R9 390 and Spiking!

[DingDongDanger]

I will post what I did on Tom's Hardware, I'm not getting any responses there and I'm hoping someone here can help!

I bought the R9 390. Great card thus far, super smooth and high FPS. However, My afterburner is saying that the GPU usage is going like 0% to 100% and up and down like that on some of my games, especially on WoW. On Ark it does not, it's very steady. I get 60-70fps no matter what it never drops below that so it's really nice, but it's at 98-100% usage 24/7 on Ark. I get some lag spikes on Ark though obviously even top end gaming rigs do it's not optimized. However, on WoW even though I'm typically at 90-105fps when things are steady and 80-90 when things get hectic, occassionally the 60-70 when things go really coocoo you know ridiculous amounts of spells going out or tons of people, I still never get any lag spikes, and I don't feel the frames drop they usually go back up really fast BUT unlike on Ark the GPU usage is spiking everywhere!

The temperature on my CPU and GPU as well as PSU are LOW, very healthy, very low. No overheating at all. Very stable temps with the curve I set.

I checked it out with different PSU's of at least 700W and higher and it still peaks like this so there's no way it's the PSU.

Also, no clashing drivers as it's a freshly reformatted computer with only the newest updated drivers. That was the whole reason I reformatted as I couldn't get all my old drivers off and it was causing clashes.

VSync does not seem to affect it at all except I get lower frames.

What else causes this? It seems really common on the R9 390's and 290's.

Is it possibly my CPU just choking out my card? I heard that these GPUS get bottle necked by a lot of CPU's, it's only an i5 4460 3.2ghz quadcore.

Or is it just simply because the card only sometimes needs to be used at 100%? I'm assuming higher % use in gaming is better because it means the card is being utilized to it's full potential, so if it keeps dropping to 0% it's either not needed or it's not being used properly for some reason correct?

I have also heard that some games have compatibility issues with this card's drivers obviously that could be an issue.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Did u install latest driver and/or try other driver versions to see if that is the cause?
Please try clean installing AMD Crimson 16.1.1
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Windows+10+-+64

[DingDongDanger]

Postat inițial de Bad-Motha:

Did u install latest driver and/or try other driver versions to see if that is the cause?
Please try clean installing AMD Crimson 16.1.1
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Windows+10+-+64

I have twice, that's exactly the first thing I thought because I know that drivers are an issue with this card. The older and newer seem to react the same.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

I wouldn't worry about the overall GPU load, as long as the FPS is stable; and the GPU remains under 85*C or so while under sustained full loads.

[DingDongDanger]

Postat inițial de Bad-Motha:

I wouldn't worry about the overall GPU load, as long as the FPS is stable; and the GPU remains under 85*C or so while under sustained full loads.

A stable higher % of usage in gaming is better than lower % and 0 correct? If it's higher and stable it's being used properly correct? As I said, it's stable in Ark, very not stable in WoW. On Ark I'm a good 60-70 but on WoW my frames drop as low as 60 depending on what's going on and the usage is spiking like crazy bananas!

I hear that some card's drivers especially AMD are not super friendly with some games. It could be my cards reaction to this particular game?

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Some games will make any GPU run at around 90-100% usage due to being poorly optimized; ARK and DAYZ being a few; as they are very early stages and un-optimized in their current stages of development; so not much u can do with regards to such games.

[Citrus Diff]

What is the Make? if it is a gigabyte, or a asus.. that is your problem.

[DingDongDanger]

Postat inițial de Corvo:

What is the Make? if it is a gigabyte, or a asus.. that is your problem.

It's the highly rated MSI AMD RADEON R9 390.

I'm testing it on Blizzard games in General. On Blizz games it's going BANANAS! On League it's very low and on Ark it's steady 100%

Is higher or lower % good or bad? I really need to clear this up. I'm assuming 0% is not being used and 100% is being used to it's fullest. So why the heck would it ever spike from 100% to 0% like crazy within seconds O_o... I mean, I don't have a faulty card do I?!

[Citrus Diff]

Postat inițial de DingDongDanger:

Postat inițial de Corvo:

What is the Make? if it is a gigabyte, or a asus.. that is your problem.

It's the highly rated MSI AMD RADEON R9 390.

I'm testing it on Blizzard games in General. On Blizz games it's going BANANAS! On League it's very low and on Ark it's steady 100%

Is higher or lower % good or bad? I really need to clear this up. I'm assuming 0% is not being used and 100% is being used to it's fullest. So why the heck would it ever spike from 100% to 0% like crazy within seconds O_o... I mean, I don't have a faulty card do I?!

