Not using full CPU ?

[rainbowwasabi]

Ok, So why isn't skyrim using all the CPU I have ?

 

I mean It is using almost all my RAM.

 

And I'm lagging, but when I go look at my CPU, it only uses about 16% of all my CPU...

 

is there any way to fix this ? It would cause me to my FPS to stay at 60% or so... thats what I think ?

 

 

I want skyrim to use all the resources it can get. So it can use all my CPU.

 

Do anyone know how to make it use all CPU ?

[GeohoundJason]

Specs? You might have a processor that's overkill for the game, but your RAM and video card might be too slow to handle it. And we can't know without knowing what your computer build is.

[acidzebra]

It's not using it because it doesn't need to, or it can't because it's waiting for other stuff. Congrats, your CPU has spare capacity for other tasks. In other words, if you are still experiencing lag or low fps you are bound by some other limitation, so gpu, ram, disk, throughput of any of the before. In other other words, the bottleneck is not your CPU.

[rainbowwasabi]

Can anyone care to explain this correctly and give me some options to fix this ?

 

Or simply tell me if I can or can't make skyrim use the rest of my CPU ? its only using 16% while the other 84% remains untouched ?

 

I know it needs to because my FPS drops and the game is slow. I'm running a ENB and about 100 mods.

 

Pretty sure my system can handle it, although I have done some research about skyrims engine being old and whether I have 32 gigabits of RAM or not it will not be able to run without lag anyways.

 

 

I just want a quick answer, whether or not I can make Skyrim use all the available CPU or not, and if YES, then what program or how do I make it do that.

[GeohoundJason]

It's hard to give you any sort of answer when we don't have any idea what your system is. The game doesn't even require that much in terms of CPU(I was able to run it on a hyperthreaded Pentium 4 at about 77% CPU usage), it's more reliant on the graphics. There's no way to improve your framerate other than to remove the ENB or get a much better graphics card.

 

Again, if you want more precise answers, TELL US WHAT YOUR BUILD IS!

[Lord Garon]

...

I just want a quick answer, whether or not I can make Skyrim use all the available CPU or not, and if YES, then what program or how do I make it do that.

 

Short answer; No.

 

1. Skyrim is a "poorly threaded" program, meaning most game and rendering work is done with two main threads.

2. You cannot force ANY program to use more CPU time than it "needs".

 

I'm guessing, because you won't tell us what kind of a CPU you have, that you have a 6 or 8 (logical) core processor. Low CPU use would be normal, though you should see 2 CORES running high utilization. Its a programming issue. Skyrim (TESV.exe) spawns 12 22 threads on my dual-core G2030 Win7 machine. Only two of those threads ever register any appreciable CPU time at all (according to Process Explorer). I'm sure those other 20 threads are doing SOMETHING, just very, very little compared to the two primary threads. But, my two cores are close to 100% at all times and my CPU (both core) utilization runs around 90% to 95% while playing. My sister's i7 runs right around 30% CPU utilization with Skyrim; cores 2 and 4 maxed (probably the two main Skyrim threads) and system stuff on the other six. There's no making silk purses from the sow's ear called Skyrim.

 

EDIT - typo

Edited November 26, 2013 by Lord Garon

[rainbowwasabi]

Windows 7

Intel core i7 q740 @ 1.73GHz (8 CPUs)

Quad core

6144MB RAM

 

 

Video card

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850

3822 MB memory

[Lord Garon]

Windows 7

Intel core i7 q740 @ 1.73GHz (8 CPUs)

Quad core

6144MB RAM

 

 

Okay... the i7 is a Hyper-Threaded CPU and shows up as 8 cores in Windows (which is what actually assigns things to CPU cores). I would expect a slightly higher CPU useage (which averages all 8 cores) than 16% with Skyrim running. As I said, my sister's i7 machine runs about 30% CPU, but with a heavily modded Skyrim. Are your System Power settings (Control Panel-->System&Security-->Power Options) set to "High Performance"? Windows will reduce computer performance in a heartbeat to save battery life and that will reduce CPU use.

 

Try running Skyrim in Windowed mode with Task Manager up in front so you can see all of your cores while the game is actually running. A "normal" run will show two of your cores with high activity and the rest with lower useage (based upon my one i7 example).

 

(Don't even think about this part if you're happy with the game performance) Hyper-Threaded CPU's make one physical core look like two logical cores. But running two logical cores takes some performance away, that is, a full physical core is "faster" than a logical core. That's why an i5 CPU does so well; it uses 4 full physical cores. Some BIOS's allow you to "turn off" Hyper-Threading. Doing so with a game that only uses a couple main threads will improve game performance. In the early days of Skyrim, this was a common technique of the i7 crowd to gain a little performance. It's not that much, HT is pretty efficient. If you turn off HT completely, you will be down to a "real" quad-core. Anything else you do that requires many threads will probably slow down (It takes more overhead in Windows to schedule multiple threads on a core than it does just to assign a thread to its own core.) Mucking with BIOS settings can, literally, break your machine. Google around and see if anyone has tried this on your model laptop before you do anything.

Edited December 1, 2013 by Lord Garon