Problem with GPU utilization and power

[BobDole]

i have a 3080, and i noticed that when changing settings, often the dlss one, or when going back to windows, the game just refuse to use my card can't get up to more than 60% gpu utilization => that problem is fixable by just restarting the game (which is extremely quick :D)

but i also have my power usage that is very low it is like 70% of what it should be even when having 97% + gpu utilization... that alone is not rare in games... but both issue could be related...

[Photonboy]

i7-8700

Originally posted by 2raw4u:

I got an i7 8700, a 2080ti both water cooled, and 32gb or ddr4 ram. Zero dawn ran perfectly but forbidden west is running terrible. It’s not using all the gpu like op said, for some reason. Here’s a screenshot running at 1440p med/high settings. Runs just as bad on 1080. Every other game runs great at 4k..

https://ibb.co/nDpBXLX

REFLEX: ON + BOOST
This turned out to be the problem for me. I set it to just "ON" and everything was fine.

[BobDole]

Originally posted by Photonboy:

Which settings are STILL messing things up?
The only thing I don't use is FRAME GENERATION because I only have a 60Hz monitor. I don't have any issues.

If you're using Frame Gen then I'd try turning it off. Maybe set an FPS cap as well. If you have a 120Hz, 4K VRR (?) screen then I'd personally pick around 60 to 70FPS.

I'm no expert, but I could theoretically see potential issues related to combining Frame Gen and NVidia reflex. Frame Gen is artificially creating new frames out of existing frames (hence the added latency/lag) and NVidia Reflex is supposed to reduce the buffering/render queue to a certain extent (to reduce lag)... these are intertwined so in theory NVidia reflex on might cause issues with Frame Gen or vice versa.

Anyway, you've probably tested all this at this point. When I get stuck I turn everything down or off, get things stable then start turning things back up/on.

frame gen is meant to be used with reflex, nvidia designed it this way, in order the minimize the latency hit created be frame gen. But doesnt matter, i have a 3080 so no fg for me.

with the new update it seems like whatever they did, it solved most of my issues

[Photonboy]

BobDole,
I get that FG and Reflex work together but you can turn on Reflex without Frame Gen. As per my above comment when I did that with "ON + BOOST", my GPU Usage inexplicably dropped despite no FPS cap. So is it this setting ONLY that's the issue? Unsure.

That's with the new update.

If I were you, I'd probably set an FPS cap that's below your unlocked AVERAGE to keep fan noise down. Usually when you run the GPU at max fans can get pretty loud.

I have no idea if fan noise is an issue for you, it's just something I've personally had issue with. I "solved" my problem by modding my Asus RTX4070 Dual with Noctua fans. I can't hear the slightest noise at all when gaming. Yay!

[Viper]

Not using 100% GPU is not an issue and should not be expected. Games run in a loop every frame. The CPU has to do so much work and run the processes . before it can show another frame. So FPS is highly dependent on your CPU and there is probably no CPU on this planet that can keep a high tier GPU at 100% all the time. This is not an issue .Just a lack of understanding on how PCs work and how games are programmed. You can not just run a GPU flat out .Everything in the game would be out of sync.Example of a simple loop. Move player...check for clicks,,, Move all machines..do enviroment motion...next frame. That is just simple. And anytime the player does something you have to add all that to the processes. There is probably more going on.

[Medusa]

Originally posted by Photonboy:

BobDole,
I get that FG and Reflex work together but you can turn on Reflex without Frame Gen. As per my above comment when I did that with "ON + BOOST", my GPU Usage inexplicably dropped despite no FPS cap. So is it this setting ONLY that's the issue? Unsure.

That's with the new update.

If I were you, I'd probably set an FPS cap that's below your unlocked AVERAGE to keep fan noise down. Usually when you run the GPU at max fans can get pretty loud.

I have no idea if fan noise is an issue for you, it's just something I've personally had issue with. I "solved" my problem by modding my Asus RTX4070 Dual with Noctua fans. I can't hear the slightest noise at all when gaming. Yay!

