Why is this taxing my GPU so massively?

[Jimmy Felon]

The graphics look like early World of Warcraft, yet my rig is running at 100%. Just unoptimized or what?

[esbenmf]

Low resolution textures does not imply low quality graphics, nor low requirements.

[Mharr]

Also have you limited the frame rate

[Jimmy Felon]

Originally posted by Mharr:

Also have you limited the frame rate

That was it. Made a huge difference. I was having trouble believing that my 3090 Ti couldn't handle this game, I'm not even running it at 4k. Thank you!

[Mharr]

The real nightmare is games where you can't limit the rate while in the menu, touch wood I don't believe Valheim has that problem at least. Glad it worked!

[Jimmy Felon]

Originally posted by Mharr:

The real nightmare is games where you can't limit the rate while in the menu, touch wood I don't believe Valheim has that problem at least. Glad it worked!

Yeah I only have 60fps monitor, so it's pointless to run it at anything more than that anyway. My GPU went from 100% to like 15-20% after doing that. Thanks again.

[Heleen]

My PC is not new, but not the worst either. I can play on max setting anywhere, except for snowstorms and EVERYWHERE in mistlands. I tried loads of different settings, but the only thing that "works" is setting graphics to the lowest. And then I am suddenly warped to 1994. My PC has RTX2070, 16gb RAM, SSD, i7-9700. I have tried limiting the FPS in both the game and in NVidea Control Panel. It does not solve it for me. Any suggestions? Thanks!

[MaCarBre]

Originally posted by Heleen:

My PC is not new, but not the worst either. I can play on max setting anywhere, except for snowstorms and EVERYWHERE in mistlands. I tried loads of different settings, but the only thing that "works" is setting graphics to the lowest. And then I am suddenly warped to 1994. My PC has RTX2070, 16gb RAM, SSD, i7-9700. I have tried limiting the FPS in both the game and in NVidea Control Panel. It does not solve it for me. Any suggestions? Thanks!

So how much FPS do you have in Mistlands when playing on high quality? You can press F2 while in game to open performance window. Also, on which resolution are you playing, and have you ever monitored your temps? (I recommend HWInfo program, as it will record which MAX temp your system components reaches while playing).

[Heleen]

Around 70-95, it varies. My main issue here is: why in Mistlands and not in all the other biomes. I have used HWMonitor and when playing the highest I have seen is 92 on 1 core and 89 on GPU of RTX2070. Also the moment I set it to highest and go to Mistland HWMonitor show Power Limit, Temperature Limit and Utilization limit 1. I play 2560x1440. I just wish they the devs would address this issue. I know I am not alone, loads of posts about it. I also played The Long Dark which also caused my PC to blow hard, but capping the FPS solved the issue entirely. Just not for Valheim...

[MaCarBre]

Originally posted by Heleen:

Well judging by you getting 70-95 FPS in Valheim, I would say that you are not capping your FPS in Valheim properly or the feature isn't working. Have you double checked that FPS is indeed getting capped when using FPS limiter? When using FPS limiter, it's important that in-game Vsync isn't enabled. I personally recommend setting FPS limit in Nvidia control panel, specifically for Valheim profile.

The Long Dark is also a Unity game like Valheim. Certain features that the games use, offered by Unity engine, can utilise GPU to 100% and if a system is not configured properly to handle that, it will have clock throttling issues to reduce temps. Any system should be able to mange temps as a result of 100% GPU/CPU utilization. If not, that system can be labeled as unstable. If you are to run some heavy benchmark programs, unrelated to Valheim, which were to stress your system, you would encounter the same temperature issues. On my deskop PC, while running Valheim at 100% GPU utilization, GPU nor CPU temps go over 70°C, and on my laptop they don't go over 80°C.

The best solution would be to limit FPS first, try running the game both in Vulkan and d3d11 (default), dedust your PC, check your case airflow, replace thermal paste on the CPU and maybe even the CPU cooler, reset BIOS to default (your CPU might be unprofessionally overclocked by who ever built your PC), check that iGPU (GPU located on the CPU) isn't being used together with your primarily card 2070 (only 2070 should be used - so best to disable iGPU in BIOS), downclock your GPU (I suggest doing a youtube search "how to downclock [insert your manufacturer] 2070 using MSI afterburner", as some GPU models have wrongly configured clocks).

[Heleen]

I must have understood you incorrectly. I checked what my FPS, temperatues etc would be in Mistlands on high settings WITHOUT capping it. If I cap it, it's capped at whatever I choose. It does not solve my issues. Also tried Vulcan. And I do appreciate all your help, but why is this only an issue in Mistlands? I don't want to change a whole lot of things on my PC just for Mistlands, I don't have an issue with other games or other biomes. In fact, the problem with the snow blizzard is now gone running it on "balanced" with FPS cap. I am due a new PC though, maybe that's the better solution (for me for now, still think dev team need to address this).

[MaCarBre]

Originally posted by Heleen:

One thing is when a game is badly optimised to the point of it having bad performance, and another thing is when a game tries to utilise your system to best of its ability but that system failing and overheating because of it, resulting in bad performance. For the latter, it's not Valheim at fault. Games are supposed to use all the system's resources at their disposal in order to achieve maximum performance. Valheim is not the only game that stresses your system and you haven't done any stress testing in benchmark programs.

Unlike other biomes, Mistlands features a larger number of enemies due to possibility of multiple dungeons being close, which can stress your CPU, and the way how the Mist behaves + the way how brood eggs get destroyed, can potentially stress the GPU. There are not plans to optimise this things further as not many system have issues with those.

You should check on which system component are temperatures hitting high numbers when playing Valheim, which can then server as clue. I was only guessing that it's your GPU that not operating properly, as that's what I often see among other players.

[Fin]

Originally posted by Jimmy Felon:

Originally posted by Mharr:

The real nightmare is games where you can't limit the rate while in the menu, touch wood I don't believe Valheim has that problem at least. Glad it worked!

Yeah I only have 60fps monitor, so it's pointless to run it at anything more than that anyway. My GPU went from 100% to like 15-20% after doing that. Thanks again.

Ideally you'd still want it above your monitor rate to have buffer zone for the minor dips in frames.