What is your build? Complete list. maybe something isnt matching up.

[DingDongDanger]

Postat inițial de Corvo:

Postat inițial de DingDongDanger:

It's the highly rated MSI AMD RADEON R9 390.

I'm testing it on Blizzard games in General. On Blizz games it's going BANANAS! On League it's very low and on Ark it's steady 100%

Is higher or lower % good or bad? I really need to clear this up. I'm assuming 0% is not being used and 100% is being used to it's fullest. So why the heck would it ever spike from 100% to 0% like crazy within seconds O_o... I mean, I don't have a faulty card do I?!

What is your build? Complete list. maybe something isnt matching up.

i5 4460 3.2ghz Quadcore
16G Kingston Ram
MSI Radeon R9 390
CX850M Bronze Corsair PSU ( I have tried it with different PSU's this is just the current one in atm, PSU doesn't seem to affect it. )

[Citrus Diff]

Postat inițial de DingDongDanger:

Postat inițial de Corvo:

What is your build? Complete list. maybe something isnt matching up.

i5 4460 3.2ghz Quadcore
16G Kingston Ram
MSI Radeon R9 390
CX850M Bronze Corsair PSU ( I have tried it with different PSU's this is just the current one in atm, PSU doesn't seem to affect it. )

MOBO?

[initiaLiSeD]

Postat inițial de DingDongDanger:

Postat inițial de Bad-Motha:

I wouldn't worry about the overall GPU load, as long as the FPS is stable; and the GPU remains under 85*C or so while under sustained full loads.

A stable higher % of usage in gaming is better than lower % and 0 correct? If it's higher and stable it's being used properly correct? As I said, it's stable in Ark, very not stable in WoW. On Ark I'm a good 60-70 but on WoW my frames drop as low as 60 depending on what's going on and the usage is spiking like crazy bananas!

I hear that some card's drivers especially AMD are not super friendly with some games. It could be my cards reaction to this particular game?

No, you don't have a faulty card, you have consistent performance in WoW.

It's not as simple as high usage good, low usage bad, just that 100% GPU usage means the game is able to use the GPU at full capacity, when it's at 0% it means a different system is the performance limiting factor.

Are you also looking at VRAM, Memory load, Disk access, CPU load, CPU clock speed. Do you use VSync or AMD's frame rate target control.

As a start post the Overview Information from AMD Radeon Settings/System/Overview/Copy All:

Radeon Software Version - 16.1
Radeon Software Edition - Crimson
Graphics Chipset - AMD Radeon (TM) R9 Fury Series
Memory Size - 4096 MB
Memory Type - High Bandwidth Memory (HBM)
Core Clock - 1000 MHz
Windows Version - Windows 10
System Memory - 12 GB
CPU Type - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU X 980 @ 3.33GHz

Then post a CPUID link:
http://valid.x86.fr/k9kbbg

[DingDongDanger]

I watch all my statistics in Afterburner and sometimes I double check with the task manager, CPU and RAM are consistantly at around 40% except on Ark it's a little higher on the RAM.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127874 that's my card, you can check the specs from there.

I just realized it's a directx12 card and I only have 11 installed, can that hinder performance.

I guess as a general question, are these spikes NORMAL on these games? for GPU usage, is it something that is just the way the card is with how it reacts to games?

I usually have steady frames but they can fluctuate withina 30fps up or down range just depending on what's happening, they NEVER drop below 60fps and I never get lag spikes except on Ark.

I just want to make sure that my card isn't bad basically.

Also not sure how to post a CPUID link.. XD I'm a newbie.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Like I said; ARK is un-optimized so regardless of the FPS u getting in such a game as that, the GPU usage will be very high, all the time just because of how the game uses it.

DX12 is under Win10 only; and no running such GPU under older OS or DirectX can't hinder it really. As the game would need to support DX12 to use it. Just cause u run say; Win10 and DXDIAG says DX12, just means that is the highest supports, not what is being used.

[DingDongDanger]

Alrighty just wanted to check, but it's the fact that my GPU usage is just going bananas in every game but ark that is kind of freakin' me out. IM SUCH A NEWB AND IM SCARED WHEN IT COMES TO SPENDING OVER 300 BUCKS ON SOMETHING LOL XD

On a side note, it sounds like the coil whine on my brand new PSU is starting to go away. I hate how they have to be "broken in" like a pair of leather boots LOL.

[initiaLiSeD]

You really are worrying about nothing.

Chances are something other than your GPU is the problem, maybe holding it back so post your system specs.

Also what software are you using to monitor GPU usage and what other metrics are you looking at that correlate directly or inversely?