SC2 not able to fully use GPU and CPU resulting in fps loss

Technical Support
1

TL;DR
I can’t get SC2 to perform at 60 fps constantly at Extreme settings even though GPU, CPU, RAM and disk are not using their full potential. Specifically, on SC2, other software and games perform well and smoothly.

Components list at the end!

My detailed issue
I’ve been going crazy for the last 3 days trying to make a good setup for my brother to enjoy SC2 in ultra settings, but for some reason SC2 is the only game I can’t get to perform at 60 fps constantly at max settings (I have tried lowering settings but still seeing some frame drops).
Somehow during gameplay I’m seeing frames drop all the way to the 20s and rise back up to 50s-60s. I can see with MSI’s afterburner that the GPU (NVIDIA geforce gtx 1050 ti gaming) does not use it’s whole pontential and uses only about 50% of its capacity and the CPU (intel core i7-2700k 3.5 ghz quad-core processor) only uses about 30% of its power. Something worth noticing is that CPU uses hyperthreading and from 4 cores I turned it into 8 cores, but only the 3rd one is the one being pushed to a maximum of 80% (not bottlenecking there at least) the other 7 cores only become about 10%-15% active, so that definitely has my attention on SC2.

What I’ve tried
I’ve tried setting Windows 10’s settings to performant, battery savers off, Set Nvidia’s software to maximum (through Nvidia’s control pannel), tweaked BIOS settings to make sure they are not holding on the computer from performing, gave the Starcraft Real-Time priority in Task manager, reinstalled Nvidia driver’s etc through their tool, re-installed Starcraft, but nothing seems to be helping.

Other games and tests
I tried installing Monster Hunter World and that WAS using 100% of the GPU and about 40% of CPU and cores had correct distributed processes and also doing MSI Kombustor tests (with afterburner) to ensure the GPU and CPU were in ok conditions, I can’t paste the link here, (here’s the ID Kombustor 4.1.5.0 - score ID: 339588) but in summary, GPU and CPU are able to be used at 100% by the computer, just not for Starcraft2 …

Could I please get some help or insight on what could be wrong here?
Is it possible it’s a performance issue with the game itself or the game with my setup? My results from Kombustor and Monster Hunter lead me to think it’s specific to Starcraft :frowning:

Thank you!

List of components:
Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H ATX LGA1155 Motherboard

GPU
GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
OpenGL 4.6.0 NVIDIA 445.87

CPU
Intel® Core™ i7-2700K CPU @ 3.50GHz

16 GBs of RAM
G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
(Uses about half of memory when playing)

Power supply
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1200 W 80+ Gold Certified ATX
(only using about 350W)

OS
Windows 10 build 18362

2

Hey there,

The game should use one core fully and then will generally use around half of a second core. So seeing 1 1/2 cores being used is definitely normal.

It is also normal for the game to not use 100% CPU or GPU at all times. If either of those is constantly pegged at 100% usage that usually indicates there is a bottleneck with the system. The one that’s pegged at 100% can’t keep up with the demand from the other components due to the way is rendering frames.
So the usage itself I would say is not the issue due to the way Starcraft 2 was designed to utilize the system’s resources.

FPS drops can definitely be caused by several different things though, and more than likely this is just a case of something else on that specific system that is causing issues with Starcraft 2. One of the things that we’ve seen cause performance issues and crashes is the Rivatuner overlay that comes with MSI Afterburner. If you are using Rivatuner you may just want to disable it or uninstall Afterburner / Rivatuner and test again.

You could also try rebooting using Selective Startup, in order to rule out other background processes or services that could be causing issues.

Press Windows Key+R.
Type msconfig and press Enter.
Select Selective startup and uncheck Load startup items.
Select the Services tab.
Check Hide all Microsoft services.
Note: Skipping this step may prevent your computer from rebooting correctly.
Click Disable all.
Click Apply then click OK.
Click Restart.

If you’re still having issues though go ahead and post your DXDIAG:

  1. Press Windows Key + R.
  2. In the Run window type dxdiag and press Enter.
  3. In the DirectX window, click Save All Information.
  4. Name the file “dxdiag” and save it to your Desktop. Open the new dxdiag file with Notepad.
  5. In the posting section here hit the </> button for “Preformatted text” then paste (Ctrl+V) the DXDIAG contents. That’ll make the information much more readable.

If you are unable to post this due to the length of the DXDIAG, please feel free to use pastebin.com and share the link with us instead. Use the </> button as well in order to share the link.