I think it's quite logical, it's prioritizing latency reduction above everything, which means the render queu consists of one frame only.
Which means the cpu has to do a full cycle for each frame... therefor 100 % GPU usage is not possible.

[BobDole]

Originally posted by Photonboy:

BobDole,
I get that FG and Reflex work together but you can turn on Reflex without Frame Gen. As per my above comment when I did that with "ON + BOOST", my GPU Usage inexplicably dropped despite no FPS cap. So is it this setting ONLY that's the issue? Unsure.

That's with the new update.

If I were you, I'd probably set an FPS cap that's below your unlocked AVERAGE to keep fan noise down. Usually when you run the GPU at max fans can get pretty loud.

I have no idea if fan noise is an issue for you, it's just something I've personally had issue with. I "solved" my problem by modding my Asus RTX4070 Dual with Noctua fans. I can't hear the slightest noise at all when gaming. Yay!

I watercooled my 3080, so 360w is 60c 30% fan... so no noise issue for me :D. on a side note, if you are sensible to noise, i would advise you to get an AIO for your GPU from alphacool, best investment of my life :D

Originally posted by Viper:

Not using 100% GPU is not an issue and should not be expected. Games run in a loop every frame. The CPU has to do so much work and run the processes . before it can show another frame. So FPS is highly dependent on your CPU and there is probably no CPU on this planet that can keep a high tier GPU at 100% all the time. This is not an issue .Just a lack of understanding on how PCs work and how games are programmed. You can not just run a GPU flat out .Everything in the game would be out of sync.Example of a simple loop. Move player...check for clicks,,, Move all machines..do enviroment motion...next frame. That is just simple. And anytime the player does something you have to add all that to the processes. There is probably more going on.

Dude sorry, i didn't say anything about your first comment... but come on... stop being so condescending and think a bit, what you say is based on nothing aside from ignorance and/or stupidity... off course you can run your GPU at 100% in every recent game on this planet, just supersample, try to run anygame at 8K ultra settings native, no GPU can run any recent demanding game at a high enough frame rate to be cpu limited at this kind of resolution...

And for your information, most games these day are GPU bound at high resolution, even a 4090 can barely run alan wake max setting at 4K 60fps native.

with that being said i have a 3080 and a 5800X, and maybe i would be cpu limited if i could hit 120+ fps.. but when you have lows around 30, it's not my CPU...

[Photonboy]

Originally posted by Medusa:

Originally posted by Photonboy:

BobDole,
I get that FG and Reflex work together but you can turn on Reflex without Frame Gen. As per my above comment when I did that with "ON + BOOST", my GPU Usage inexplicably dropped despite no FPS cap. So is it this setting ONLY that's the issue? Unsure.

That's with the new update.

If I were you, I'd probably set an FPS cap that's below your unlocked AVERAGE to keep fan noise down. Usually when you run the GPU at max fans can get pretty loud.

I have no idea if fan noise is an issue for you, it's just something I've personally had issue with. I "solved" my problem by modding my Asus RTX4070 Dual with Noctua fans. I can't hear the slightest noise at all when gaming. Yay!

I think it's quite logical, it's prioritizing latency reduction above everything, which means the render queu consists of one frame only.
Which means the cpu has to do a full cycle for each frame... therefor 100 % GPU usage is not possible.

No.
Not how it works at all. You aren't adding to the CPU load. Turning Reflex to "ON" is trying to minimize buffering by doing "just-in-time" rendering.

So it takes your "MPRF" or "Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames" to zero.

And the "BOOST" part simply locks your GPU into "Maximum Performance" mode to maintain your GPU at its maximum frequency (which can be an issue if things are fluctuating).

So "ON + BOOST" should not be lowering the FPS like it did with me.

(and "ON" isn't always the desired option either. It probably works better with GSync but I'm not sure how well it works with VSYNC on a non-GSync monitor. I didn't notice a difference on vs off but since VSYNC does buffer I don't see how MPRF could be = 0).

I get that this is confusing, guys. Heck, I remember when I heard someone say to turn VYSNC on along with GSYNC years ago and I thought that was stupid advice.

(on a side note, some of the guys giving advice here should read up on the Dunning-Kruger Effect. A lot of you THINK your advice is good because you don't know what you don't know...)

