Low frame rate, but graphics card not working at 100%

Bugs and Support
1

I’ve got a reasonable spec PC on my Zwift setup, but for some reason the graphics performance isn’t very good and I’m struggling to work out what’s the issue.

My system is as follows
Phenom X4 940 CPU running at 3.4Ghz
8gb ram
SSD
R9 290 graphics card with 4gb ram

When zwift is running the system only achieves around 25 FPS, but the graphics card is hardly being worked. The usage of the graphics card averages around 50% and the graphics card never runs at its maximum clock speed. The CPU averages around 70%.

Changing between the graphics mode in zwifts settings makes no difference to the frame rate either, it’s always around 25 average.

I’ve tried running 3DMark and it maxes out the graphics card, so everything is working ok. It’s almost like zwift isn’t taking full advantage of the systems hardware.

Can anyone give me some ideas of what I can do to improve my zwifts performance?. Thanks.

2

The Zwift engine uses OpenGL.
AMD GPU can’t do OpenGL very good, Nvidia GPUs are far better.
Buy a used GTX970.
Also the old Phenom has a terrible 1-Core Performance.
Maybe the CPU is at max. (70% means, that it don’t uses all Cores at max, but maybe 1 or 2 Cores are at max and the rest is idle)

1 Like
3

Thanks for the reply, I bought the R9 290 as it’s one of the recommended graphics cards for Zwift at high resolution. Surly zwift wouldn’t recommend that card if it’s not suitable for thier software.

4

All Zwift is saying on this link: What You Need To Ride is that the R9 290 is the minimum card required to get extreme specs.

Also, I would agree that the limiter is probably the CPU in your setup.