GPU isn't fully used in any game or benchmark

Rondo Anderson · Feb 16, 2017

Starting with the specs, people seem to like this.
AMD FX 8370 @4.6GHZ
2x Nvidia Geforce GTX 660
16gb of DDR3 - 2133
all sitting on a Asus TUF Sabertooth 990fx r3.0
some odd 1200W power supply i found in the trash but tests out fine

CPU IS NOT A BOTTLENECK! two weeks ago it was working fine.

While running games or benchmarks, if my FPS goes above 65 then my GPU usage drops.
GPU is at 40-70% and CPU is at 40-70%. VRAM is about 800MB/2GB and RAM is at 6gb/16.

Michael_42 · Feb 16, 2017

Whats your GPU temperature? What benchmarks? Use Heaven Benchmark - https://unigine.com/products/benchmarks/heaven/

geofelt · Feb 16, 2017

FX cores are weak.

Be careful how you interpret task manager cpu utilizations.
Windows will spread the activity of a single thread over all available threads.
So, if you had a game that was single threaded and cpu bound, it would show up on a quad core processor as 25%
utilization across all 4 threads.
leading you to think your bottleneck was elsewhere.
It turns our that few games can usefully use more than 2-3 threads.
How can you tell how well threaded YOUR games or apps are?
One way is to disable one thread and see how you do.

You can do this in the windows msconfig boot advanced options option.
You will need to reboot for the change to take effect. Set the number of processors to less than you have.
This will tell you how sensitive your games are to the benefits of many threads.
If you see little difference, it tells you that you will not benefit from more cores.
Likely, a better clock rate will be more important.

You can test that in a backhanded way.
Limit your cpu, either by reducing the OC, or, in windows power management, limit the maximum cpu% to something like 70%.
Go to control panel/power options/change plan settings/change advanced power settings/processor power management/maximum processor state/
This will simulate what a lack of cpu power will do.
Conversely what a 30% improvement in core speed might do.

photonboy · Feb 16, 2017

1) First of all, the CPU can be less than 100% and still be the bottleneck.
For example, let's ignore the OS etc and assume just the game and the CPU. Now assume the game can only use FOUR CORES/Threads and no more. Your CPU would then only be able to use 50% of it's processing power. If the game only used 80% of that, then it would show 40% usage (add in Windows and it may show 50%).

(not saying it's the CPU though)

2) Check POWER OPTIONS and turn the PCIe link-state management off. (Mine was set HIGH which ended up throttling the graphics card)

3) GPU usage drops if it goes above 65FPS?
Uh... that doesn't actually make sense to me though I don't know exactly what you are referring to.

4) Try running Unigine Valley and see what the GPU usage/frequency is (FYI the top-right data is wrong. use MSI afterburner or whatever you find reliable)

photonboy · Feb 16, 2017

Update:
About the CPU. Since you know things worked fine before, then all you need to check is that the CPU is using the correct number of threads and the frequency is correct.

So under load it should show EIGHT GRAPHS and run at roughly 4.6GHz (possibly a bit under 4.6GHz). Just start Task Manager -> Performance -> CPU
(set to show all graphs if not set, then look at "Speed" which should stabilize under heavy load.

Maybe start Prime95 and observe long enough to show it is working. (I doubt the CPU is the problem too)

Rondo Anderson · Feb 17, 2017

Thing is, two weeks ago this wasn't a problem. Im thinking its some setting somewhere that I accidentally changed. Thats why it isn't a cpu bottleneck. Neither GPU gets to over 62 degrees, and it isn't throttling (monitoring frequency) Changing CPU frequency had no effect. I have been using heaven benchmark and valley, plus DIRT 3 and a couple others.
EDIT: the CPU is stable, had prime95 going for 6 hours with all cores at 100% and frequency at 4630~ mhz.
EDIT 2: sorry about the wording, i made it confusing. I meant that the fps limits at 60-80 a little like vsync even though vsync is off, and like vsync, when it hits the limit the gpu usage is lower.

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GPU isn't fully used in any game or benchmark

Rondo Anderson

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Rondo Anderson

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