Determining if a gpu is hitting its limit

Jay Santos

Reputable
Apr 20, 2015
294
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4,810
i5 4690K @ 4.5ghz
GTX 970 reference
1080p 60fps Samsung tv

Basically I like to game with everything maxed out. Of course there are times when frame rates dip below 60.

When I play Crysis 3, everything set to max, I would get dips as low as 40 fps. I have a monitoring tool on my hardware. What I find out is that on the times where frame rates dip, I don't see my cpu or gpu pegged. CPU cores are about 60% while gpus hit around 82%. I also don't think vram has hit 3gb.

Where do I pin point the source of that dip? Btw, I have 16gb ram and ssd. GPU is oc'd at 1,450mhz and +200mhz for the ram.

Can I rely on what tools like Afterburner and Open Hardware Monitor are showing?