Processors
Intel® Processors, Tools, and Utilities
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I recently got an i5 6600K and the utilization is around 100% when playing some games.

idata
Employee
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The temperature is never very high though, around 40c. This seems high since my old AMD 8350 never got that high. I thought intel was better at handling games then AMD. Idle usage is around 5%-10%. Graphics card is at 80% in graphic intensive games. Is this normal? How can I fix this?

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idata
Employee
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Hello, speecbeen:

I would like to verify some information in regard to your system in order to confirm if this can be considered as normal behavior, so please provide me with the following reports;

Regards,

Amy.

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idata
Employee
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Intel Processor Diagnostics tool - ALL PASS

Game was The Witcher 3

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idata
Employee
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Can you please attach the files from both utilities? To attach a file, you must click "Use Advanced Editor" in the top right corner of the response box, then the "attach" option will appear in the bottom right corner of the response box.

Regards,

Amy.

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idata
Employee
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I apologize. I was trying to reply with through email and was having trouble attaching the files. It seems I am able to attach these types of files through here though.

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idata
Employee
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Please let's try updating your BIOS version to the latest. See here for the download https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z170-A/HelpDesk_Download/ Z170-A | Motherboards | ASUS Global, download BIOS version Z170-A BIOS 2001. One more thing, I noticed that your computer model supports multi-GPU; how are you setting this in your BIOS?

Regards,

Amy.

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idata
Employee
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Integrated graphics is disabled and gpu slot is set to auto.

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idata
Employee
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Bios is the second newest version (1902). But people keep telling me not to update my BIOS because it's too risky. I have downloaded the update file already though. How ever it is a .cap file and I don't know how to install it.

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idata
Employee
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idata
Employee
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For testing purposes, can you set them to low?

Let me know if you updated the BIOS version.

Regards,

Amy.

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idata
Employee
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BIOS is updated. Ran witcher 3 on low settings still 100%.

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ssote
New Contributor II
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With good game coding you will have 100% CPU utilization in gaming. What that means is the CPU is being used 100% of the time. The CPU under load runs at the same speed all the time, the only difference is how fast the applications feeds the CPU.

A lot of people misunderstand about processor utilization it is not the speed of the CPU processing that stays the same under full load, think of it based on time and work that gets done.

At Idle my i5 6600k CPU utilization is 0-3% I would look into what applications are running in the background on your PC they may just be bursting with CPU usage, meaning short interval of time.

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idata
Employee
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speecbeen, something that I noticed from your reports is that you are using the memory with the following configuration;

Configured Clock Speed 2472 MHz

Configured Voltage 1200 millivolts

Is there any chance you can set the RAM values to the following DDR4-1866/2133 @ 1.2V? And, if possible can you test your motherboard with a different RAM type? The recommended configuration is DDR4-1866/2133, DDR3L-1333/1600 @ 1.35V which is the official memory specifications supported. Check here for the Memory Specifications http://ark.intel.com/products/88191/Intel-Core-i5-6600K-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_90-GHz Intel® Core™ i5-6600K Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.90 GHz) Specifications.

Regards,

Amy.

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idata
Employee
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I have changed the RAM to 2133 and nothing has changed. And as much as I would like to go out and buy some more RAM I don't have the money for that now as I have spent it on a new processor and motherboard.

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idata
Employee
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I understand, and don't worry it was just a suggestion.

Let's try something different, please unplug the graphics card from your motherboard and run the game with the integrated graphics on low settings. I want to check if the resources are being shared or just consumed by graphics card.

One more thing, what tool are you using to check utilization? Can you please attach a screenshot?

Regards,

Amy.

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idata
Employee
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It looks like it is the same without the gpu. I'm using HWmonitor.

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ssote
New Contributor II
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A 100% utilization is a good thing it means while gaming the game is using 100% of the CPU.

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TAmor
Beginner
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CPUS are made to run at 100%, if the software is bad at multithreading or another part of the computer caused a bottleneck, the cpu usage will be lower.

Most games are bad at multithreading and wont reach 100% with 4 or more cores, but some games are pretty good and do reach that. So do some benchmarks and production software.

Run cpu and gpu benchmarks and compare to others online to see if you are getting the expected performance, if so, and if your temperature is within specs, your cpu is fine.

Also, dont overclock anything when testing the cpu for support, because overclocking can result in unexpected behaviour.

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idata
Employee
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I have the exact same problem with my processor (provided I understand your issue right). My 6600K is constantly on 100% usage in most games, even in the menus and is bottlenecking my gtx 1070, resulting in very low frame rates. I hope Intel can give us a solution

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ssote
New Contributor II
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DokiBaxxi wrote:

I have the exact same problem with my processor (provided I understand your issue right). My 6600K is constantly on 100% usage in most games, even in the menus and is bottlenecking my gtx 1070, resulting in very low frame rates. I hope Intel can give us a solution

Do you have malware or virus, apps running in the background, what games do you play also What FPS are you seeing, What does your CPU utilization look like in windows task manger when you are gaming?

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