[WINTERSTELLAR]

4090/i7-13700 here, better performance with DLSS and FG Off, never experienced that on any game.

[Viper]

Originally posted by BobDole:

Originally posted by Photonboy:

BobDole,
I get that FG and Reflex work together but you can turn on Reflex without Frame Gen. As per my above comment when I did that with "ON + BOOST", my GPU Usage inexplicably dropped despite no FPS cap. So is it this setting ONLY that's the issue? Unsure.

That's with the new update.

If I were you, I'd probably set an FPS cap that's below your unlocked AVERAGE to keep fan noise down. Usually when you run the GPU at max fans can get pretty loud.

I have no idea if fan noise is an issue for you, it's just something I've personally had issue with. I "solved" my problem by modding my Asus RTX4070 Dual with Noctua fans. I can't hear the slightest noise at all when gaming. Yay!

I watercooled my 3080, so 360w is 60c 30% fan... so no noise issue for me :D. on a side note, if you are sensible to noise, i would advise you to get an AIO for your GPU from alphacool, best investment of my life :D

Originally posted by Viper:

Not using 100% GPU is not an issue and should not be expected. Games run in a loop every frame. The CPU has to do so much work and run the processes . before it can show another frame. So FPS is highly dependent on your CPU and there is probably no CPU on this planet that can keep a high tier GPU at 100% all the time. This is not an issue .Just a lack of understanding on how PCs work and how games are programmed. You can not just run a GPU flat out .Everything in the game would be out of sync.Example of a simple loop. Move player...check for clicks,,, Move all machines..do enviroment motion...next frame. That is just simple. And anytime the player does something you have to add all that to the processes. There is probably more going on.

Dude sorry, i didn't say anything about your first comment... but come on... stop being so condescending and think a bit, what you say is based on nothing aside from ignorance and/or stupidity... off course you can run your GPU at 100% in every recent game on this planet, just supersample, try to run anygame at 8K ultra settings native, no GPU can run any recent demanding game at a high enough frame rate to be cpu limited at this kind of resolution...

And for your information, most games these day are GPU bound at high resolution, even a 4090 can barely run alan wake max setting at 4K 60fps native.

with that being said i have a 3080 and a 5800X, and maybe i would be cpu limited if i could hit 120+ fps.. but when you have lows around 30, it's not my CPU...

You absolutley don't get it. What ever is happening in the game has to be completely in sync with whats being shown on the screen.That stuff has to be processed every single frame to display the next frame. GPUs rarely run at 100%. They just don't. unless they are a lower tier or much older GPU...paired with a fairly new CPU.

[Medusa]

Originally posted by Photonboy:

Originally posted by Medusa:

I think it's quite logical, it's prioritizing latency reduction above everything, which means the render queu consists of one frame only.
Which means the cpu has to do a full cycle for each frame... therefor 100 % GPU usage is not possible.

No.
Not how it works at all. You aren't adding to the CPU load. Turning Reflex to "ON" is trying to minimize buffering by doing "just-in-time" rendering.

So it takes your "MPRF" or "Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames" to zero.

And the "BOOST" part simply locks your GPU into "Maximum Performance" mode to maintain your GPU at its maximum frequency (which can be an issue if things are fluctuating).

So "ON + BOOST" should not be lowering the FPS like it did with me.

(and "ON" isn't always the desired option either. It probably works better with GSync but I'm not sure how well it works with VSYNC on a non-GSync monitor. I didn't notice a difference on vs off but since VSYNC does buffer I don't see how MPRF could be = 0).

I get that this is confusing, guys. Heck, I remember when I heard someone say to turn VYSNC on along with GSYNC years ago and I thought that was stupid advice.

(on a side note, some of the guys giving advice here should read up on the Dunning-Kruger Effect. A lot of you THINK your advice is good because you don't know what you don't know...)

Not adding to load no, but definitely adding to the bottleneck.
Same happens in TrackMania when i set GPU/CPU synchronization to immediate. Reduced latency at the cost of fps due to CPU not being allowed to prepare more frames. So in essential you add to the bottleneck by reducing the CPU load but your latency will be good.

