GPU @ 70% but FPS struggling...

[Fry750]

Asked this question re. Watch Dogs Legion however assumed it was down to Ubisoft/an engine problem and annoyingly, it's happening in State of Decay 2 - CPU and GPU aren't @ 100% utilisation but FPS struggles.

In this particular scene, FPS was hovering around 46, with a max of 60 (VSYNC).

I can't capture the details with a screenshot, so have had to take a photo with game bar overlay.

CPU @ 14% (3900X and no cores are at 100%)
GPU @ 71% (3060ti)
VRAM @ 63%
RAM @ 43%



Why is performance struggling if nothing is @ 100%? It's slightly annoying - what could be the issue?

Any help/suggestions appreciated!

 

[Zefan]

Suspect vsync is causing this issue. How have you got it set, nvidia or in game?

 

[Fry750]

In game...

With an unlocked frame rate, should GPU be @ 99% usage all the time?

 

[ljt]

Sorry If I've misread but have you disabled v-sync completely and restarted the game to try?

 

[z10m]

Suspect vsync is causing this issue. How have you got it set, nvidia or in game?

OPs screenshot is showing 54fps and 71% gpu usage so that’s not the issue here unless his display is running at 54hz lol.

 

[robfosters]

In game...

With an unlocked frame rate, should GPU be @ 99% usage all the time?

Seen this issue with my 3900X and 3080. As good as the Ryzen 3X chips are, they don’t have the greatest single core performance, and in certain games they struggle to feed the GPU with enough work to fully utilise it. It’s a big problem with FS2020.

 

[Fry750]

Okay - I've tried a couple of things and it's now at 60FPS in that particular scene.

1 - RAM XMP had switched itself off back to default, so have turned XMP back on
2 - Installed latest NVIDIA drivers (was only one behind anyway)
3 - Toggled Vsync - on and off. Hovers around 70 with no Vsync but STILL only 60% GPU usage

**Hmm, perhaps I'm a tad late to the party but does Vsync impact GPU usage?

I'm getting 60FPS - 88% GPU usage with Vsync ON
70FPS - 60% GPU usage with Vsync OFF

Interesting either way, I assumed Vsync would be more usage friendly as it would cap the FPS but obviously syncing frames takes a performance hit...

 

[Fire_fly]

Just to confirm, it may be down to the monitoring software you are you using, is you CPU actually boosting and not stuck at 3.8GHz?

 

[Fry750]

Yeah, it hovers around 4.2 for the most part.

 

[keyser]

3060 Ti is new and might need an updated driver to correct this. I don't have Watch Dogs Legion but it might be a quirk of that engine. Vsync on will limit the framerate to your monitor refresh, Vsync off won't limit it to your monitor refresh.

I recently played the old game Dishonored 2 and the engine has what can only be a bug that was never fixed where the game can run really low fps sometimes but the GPU is only at 60% usage (CPU is whatever that is 60%).

 

[VortexA1]

Okay - I've tried a couple of things and it's now at 60FPS in that particular scene.

1 - RAM XMP had switched itself off back to default, so have turned XMP back on
2 - Installed latest NVIDIA drivers (was only one behind anyway)
3 - Toggled Vsync - on and off. Hovers around 70 with no Vsync but STILL only 60% GPU usage

**Hmm, perhaps I'm a tad late to the party but does Vsync impact GPU usage?

I'm getting 60FPS - 88% GPU usage with Vsync ON
70FPS - 60% GPU usage with Vsync OFF

Interesting either way, I assumed Vsync would be more usage friendly as it would cap the FPS but obviously syncing frames takes a performance hit...

You should have g-sync controlling the frames - not the game's Vsync. Also you can cap the FPS through the Nvidia control panel which is the correct way of doing it

 

[Grim5]

In game...

With an unlocked frame rate, should GPU be @ 99% usage all the time?

yes

 

[Grim5]

Okay - I've tried a couple of things and it's now at 60FPS in that particular scene.

1 - RAM XMP had switched itself off back to default, so have turned XMP back on
2 - Installed latest NVIDIA drivers (was only one behind anyway)
3 - Toggled Vsync - on and off. Hovers around 70 with no Vsync but STILL only 60% GPU usage

**Hmm, perhaps I'm a tad late to the party but does Vsync impact GPU usage?

I'm getting 60FPS - 88% GPU usage with Vsync ON
70FPS - 60% GPU usage with Vsync OFF

Interesting either way, I assumed Vsync would be more usage friendly as it would cap the FPS but obviously syncing frames takes a performance hit...

It's not that, "gpu usage" for modern Nvidia GPU is very flawed, trying to use it as a single measurement for how hard the GPu working its pointless it's practically useless on its own

For people who want to accurately know how hard their gpu is working you need to look at all of these together:

* GPU usage (this is actually not "usage" it's a stupid Windows name - what this actually measures is what percentage of Cuda cores are currently in operation, it doesn't measure how hard each Cuda core is working). I have observed games where usage is 90% and yet power draw and clock speed is low, usage on its own looks like the GPu is working hard, but it is not.

* Power Draw - on its own this is a superior measurement to identify of a GPU is operating as high as it can go, but it's not perfect. Power Draw as a percentage of TDP on Nvidia GPu is strongly correlated to clock speed and less so to Cuda Core usage. I have observed games where it can load up 40% Cuda cores but run super high clocks and pull 90% TDP, it loooks like the GPU is working very hard, it's actually not

* Clock speed. Usually higher clock speed = more frames but some games like high clocks but don't want the Cuda cores - clock speed is not worth looking at on its own

 

[pp111]

I think Grim5 is correct here, in that CPU and GPU loading don't cover everything in a system and for some games they don't represent a good metric at all. I have games that neither my CPU or GPU hit anything like 100%, but there are some they do. It seems to be more down to the game.

 

[Minstadave]

I think Grim5 is correct here, in that CPU and GPU loading don't cover everything in a system and for some games they don't represent a good metric at all. I have games that neither my CPU or GPU hit anything like 100%, but there are some they do. It seems to be more down to the game.

If a game is heavily single threaded you can easily hit the single thread limit meaning your total CPU and GPU usage can be low.

I don't know thus engine well but would check with other games to see if this the behaviour is consistent.

 

[g67575]

I have a similar problem with Watch Dogs: Legion (fps dips to~45 on low settings, GPU + CPU not fully utilized) . I think it's RAM frequency related, what is the frequency of your DDR4 RAM?

I suppose you can test this by setting the RAM speed lower in your BIOS. Many open world games like fallout 4 / GTAV benefit from higher RAM speeds.

You mentioned that the XMP defaulted to off, what is the difference in frequency between XMP on and off with your RAM?

It doesn't sound like your GPU was being over utilized by the game to me.

 

[Poneros]

Is the disk it's on being used by anything else?