deeselcyde1 said:
I got an XFX 290 DD last week and I'm getting the same GPU usage spikes. I'm OC'd at 1150/1440. Far Cry is pretty much unplayable for me due to the stuttering. As mentioned above, when fully maxed on FC3 it cripples the FPS down to the mid 40's. I'm currently running Mantle on BF4 with renderaheadlimit set at 3 and see a very consistent 60 fps with Vsync On but there are occasional stutters. Sleeping Dogs (which came free with my card) runs maxed out except for AA at 4 instead of 8 with the high texture pack at pretty much 60 fps all the time. It was weird, I froze once in game (Sleeping Dogs, wasn't due to GPU, something was wonky with my system) and the next couple times I booted the game up it had 60 fps but was stuttering way more than it used to. After a couple restarts it seems to be back to normal.
Back to the GPU usage spikes, when running Unigine Valley or other benchmarks, I don't see those type of spikes (up down up down). It will be for example, 100, 100, 100, 75, 88, 95, 98, 100, 65, 86, 100, 55, 100. So it's not as drastic as 100, 0, 100, 5.
Also, my score on Unigine Valley ExtremeHD is just over 2700. I think I got 2739 once and 2709 another time with my current OC. I've heard conflicting perceptions of these scores. Are those good scores?
Don't worry about it. I realized that Far Cry 3 frame drop is caused by CPU bottleneck, a CPU overclock can fix that. I also get microstuttering which is mostly fixed by turning off MSAA in game and forcing AA in CCC. Your Unigene Heaven tests prove nothing is wrong with your card. Far Cry 3 is just a badly ported game. For Sleeping Dogs, if you say you are getting dropped frames with everything on max, it may be normal only if it happens daytime. At night in game, I stay at 60 constant, but at daytime, it drops to 45-ish. If the stuttering you are talking about in sleeping dogs happens every 3/4 of a second with a constant fps, that's microstutter, not low fps. Sleeping Dogs has that problem, I had it with my GTX 660. It was fixed by playing in windowed mode. It stopped with my 290 though, gladly. If GPU usage drops when changing scenes in Unigene Heaven, then that's normal since there's nothing to render. The occasional stutters in BF4 is because of vsync. When in a scene where your GPU isn't able to render a constant 60 fps with vsync, it will instantly dip to 30 fps, that's how it works. Vsync is the worst thing you can have in online FPS. It causes input lag which is the last thing you need in a fast paced game (trust me) and since BF4 if very intensive in some areas, you will get 30 fps dips. I cap the frame to 60 fps with an fps limiter, so my gpu doesn't have to work so hard, no input lag and no 30 fps dips. Also make sure your CPU isn't bottle necking.