Hello! Thank you for stopping by to help me with my issue, it's GREATLY appreciated!
-----------------The GPU I am using is a Diamond Radeon HD 7970 I bought in May of 2013--------------------
Okay, so here is the problem... in MSI afterburner my GPU (on random occasions, for seemingly no reason) spikes WAY up from 0 GPU usage % in afterburner to 85%, 91% and recently went as high as 152% which I didn't even know was possible. the spikes are not constant, and only last a fraction of a second before going back down to 0, they can continue in a long string for a few seconds, or sometimes there is only 1-3 spikes before it stays at zero for quite a while, it seems I can get the spikes to stop by playing an on disk video, like a wmv file, playing it during one of the "spike episodes". though it could just be coincidence, since it's hard to gauge, as the spiking frequency is erratic, it can be as little as one spike every minute, to 1 spike every second for 20 seconds. These spikes occur whether I'm connected to the internet or not, I have unplugged the ethernet cord from my computer, and the spikes can go on for another few minutes, or seconds, depending on that specific "episode" of spikes. These spikes do not appear to affect my actual GPU clocks, temp, or fan speed, as the spikes can go on for a bit without the temp, fan, or clocks moving at all. Spikes appear at the same numbers in GPU-Z as they do afterburner, but the spikes seem to not appear, or at least not appear as high when using the Process Explorer, and they aren't ever consistent, my usage doesn't sit at a constant high value, but only spikes for a brief moment before returning to 0-ish. - Footnots on above paragraph for convenience -
- GPU Spiking randomly to 81, 85, 91, and even 152%
- Spikes happen when connected to the internet, or not, it doesn't appear to matter
- Spikes seem to not affect the clock speeds, temperature, or fan speed of GPU
- Spikes appear in both Afterburner, and GPU-Z, but not at all in Process Explorer (or at least to a lesser degree)
Now, some background here, for the last 2 days I have been doing self trouble shooting, my first assumption based on internet searches, was that perhaps I had a bitcoin miner virus installed, but the symptoms for those are generally more aggressive, causing high usages for consistent periods of time, as well as causing high temperatures and fan speeds (which don't occur for me), but since I am paranoid about viruses and malware, I have scanned with AVG free, malwarebytes anti-malware, Malwarebytes anti-rootkit, TDSS Killer, and Hitman Pro, they have all come up clean, aside from a few tracking cookies or so, I have scanned with all these files in both normal mode, and safe mode. I also scanned with Rogue Killer, none of the found files or processes were "red" but there were some orange PUPs, I'm not entirely sure if they are dangerous but they appear to not be, I left them alone to stay on the safe side, I can list them below for reference if you think it could be a cause. So, basically all my scans came up empty. My next step was of course to figure out what was causing the usage, so I go into the task manager and try to find sketchy processes, but having looked them over and googling a lot, they seem to be legit, and since nothing is coming up on virus scanners, idk. So, I decided Task Manager was unreliable, so I downloaded a program through microsofts subsidiary website called "Process Explorer" it's basically task manager on steroids. I set tabs to show GPU Usage, but there didn't appear to be any processes listed using up GPU stuff, aside from things I already knew about, or had open, like flux, a browser, dwm.exe, CCC.exe, and Razer Synapse. I assumed the issue would appear upon closer graph inspection in Process Explorer, so I opened it to compare real-time to the spikes as they were happening on afterburner through the GPU Engine viewer in Process Explorer, spikes did seem to appear in Process Explorer, but they were much smaller, and being used by specific programs, or the dwm.exe, Perhaps the spikes were the same, but maybe Process Explorer maps out on a smaller scale? The percentages weren't showing up as high as they were in MSI or GPU-Z, but I don't know if it's because of a difference in usage reading between the programs or not. But this also seemed like a dead end, so on I went. From there I did some more troubleshooting, I deleted local temp folders, closed unecessary processes like adobe update, and these things didn't seem to make a difference, I tried updating my gpu drivers to the latest version, I tried updating MSI afterburner, as well as uninstalling and reinstalling the updated version, and none of these things seem to make a difference. Attached are images of the problem, as well as variants - The FIRST Image is the spikes going up to 150 just a little bit after using the FURMark Benchmark - The SECOND Image is the GPU Spikes on a regular inconsistent line, just a standard spike instance - The THIRD Image is the GPU spikes and what happens at the End when I play a local wmv video during the spike instance. - The FOURTH Image is the GPU Usage Spikes alongside the GPU monitoring and Engine graphs in Process Explorer SO Linus TechTips, I have come here, created an account and beg you for an answer as a last resort, as I still have no idea what the issue is, keeping in mind EVERYTHING I've already tried, I would love some input on how to go about solving this issue ps. What are the odds of a bitcoin mining virus going undetected by all the scans I've run? Also, in malwarebytes post scan results, when I hit view details, it says at the top part "malware protection disabled" above "website protection disabled" I assume this is talking solely about realtime protection? **EDIT** UPDATE** Okay, so a little update, I managed to stumble upon a sort of recreation of results. I am able to cause the spikes myself (sometimes) by going into afterburner, hovering over the graphs on the right with my mouse, until I get the window popup, and then proceeding to put my mouse over the popup window in after burner, and sort of just move it around over the window as the window is trying to close, this will cause spikes of a random size, but it doesn't always happen. The first time I did it it was causing 89+ spikes, a while after it was causing spikes up to 50%, and after it was only causing spikes of 5... I'm not sure what's going on. Also, I left the computer running with afterburner open overnight with the internet unplugged making sure to log the data, and I was able to both recreate the spikes with the method just mentioned, but the spikes would also happen every few minutes to every few dozen minutes, to one spike every hour maybe as I left it running overnight, and these happened seemingly at random. I'm not sure what this means, but all I know is I am able to cause spikes in afterburner if the conditions are met, I'm not entirely sure what the conditions are at the moment though.
**UPDATE 2** Through some more digging it also seems my "csrss.exe" in Process ecplorer shows constant GPU Usage, not too big of deal, except when I force the spikes in afterburner using the method above, the csrss.exe GPU usage spikes as well, and I have 2 instances of csrss.exe running in Process explorer, only one shows up in task manager unless I check "processes from all users", both csrss.exe files go to the same file location when opened via task manager or Process Explorer. I don't know what signifigance this holds.