[BobDole]

Originally posted by Viper:

Originally posted by BobDole:

I watercooled my 3080, so 360w is 60c 30% fan... so no noise issue for me :D. on a side note, if you are sensible to noise, i would advise you to get an AIO for your GPU from alphacool, best investment of my life :D



Dude sorry, i didn't say anything about your first comment... but come on... stop being so condescending and think a bit, what you say is based on nothing aside from ignorance and/or stupidity... off course you can run your GPU at 100% in every recent game on this planet, just supersample, try to run anygame at 8K ultra settings native, no GPU can run any recent demanding game at a high enough frame rate to be cpu limited at this kind of resolution...

And for your information, most games these day are GPU bound at high resolution, even a 4090 can barely run alan wake max setting at 4K 60fps native.

with that being said i have a 3080 and a 5800X, and maybe i would be cpu limited if i could hit 120+ fps.. but when you have lows around 30, it's not my CPU...

You absolutley don't get it. What ever is happening in the game has to be completely in sync with whats being shown on the screen.That stuff has to be processed every single frame to display the next frame. GPUs rarely run at 100%. They just don't. unless they are a lower tier or much older GPU...paired with a fairly new CPU.

you are so wrong, the only way you could be remotely right would be if you would not consider 98-99% to be the equivalent of a 100% load. and still your point would be mute, because you basically say that you can't be GPU limited... which is so so far from the truth

[Photonboy]

"Not adding to load no, but definitely adding to the bottleneck.
Same happens in TrackMania when i set GPU/CPU synchronization to immediate. Reduced latency at the cost of fps due to CPU not being allowed to prepare more frames. So in essential you add to the bottleneck by reducing the CPU load but your latency will be good."

Medusa,
You need to just STOP and go back to the basics because this is simply wrong.

Let me be clear. This was with VSYNC OFF:
Reflex "ON" had 99% GPU usage
Reflex "ON + BOOST" had 80% GPU Usage

"BOOST" is supposed to ONLY lock your GPU frequency to avoid GPU frequency fluctuations that could cause Reflex to miss its rendering target.

So "ON + BOOST" shouldn't be causing a CPU bottleneck when it has nothing to do with the CPU at all.

(I can't comment on TrackMania since I don't have an official description of what that does. But it's not related to the issue I described. I'm willing to be proven wrong, but everything I read says that "BOOST" simply forces Maximum Performance Mode on. In which case that should not drop the FPS)

Viper,
BobDole is correct. GPU's frequently run at near 100%. It's far more common than being CPU bound actually.
The better the GPU vs the CPU the less likely this is to happen. The higher the RESOLUTION the more likely this is to happen... With my Ryzen 3000 + RTX4070 I'm bound by my GPU pretty much 100% of the time in this game if I turn off VSYNC ( but I turn on VSYNC for my 60Hz monitor to avoid screen tearing, at which point I'm neither CPU or GPU bound but just artificially capping the FPS in software).

You really shouldn't argue that GPU's are rarely the bottleneck. That's just very, very wrong.

[Medusa]

Originally posted by Photonboy:

"Not adding to load no, but definitely adding to the bottleneck.
Same happens in TrackMania when i set GPU/CPU synchronization to immediate. Reduced latency at the cost of fps due to CPU not being allowed to prepare more frames. So in essential you add to the bottleneck by reducing the CPU load but your latency will be good."

Medusa,
You need to just STOP and go back to the basics because this is simply wrong.

Let me be clear. This was with VSYNC OFF:
Reflex "ON" had 99% GPU usage
Reflex "ON + BOOST" had 80% GPU Usage

"BOOST" is supposed to ONLY lock your GPU frequency to avoid GPU frequency fluctuations that could cause Reflex to miss its rendering target.

So "ON + BOOST" shouldn't be causing a CPU bottleneck when it has nothing to do with the CPU at all.

