• Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion: Running at 2560x1600 with NVIDIA Enhanced Application
mode 16xQ, extremely rare 1‐2 second pauses occur during some fighting. [262685]
This appears to be an application issue in how large textures are created during the in‐game
fighting.

• Far Cry: Water reflection on Archive level is not correct. [253431]
This appears to be an application issue. NVIDIA is working with the application developer
to try to patch their application

• Half‐Life 2 Lost Coast: Color corruption occurs in the video stress test after
changing the display mode.
This is a known application issue.

• Half‐Life 2 Episode One: Gravity Gun has z‐fighting problems on certain portions
of the gun. [263505]

• Quake4: Random pauses occur during gameplay. [260029]
This appears to be an application issue that affects testing on Quake4 with dual‐core
optimizations turned on. Turning off the SMP value in Quake4 eliminates this problem.

• During DVD and HD DVD/Blu‐ray playback, a white screen may appear over video
when toggling from windowed to full‐screen mode.[263449]
NVI D I A C o r p o r a t i o n 15
R e l e a s e 1 8 5 G r a p h i c s D r i v e r V e r s i o n 1 8 5 . 8 5
This issue was reported in driver v96.94 as an NVIDIA driver issue, but now appears to be
an application issue with PowerDVD. NVIDIA is working with the application developer to
provide a fix.

• Age of Empires 3: Vertical sliver appears near the right side of the introduction
videos. [221738]

• Battlefield 1942 hangs after playing for a few minutes.[265230]
This is an application issue with dual‐core CPUs.

[The Artist]

[Scotsman37]

Here's a help guide from the community forum found at the maker's website to eliminate stutter that a lot of people are experiencing!


https://www.gsc-game.com/index.php?t=community&s=forums&s_game_type=xr&lang=en

[The Artist]

I went through all them. The only major thing I did was change page file to 1024mb from 2048mb and the game seems a lot better. Still stutters a bit. Nowhere near as much as before but the CPU still does that one on full and other on less than half thing.

[Scotsman37]

That's why it's so hard for software companies these days to test for every conceivable hardware setup to test their new program to debug it for full compatability due to costs. So, no doubt they go with a few well known major brand names and that's there test system until the next leap in hardware, but after it's released is when they start to really find the bugs appearing, if any, and try to retify it or not maybe the question if the costs out weigh the benefits of keeping it popular to the masses!

At least it's working better in some ways, hopfully they will rectify more bugs in their next patch, if it comes out?

Do try this anti-malware program after you've ran it's update to see if it finds anything, as it's really good at what it does and it's highly recommended because it finds viruses/malware that a lot of other software don't find in the end.

https://download.cnet.com/Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware/3000-8022_4-10804572.html?part=dl-10804572&subj=dl&tag=button

[The Artist]

Yeah I have got that malwarebytes program and superantispyware which seems to find more than others.

Spybot S&D which doesn't work aswell as it did a few years ago.

AVG paid for version

[Scotsman37]

Here's AMD's answer to cpu usage problems;

https://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/CPU-4-Atidleorunderalightapp.aspx

Also, here's a bit info you maybe interestyed in about Stalker!

STALKER & Dual Core CPUs



The developers of STALKER have clearely stated that STALKER benefits from Dual/Quad Core CPUs. This is evident in the Readme.txt file found under your \Program Files\THQ\S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl directory which specifically says that "S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl should utilize your dual and quad core processor natively and automatically. Running a dual or quad core processor is one of the best ways to improve performance."



Unfortunately in testing STALKER on a dual core CPU, I've found that in general while I've had no problems, it doesn't seem to utilize both cores completely; like most non-multithreaded games it only uses around 50% of each CPU, or 100% of one core and around 0% of the other. I haven't found any switches which force STALKER to run in multithreaded mode, and I'd suggest that given the game began development over six years ago, it's unlikely most of it is multithreaded enough to truly take advantage of multi-core CPUs. Perhaps a patch will fix this - stay tuned.



Update: As of the 1.0004 Patch STALKER has been further optimized for dual core CPUs. In my own testing it still doesn't appear as though the combined CPU usage is going much above 50% on average, but any improvement is welcome.


https://www.tweakguides.com/STALKER_10.html

[Welshd1k]

that looks normal for ingame tbh m8t pluss your gfx card is a pile of poo poo so dont eb expectign high gfx quality in big close combast bits
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Sold >,zxr400 h2 (33bhp kit) rd350 n1 rd350 lc2<