CPU/GPU usage... :/

[Sakiri]

First off:

 

https://wiki.step-project.com/User:Sakiri/SystemSpecs

 

Get that out of the way.

 

I'm having a few... issues. So to speak. Mostly with GPU and CPU usage.

 

I expect them to be high but it's going to interfere with some things. I record videos. With just OBS running, I get some stuttering and I'm like well hm... let's see.

 

Fired up Afterburner(GPU monitoring) and RivaTuner(framerate) as well as CoreTemp(CPU monitor) and noted a few things.

 

With OBS running, I'm regularly capping my CPU usage. All cores are averaging 85% capacity, and temperatures are reaching close to 80C. This is a system that sits idle at 45C, tops. Air cooled.

 

Without OBS running, I'm sitting at closer to 60-70% CPU used, and my temps don't go above 75C. 

 

Regardless of the use of OBS, my GPU usage peaks at 100% and just stays there.

 

I'm now curious as to if there's something I can do to the install to fix that. I'm actually using all of STEP's suggested qualities or lower already. Medium setting for DynDOLOD. 

 

Is there anything I can do to lower the load on my processors?

[TechAngel85]

Making sure you don't have anything unnesarry running in the background is about the only thing you can do since you don't have a "K" model Intel. If you had a K model, you could get better cooling and overclock it.

[Sakiri]

I wouldn't overclock it anyways. Last time I attempted that it cost me a few hundred.

 

I'm referring to anything I can do to the game install itself. Not hardware.

 

Because outside the monitoring software, nothing *was* running in the background. Soon as I shut Skyrim off my CPU usage went back down to 2%.

[Greg]

Seeing 100% GPU is normal due to the way AMD cards throttle the clock speed based on usage -- meaning total usage should be pretty much 100% but the core clock speed varies all over the place depending on a variety of factors.

 

Skyrim by itself isn't all that CPU intensive and I see roughly 20% to 30% CPU usage on average on my i7-4790K @4.00GHz (not overclocked). I imagine you're seeing perhaps a smidgen more CPU usage from Skyrim on your i5-4690 @3.50GHZ.

 

Your issue is primarily trying to capture/encode/stream video simultaneously while playing Skyrim and I think you'll need a fairly beefy system to handle both at the same time. You might try disabling any post processing (FXAA, SMAA, etc. via the enblocal.ini EnableProxyLibrary setting) if you have any of these enabled to see if this makes a difference.

[TechAngel85]

I have an Nvidia card so I'm not aware of how the AMD side runs. I agree that I would recommend a Core i7 for capturing, encoding, editing, steaming video. The benefits from the extra cores and HT would be worth if, if you're planning to do a lot of that type of stuff.

[hishutup]

If I were you Id get a benchmark of how much usage is required for encoding. If its less then two cores then set the affinity for the encoder to use only two of the available physical cores. Then for skyrim set the affinity to the other two cores then you should be fine, however with my amd 6970 2GB, I did notice stutter almost consistently, regardless of mods. Upgrading to a 4GB card obviously fixed it.

But at Tech said, 8 logical cores would help

 

I wouldn't overclock it anyways. Last time I attempted that it cost me a few hundred.

I would argue the other way since one should always assume there is some sort of risk.

Before even attempting to OC a foreign architecture, you have to research what affects what. One of the gotchyas on skylake is that the vcore ramps up with clockspeed.

Most high end mobos have this disabled by default but when I enabled it the vcore when up to 1.35+ which I wasnt happy with so I applied a negative offset as it was stable across the board otherwise.

[Spock]

I'm not that much into video encoding, but can't the GPU do that way faster then the CPU anyway (especially AMD)? Shouldn't HT reduce Skyrim performance when the threads are really used? My reasoning would be that HT reduces performance per thread and Skyrim is pretty much single threaded (the important stuff: renderer and game logic).

[DoubleYou]

You should use amd gaming evolved for the video recording I believe, since it uses the GPU to record.

[TechAngel85]

The HT and more cores comes in handy, not so much in game, but with other background tasks (assign cores manually, if needed) and for the editing and encoding software.