Bottlenecking

Community Blog
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(This might be a tad ranty)

As many always want to "prevent bottlenecks" (= move the bottleneck somewhere where it does not disturb much), I recorded some real bottlenecking in game:

Bottlenecking.JPG1188x1031 515 KB

That is what Heroes of the Storm at lower than 40FPS on 1080p looks like:
- GPU load all over the place
- 200 to 400Mhz GPU clock
- Two CPU cores (No 5 and 6) doing something game related. Core 0 and 2 managing music and browser.
- VRAM load is SOMEWHERE but not where it should be

What you see in game:
- < 40 FPS
- stutters

What developers (in this case Blizzard Entertainment) should do:
- use Vulkan
- make use of more than two cores for the love of god! This is not 2005 anymore when using two cores was the shit!

Lastly on this list, system specs:
FX-8320 at 3.9Ghz
Sapphire R9 Fury

A little rant on "prevent bottlenecking":
You can´t! Done.
It does not even make sense in the first place. You always have a weak link. In this case, using four cores instead of two would move the bottleneck somewhere else. Imagine having the ultimate CPU, sixteen cores each having the power to simulate a human brain in real time... and a VooDoo3. You will not get good FPS with that.
Now get some more down to earth components. i7-6700k and Radeon ProDuo, but only a CRT because you blew your money on that rig. Now you are literally looking at your bottleneck (and an empty wallet).


I am just a bit upset that I have a 500€ GPU in an 500€ rig and get only 30 FPS in a Free to Play game...
Does anyone know if I can make my FirePro W8100 help the CPU out?

Little Update:

A friend of mine has an FX-8350 under water paired with my old R9 270X. He gets more FPS in Heroes of the Storm on that card then I did. The overclocked CPU seems to be the key.

MSi AB readings are accurate. Need proof?
Played some GRIP as that seems to hit 6 cores. Here is what 69FPS average looks like:

NoBottleneck.JPG1535x863 629 KB

On the left we have Sapphire TriX and on the right MSi AB. I overlayed the two graphes. I aligned them by the memory usage graph:

As you can see, the GPU clock is higher compared to Heroes. I think we can agree that whatever stalls my GPU in Heroes is not an issue in Grip.

My screen is from a time when Freecync was barely a thing. Plus it is connected via HDMI. Freesync is not the cause.

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You are totally right. There is no single machine, that does use all it's ressources efficently for all tasks.
And it's sad, that game-devs aren't using more than a few cores/threads, but it's understandable. Most of their customers run intel, and most of them are using 4 cores or less, so it makes sense to target this group.

While the 8320 isn't a bad cpu for some workloads (Cheap VM server ;) ), it pretty much sucks for gaming these days.

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Waiting for Zen like:

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Do you like the Fury? Is there coil whine?

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I like the card. Was a really good step-up from my Sapphire R9 270X 2GB
I never experienced any coilwhine. A load of people say Furys cry like babies... Must be a hand sign crying then!

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I don't do bottlenecks I do mason jars so I can drink faster...

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Sure it can, you just have to rewire your semantics. Replace 'bottlenecking' in your thought process with 'balance'.

Attempt to make sure that each component will not slow down an adjacent component and even more important, don't buy any part that is over-powered for your needs. Do you remember the Windows Experience Index benchmark test in the Control Panel? Although it was flawed I used it to compare the relative balance between parts of my system.

Win10ExperienceIndex.jpg1000x780 130 KB

Try to look at the cost vs. long term benefit ratio of your computer and its parts. I can only use my system as an example.

My use case is about - 50% Video or Web browsing, 25% Photoshop and 3D modeling, 15% Gaming, 10% Windows and File management. I use a i5-4690K, 16GB DDR3, GTX 970. Ninety percent of the time the i5 is perfectly balanced to my needs. Only when I am doing 3D work do I require an i7, so it did not make sense to spend more money on CPU power I will rarely use. If I were using this PC to make money then it would be worth the investment in the best CPU available.

With all the hype about the new video cards of course I want one, but my GTX 970 is always over 60 fps on Ultra so why spend the money? On the flip side, I recently needed more drive space so I got an Intel 750 NVMe SSD. It's blazing fast in benchmarks but I can't tell the difference from the SATA SSD in the real world. My money would have been better spend on a larger SATA SSD.

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I mean not to make you feel bad or anything but I crush those numbers in the same game, max settings. and somewhere between 1080-1440 with VSR.

GPU: R9 280 Windforce @ 1.1ghz core
CPU: FX-6350 @ 4.5ghz

Not sure why your performance is so shoddy.

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enable AMD compatability settings in MSI after burner dude.

MSI ab will show amd gpu usage all over the place (0-100%) llike that unless you enable unified monitroing, then you will get accurate readings.

Second make sure freesync is DISABLED and you have preformed a clean driver install.

I had similar results when I first got my Fury X, turns out freesync causes major FPS issues.

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The acurate readings are that.

My screen does not support freesync. HDMI does not support Freesync either. So yeah.

It will not get any cleaner than that.

No freesync, no issue.