I'm running a Ryzen 7 5800X, a Radeon 9070, and 32 GB of RAM. Whenever I load into Helldivers 2, CPU usage jumps from roughly 40% to 100%, and the reported clock speed sometimes drops as low as 0.78 GHz. The system doesn't appear to be overheating—the CPU reaches about 60–78°C according to HWMonitor—and my chipset and graphics drivers are fully updated. This also happens on the lowest graphics settings. What could be causing it?
3 Answers
Since you’re using an AMD graphics card, try disabling Radeon Anti-Lag and compare the result. Latency features can sometimes increase CPU scheduling overhead in a particular game. Also check whether the clock actually stays near 0.78 GHz under load; if it does, look at Windows power settings, motherboard BIOS settings, and CPU effective clocks rather than relying on a single reported frequency reading.
The game also uses peer-hosted session simulation, so the player hosting the match may handle more of the enemy and gameplay calculations. That can push CPU usage and temperatures higher than in other games. Your 60–78°C readings aren’t concerning by themselves, but check the clock speed with a tool such as HWiNFO to confirm whether it is truly dropping or whether HWMonitor is reporting a misleading value.
Helldivers 2 is unusually CPU-heavy. Besides rendering, the game is constantly handling enemy AI, physics, particles, and other simulation work. High CPU usage can be normal, especially during busy encounters, and it may still happen at low settings because lowering graphics settings doesn’t reduce all of the simulation workload.
That makes sense, but it still reaches 100% even with everything set to low, so I wasn’t sure whether that was expected.