Lagging when playing APB

[Nubliretacos]

I'm playing a not so known game called All Points Bulletin (TPS shooter) and I'm sick of having 40 FPS whenever I'm playing in crowded areas.

Windows 7
AMD Phenom 955 Black Edition, OC to 3,9 GHz
8GB RAM
HD7870

So, this game is extremely bad optimized and even with lowest possible settings it's lagging hard when I'm playing in crowded areas... I have overclocked both the CPU and the GPU as much as I can. I have replaced the stock CPU cooler with a CMaster Hyper 212 Evo. The problem when OC the CPU is not the temperature, it's something else.

I guess it's my CPU that's the bottleneck in my setup, but is it maybe possible to OC it a bit more or is 3.9 GHz the most I can get out of it?

These are my stats when playing the game (why isn't the CPU and GPU working at 100% when my fps drops?):

 

[OhSnapWord]

Try cranking up the fan speed on the GPU. Could be overheating and throttling.

 

[Nubliretacos]

Try cranking up the fan speed on the GPU. Could be overheating and throttling.

Nah, the peaks you're seeing in the graph is because I minimized and maximized the game a few times during the testing process.

I think it's my CPU that's the bottleneck, but how do I make sure of that?

 

[setishock]

If the game is not optimized, or badly optimized as you put it, could be why it's a not so well known game. You're not going to make it run any better if it's crap to start with.
You can OC your system till it explodes, bad code is bad code.
Garbage in, garbage out.