I've been playing Far Cry 3 for a long time now after its release, and I have been observing my CPU's usage on the game using a CPU core monitoring program; the game usually utilizes around 74%, 86% to 94% of my CPU across all four cores without any interference from background applications - I guess it's CPU intensive in that case.
Whenever I go to high places in Far Cry 3 and look at the landscapes, the frame rates drop to 31 to 40 fps @ 4.4ghz - So I was wondering if my CPU was having any problems with temperature, but it appears to be around 64° to 74° Celsius and there was no CPU throttling what so ever.
So I wanted to know if there would be any difference or any noticeable performance decrements If I down-clocked my CPU to 3.4ghz - and as it turned out, it remained the same, it still dips around 31 to 40 fps. I guess my GPU is holding back my CPU's performance even at 3.4ghz! This made me realize how capable my CPU is even at low frequencies, so I decided to stick with the 3.4ghz frequency for now and tested other games, somehow they felt the same as if I was still using my 4.4ghz OC.
monitoring cpu load during the game does not make much sense, you should install msi afterburner and monitor the gpu load during the game. Could be just a part of the game. But could also be a GPU driver issue.
Installing the latest stable driver is also something i would highly recommend. 14.9 driver for example.
No, monitoring my CPU's work load during the game does make sense, how am I supposed to know how much the game utilizes the CPU?
Yes, I've been using MSI afterburner to monitor my GPU's work loads during the game, most of the time it has been running at 99% at decent temperatures. That part of the game where I got a performance dip is very taxing since it displays most of the post fx details and other heavy graphical features.
It's not a GPU driver issue, I've encountered the same thing when I was using previous drivers including the 14.9 - which I replaced with the new 14.12 Omega driver.
No matter what anyone here might say, CPU bottlenecking will not occur on most CPUs you would have to get a really low end one like a Intel i3 or AMD A4. That is of course not true in multiple GPU setups where more horsepower is needed on the CPU end of things. The lack of FPS drops you are seeing are proof of this; most games are GPU dependent to a sicking point.
That being said there are games and applications that do bottleneck due to heavily CPU intensive rendering like EQ2 and Skyrim but these are the exception not the rule.
if your gpu load is at 99% then it does not matter how high the cpu load is. Because your GPU is getting maxed out.
Those frame dips is probably just a part in the game. Wenn during those dips your gpu load is still well above 90% load, then its just simply a GPU limitation.
and if it does occur. it is a problem with the game. Specifically Ubisoft title. They have a habit of half baking their stuff or not baking them at all for PC.
The scenario you describe, "going to a high place and looking at the landscape" and noticing a drop in frame rate, is a common effect on most PCs. It has nothing to do with bottle necking between the CPU and the GPU. What your seeing in your particular case is a change in the complexity of the scene being rendered.
In low places, in the trees and under brush, your view of the landscape is blocked by foliage and near by terrain features, and the game, being able to logic out what you can and cannot see, only renders the things you can see. When you go to a high place, where your view is not mostly obscured, you are forcing the game to render almost everything within your field of view.
Remember how detailed the scenery is low down on the map? When you go to a high place, you force the game to try and render out that same detail over a much larger area, and as a result it gets bogged down in the shear amount of polygons and textures and objects that need to be rendered to make that landscape look good.
Its not a bottle neck issue, its a game graphics complexity vs GPU capabilities issue. If there was a lot of physics being rendered then you could attribute that kind of fps drop to a bottle necking issue, but based purely off of your description of the scenario, I would say that you have simply reached the maximum capabilities of your card in relation to far cry 4.
I just read this article about what a CPU does in gaming - some of the users say the CPU is the land-stick by which you would get the power out of any graphics card. A strong CPU will get the most out of a graphics card's performance, whereas a weak one will limit your GPU's capability.
The thing I understand about bottlenecks is that it's something that limits another thing, like I can't get much of the CPU's performance, because my GPU is holding it back.
Could you further explain this "game graphics complexity vs GPU capabilities issue?" I've never heard of it before.
Without getting too technical, graphics complexity vs GPU capabilities really means what your GPU can handle vs what the game is designed/set to render. The polygon count + the texture quality + the texture count + shader effects + bump mapping etc etc in a game a combine to form the workload you're asking the GPU to render. If one or more of these things exceeds what your GPU can handle then the games framerate will drop to compensate, slowing the rest of render down so the toughest part of the render can keep up with the rest of the scene. It really is a case of the weakest link holding back the whole render.
What youre experiencing when you go to a high place in far cry is one or more of the things mentioned above exceeding what your GPU can handle and thus slowing down the frame rate. If there was a lot of action going on when the frame rate dropped, then I would point toward a CPU/GPU bottle neck. In reality I think its more likely a bottle neck within the GPU it self.
And let's be honest, if that's the only time you get a noticeable fps drop, I wouldn't be too concerned, especially running on ultra. If the rest of the game runs smoothly, then I think an occasional performance drop in one specific scenario is a small price to pay.
This is very informative, thanks a lot of sharing! I thought bottlenecks only occur between a GPU and a CPU - I'll be keeping my R9 280x for a very long time - so far it's been doing very well with the new games, and hopefully soon in the future. Cheers!
