This appears to be a game issue as it’s the only game that has this low utilization, please see attached screenshot.
My Current rig is as follows:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5800X3D @ 4450mhz.
RAM: 64 GB 3600 CL16 RAM
GPU: ASUS ROG STRIX 3090 @ OC:ed 50 2050 Mhz.
Everything on Custom Water Cooling.
OS: Windows 10 22H2
GPU: Driver 576.02
Now as you can see from the RTSS overlay I’m only getting about 30% Utilization on the GPU and about 40% on the CPU.
Just to clarify, This is both in the hub and mid-combat mid-mission. I just chose this place to take a screenshot.
Is this to be expected in Darktide or is this something wrong on my end?
Looking for things to optimize, thank you <3
Tried what you recommended, no noticeable difference.
Used Windows Task manager to verify utilization.
Initial post was withouth Framegen, Enabling FSR Framegen has gotten me to playable FPS the game is at least playable now.
It’s just a very wierd scenario where there is so much more power available that the game for whatever reason can not seem to utilise.
I have no deeper understanding of the engine, perhaps there is this one thread that would like a core with much higher clock, but everything I’m reading about the engine seems to say that it’s very multi threaded.
Hope some dev can chime in and perhaps we can get to the root of it.
The issue seems to be on your end?
Similar specs: 5900x w/ RTX 3080, I just now upgraded to latest hotfix drivers and ran a solo map for a bit, seemed fine. I’m on Win 11 24h2 here though.
The average CPU utilization isn’t a particularly useful metric though, the individual cores, core 0 (or the Ryzen best/preferred core graphs?) might be more useful. It’s handy to monitor stuff w/ afterburner and record to a file for review, turn any overlays off for troubleshooting. Worker threads in DT? Try 8. Any other CPU heavy tasks?
You might want to google some troubleshooting steps to try.
You can be CPU bound way before the % indicator can suggest in MSI AB as a game may not utilise additional cores fully due to game engine limitation. Last of us 2 - Now that game actually does CPU scale all the way to 16.
This Darktide game engine is a strange one. Uncapped frame rate it uses 50W for CPU and 150W for GPU, so I know both under utilised. Enable RTX then GPU does 200W, still only half for both.
MSI AB tip:
You can set core affinity to last vCPU/e-core etc to bind to MSI AB process if want to keep using it without interfering with game. Still displays stats without delay per sec. Or just set to both MSI AB and the 3 RTSS services too.
5800X3D is good CPU I wouldn’t discard if you’re happy with performance in other games, rather than upgrade for one game. Well depends how much you really like the game.
Going from 5800X3D to 9800X3D in CPU bound games might be 15-20% FPS at most at 1440P, even with top end GPU.
I went from a 5800X3d/4080 to a 9800X3d/5080 and it was not a huge upgrade.
5800X3d and a 3090 should be doing a lot better. I’m still thinking it has to do with Afterburner and RTSS. I had horrible frame times every second or so until I disabled some of the power polling afterburner and RTSS were doing.
I use process lasso. Turn off it’s pro balance feature then for MSI AB and the 3 RTSS services set their CPU affinity to use only the one last vCPU. Now I can turn on all monitoring like power, power percent etc and it doesn’t affect game at all. Give it a go as free.
A lot of people try to use it on their game processes like disabling SMT, more CPU priority to it etc. But best not to. Best way to use it is instead to suppress non-windows background processes like mouse/keyboard software, dropbox, discord, Nvidia processes etc to only the one last vCPU to prevent interference with games entirely.
Or if want to do without installing software to set CPU affinity.
Set MSI Afterburner to not autostart when you login
Create a .bat file to run instead
cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSI Afterburner"
start /affinity 0x0000000000008000 MSIAfterburner.exe
For some reason it won’t accept one command line filepath with quotes, so have to CD into directory first
Now if you go into task manager → details, right click MSI Afterburner process → Set Affinity it will show only CPU15 set. As MSI Afterburner also loads the 3 RTSS services it inherits the CPU affinity and they also are set to CPU15 only.
If you upgrade to 16 core CPU in future you can use below to get HEX value.
I am really thankful for the help and tips, but i did verify with afterburner and any other overlay etc turned off.
No difference.
I’ve tried using process lasso to set CPU affinity, I’ve played around with Worker threads.
I have tried almost every optimization trick I could find for this game, to no real avail.
The performance varies so widely between maps in particular.
It’s obviously CPU bound, to the point that on some levels the GPU will clock down to like 800-1000 Mhz with it’s max beeing 2050- since there is nothing for it to do, it’s just waiting for the CPU to finish up. At least that’s what I think, I don’t have any debugging tools available for this, unfortunately.
I wouldn’t use process lasso to influence the game process. Better to use it to prevent background non windows apps from interfering with the game.
i.e. Mouse/keyboard software steel series/razer etc, Dropbox, MSI Afterburner, Discord etc. Use Process lasso to set them to use only last vCPU. But leave windows services and game process untouched by it.
Turn off pro balance feature in process lasso otherwise that will take effect on game process.
The game does have some sort engine limitation with uncapped frame rate.
You: GPU 170W and CPU 60W
Me: GPU 150W and CPU 40W
Now if I run a something more optimised i.e. Black Myth WuKong or Doom Eternal. GPU 300W+
I believe is an issue with game optimisation. Makes even less sense in mourningstar when nothing CPU heavy is going on like particles or physics and considered CPU bound.
I don’t know then. The only condition I can get it to use 300W is by putting all graphics to max and grabbing my 4K monitor I only use for work. But I prefer my smaller higher refresh rate monitor of 360Hz
Then it pulls 325W (This is my max as I set an OC and undervolt flat at 3000MHz @ 0.955V)
I think playing at lower resolution is setting CPU bound scenario in respects to Darktide use of CPU
