Anyone else has very high GPU usage?

[Nivroc]

Title. Even in main menu my 3080 usage is 98% which is very weird. Rendering at high 1440p@144hz

[kory]

I found that turning off unlimited frame rate helped

[Leisurely Luke]

Hey! The game is trying to utilize all the cores and if you do not limit the framerate with VSync or regular cap it will try to squeeze as much as the CPU allows (which in the case of our game and your setup is probably as much as the graphic card can take). If you want you can reduce the load by disabling VSync in the game's options and capping the FPS. Please make sure that your GPU driver is not overriding those settings, though. You can also disable some GPU-intensive settings (resolution is always the first culprit in the case of GPU).

[Nivroc]

Thanks for the prompt reply!
I did get a bit lower utilization by lowering some stuff, but for a cartoonish graphic game it still takes A LOT of juice to run. Comparable to some AAA FPS games. Wonder if it's going to become a problem on steamdeck.

Other than that it's an amazing game!

[Leisurely Luke]

I totally understand where this concern comes from. Though it is important to keep in mind that when playing on 2560x1440 resolution on a 144 Hz monitor with VSync on, the graphic card has 4.5x more work to do compared to 1920x1080 60fps, and 8.64x more compared to playing on Steam Deck at 60 fps. The game runs just fine on Steam Deck, by the way, and Valve rated it Steam Deck Playable.

The fact that we have a cartoonish graphic doesn't change much, I'm afraid. Modern GPUs are built with a focus on realistic games with high tris count, so the relatively low tris count in Against the Storm doesn't help that much.

The main problem, as with most strategy and city-building games, is the number of things happening on the screen at the same time and the number of visual effects.

The game prioritizes visuals and speed. It uses as many GPU cores as possible to achieve it, thus you can oftentimes see the GPU usage nearing 100%. If you'd prefer to reduce the usage to save on electricity bills or lower the fan noise, there are several things you can do. In your case, that would be mainly lowering the framerate and/or resolution.

You don't need to completely turn the VSync off. We also have the option to enable VSync at half the monitor rate which will still allow you to play at 60+ fps.

I hope this helps!

[zPure_AssassiNz]

I still think that it's crazy I can't run the game in High 1440p@120fps on a 5800x3d and 7900xtx. Like I can run Avatar frontiers of pandora at 1440p high and I get almost the same frame rate as I do in this game. If I lower the graphics quality in AoS to medium I go from 90fps to 300fps.

Also my testing is just on the main menu of Against the Storm