(I can't comment on TrackMania since I don't have an official description of what that does. But it's not related to the issue I described. I'm willing to be proven wrong, but everything I read says that "BOOST" simply forces Maximum Performance Mode on. In which case that should not drop the FPS)

Viper,
BobDole is correct. GPU's frequently run at near 100%. It's far more common than being CPU bound actually.
The better the GPU vs the CPU the less likely this is to happen. The higher the RESOLUTION the more likely this is to happen... With my Ryzen 3000 + RTX4070 I'm bound by my GPU pretty much 100% of the time in this game if I turn off VSYNC ( but I turn on VSYNC for my 60Hz monitor to avoid screen tearing, at which point I'm neither CPU or GPU bound but just artificially capping the FPS in software).

You really shouldn't argue that GPU's are rarely the bottleneck. That's just very, very wrong.

If that is the only thing Reflex does, i suppose it's hitting the power target one way or another before it reaches 99 % GPU utilization.
I have seen GPU power usage being 100 % at 80-90 % Utilization in Cyberpunk with path tracing.
I also had a similar issue in the Witcher 3 enhanced edition: There the combination of reflex and hairworks caused GPU usage and framerate drops, so hairworks, raytracing and framegen were not an ideal combination.
Had to either run no framegen, no reflex with DLSS quality, or had to run framegen with hairworks off... However in Witcher 3 Reflex kinda is a requirement to make the game responsive enough if RT is switched on. Not sure why that is.

[Photonboy]

"If that is the only thing Reflex does, i suppose it's hitting the power target one way or another before it reaches 99 % GPU utilization.
I have seen GPU power usage being 100 % at 80-90 % Utilization in Cyberpunk with path tracing."

Power Usage varies primarily because the number of transistors that are currently switching varies by the load. That's why stress tests or "power viruses" like Furmark can use more power than gaming even if both show GPU Usage at near 100%.

You don't hit some "Power Target" and then suddenly the GPU Usage has to drop to 80% or whatever. Just not how it works (though the FREQUENCY can drop slightly but that's not the same thing). The "GPU Usage" drops because something is bottlenecking the graphics card. So it's actually more like the OPPOSITE of what you're suggesting.

BUT...
At the end of the day this is getting into the weeds. Usually you can get by with experimenting with settings. Just don't give advice when you clearly are confused on the details.

And on that note I'm going to UNSUBSCRIBE because this is getting a bit silly.

[Viper]

Originally posted by Photonboy:

"Not adding to load no, but definitely adding to the bottleneck.
Same happens in TrackMania when i set GPU/CPU synchronization to immediate. Reduced latency at the cost of fps due to CPU not being allowed to prepare more frames. So in essential you add to the bottleneck by reducing the CPU load but your latency will be good."

Medusa,
You need to just STOP and go back to the basics because this is simply wrong.

Let me be clear. This was with VSYNC OFF:
Reflex "ON" had 99% GPU usage
Reflex "ON + BOOST" had 80% GPU Usage

"BOOST" is supposed to ONLY lock your GPU frequency to avoid GPU frequency fluctuations that could cause Reflex to miss its rendering target.

So "ON + BOOST" shouldn't be causing a CPU bottleneck when it has nothing to do with the CPU at all.

(I can't comment on TrackMania since I don't have an official description of what that does. But it's not related to the issue I described. I'm willing to be proven wrong, but everything I read says that "BOOST" simply forces Maximum Performance Mode on. In which case that should not drop the FPS)

Viper,
BobDole is correct. GPU's frequently run at near 100%. It's far more common than being CPU bound actually.
The better the GPU vs the CPU the less likely this is to happen. The higher the RESOLUTION the more likely this is to happen... With my Ryzen 3000 + RTX4070 I'm bound by my GPU pretty much 100% of the time in this game if I turn off VSYNC ( but I turn on VSYNC for my 60Hz monitor to avoid screen tearing, at which point I'm neither CPU or GPU bound but just artificially capping the FPS in software).

You really shouldn't argue that GPU's are rarely the bottleneck. That's just very, very wrong.

Sorry but GPUs hardly even run at 100%. YOU are wrong. This game as well as every other game should prove that to you try some games and thne get back to me with any game that runs mostly aT 100%.i dont expect for you to find one but good luck.