GPU usage misconception

[Biohazard]

The task manager GPU usage information is lacking information about the current clock rate of the card. But the graph and usage it shows is relative to the clock rate - so the usage it shows is not your actual, total usage at all, which makes it pretty useless.

Example of a tweaked scene wallpaper on a GTX 1080: https://imgur.com/jYeAZ9N notice the 'usage' at 30% but the lowest possible idle clock of 139mhz of this card. This is the best case scenario, although the 'usage' is displayed as 30%. The actual usage based on the max clockrate of 1823mhz is only 2.2% (30 * 139 / 1823).


A card could have clock rates between 100mhz and 2000mhz for example. If the task manager shows 50% then it makes a big difference whether it is 50% of 100mhz or 50% of 2000mhz. You can use tools like GPU-Z https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ to see the clock rate. Just don't make them refresh too quickly or they will push the clock rate on their own.

To illustrate, 50% of 100mhz is better than 3% of 2000mhz.

If you want to improve GPU performance:

• Disable or delete overlay and recording tools, including Geforce Experience.
  
• Lower the frame rate setting and disable MSAA (it does not affect the quality 2D scene wallpapers). This won't influence the performance of videos, they have fixed frame rates and quality.
  
• Connect your monitors to the same GPU or Windows will perform poorly while trying to merge them.

Videos use predefined clock profiles from your driver. The resolution and frame rate of the video will control these.