Low GPU usage giving me low FPS [Overwatch]

[Arooon]

Hey everyone,

 

I have a pretty temporary gaming setup while I save up for a full pc build at the end of the year. I use an overclocked GTX 960 2GB which I picked up for a very low price and it’s been serving me really well. I play Doom 4 on it perfectly with FPS never dropping below 60 at nice looking graphics.

 

However on Overwatch it’s another story. In the training arena or even bot games my GPU usage will be at 80-95% usage giving me tonnes and tonnes of FPS - which is what you want with a competitive game like overwatch. However in real matches my GPU will often fall down to as low as 60% usage and drop my FPS to the low 40s! Creating horrible drops that are more than noticeable.

 

I’ve tried many things like capping FPS to 60, turning up resolution scaling and graphics settings (the latter I think made a bit of an improvement), feeding my GOU more voltage, even enabling constant voltage (afterburner) and kboost (precision 16), removing my OC as I know Overwatch has issues with OC’d GPUs sometimes but I still get frame rate drops when my GPU decides to stop working as hard!

 

When I capped my frame rate to 60 my GPU went to an even lower usage which is understandable - it shouldn’t need to work hard to keep 60 FPS in Overwatch, but the drops went *even lower*!

 

I have spent many hours trying to find some miracle way to “always have my GPU working at 100%” with no luck as GPUs aren’t meant to do this and only work as hard as they should. Mine works less hard when it should be working more hard - but only in Overwatch...

 

Any help would be much appreciated!

 

Thank you!

 

TL;DR GPU drops to low usage in more demanding scenarios **only in Overwatch** and gives me low FPS

[.Apex.]

@Arooon

We need full system specs

[Arooon]

9 minutes ago, _Syn_ said:

@Arooon

We need full system specs

Alright, might be a bit different to what you usually deal with:

i5-4210U

GTX 960 2GB (eGPU) 

8GB RAM

1TB SSHD

 

My CPU bottlenecks my GPU in CPU intensive games (it does so in Doom). If the CPU was indeed bottlenecking my GPU in Overwatch would this prevent the usage going to 100% and causing the drops? Strange that my GPU usage is never dropped in other games even though I know it’s bottlenecked in those games... (like Doom again).

[Mira Yurizaki]

4 minutes ago, Arooon said:

My CPU bottlenecks my GPU in CPU intensive games (it does so in Doom). If the CPU was indeed bottlenecking my GPU in Overwatch would this prevent the usage going to 100% and causing the drops? Strange that my GPU usage is never dropped in other games even though I know it’s bottlenecked in those games... (like Doom again).

Yes.

 

Doom likely has less overall amount of work to complete, but the amount of spare time the CPU has isn't enough to feed the GPU to 100%. When playing Overwatch online, it can be potentially more taxing than playing with bots (unless you are playing with like 32+ bots), so this means the CPU has even less time to send GPU stuff to do and depending on what's going on, there can be spikes of processing to do that will cause sudden drops in frame rate.

[Arooon]

6 minutes ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

Yes.

 

Doom likely has less overall amount of work to complete, but the amount of spare time the CPU has isn't enough to feed the GPU to 100%. When playing Overwatch online, it can be potentially more taxing than playing with bots (unless you are playing with like 32+ bots), so this means the CPU has even less time to send GPU stuff to do and depending on what's going on, there can be spikes of processing to do that will cause sudden drops in frame rate.

Ahh okay, thank you! Is there anyway that I can try and minimise this or the effect of this? (Unfortunately I cannot upgrade my CPU) I close any background applications and set my game to high priority in task manager.

[Mira Yurizaki]

5 minutes ago, Arooon said:

Ahh okay, thank you! Is there anyway that I can try and minimise this or the effect of this? (Unfortunately I cannot upgrade my CPU) I close any background applications and set my game to high priority in task manager.

Outside of upgrading the CPU, doing that may help, but not by much.

[Arooon]

6 minutes ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

Outside of upgrading the CPU, doing that may help, but not by much.

Okay, thank you so much for the help! I guess it’s just another reason to look forward to my full build.

[Zeitec]

10 hours ago, Arooon said:

Alright, might be a bit different to what you usually deal with:

i5-4210U

GTX 960 2GB (eGPU) 

8GB RAM

1TB SSHD

 

My CPU bottlenecks my GPU in CPU intensive games (it does so in Doom). If the CPU was indeed bottlenecking my GPU in Overwatch would this prevent the usage going to 100% and causing the drops? Strange that my GPU usage is never dropped in other games even though I know it’s bottlenecked in those games... (like Doom again).

Yeah you're hitting a hard CPU bottleneck. That's a really old, really slow dual core CPU. Honestly any CPU recent quad core CPU would be a good upgrade. I've seen R5 1600+B350 motherboard combos go for under $200 on microcenter. That would be a great upgrade path. 

[Arooon]

5 hours ago, Zeitec said:

Yeah you're hitting a hard CPU bottleneck. That's a really old, really slow dual core CPU. Honestly any CPU recent quad core CPU would be a good upgrade. I've seen R5 1600+B350 motherboard combos go for under $200 on microcenter. That would be a great upgrade path. 

Thanks for the help, an honestly I would ig I could! Unfortunately I’m on a laptop (Lenovo Z50-70) with an external GPU. It’s a temporary set up until I build a full gaming PC.

[alatron978]

16 hours ago, Arooon said:

Alright, might be a bit different to what you usually deal with:

i5-4210U

GTX 960 2GB (eGPU) 

8GB RAM

1TB SSHD

 

My CPU bottlenecks my GPU in CPU intensive games (it does so in Doom). If the CPU was indeed bottlenecking my GPU in Overwatch would this prevent the usage going to 100% and causing the drops? Strange that my GPU usage is never dropped in other games even though I know it’s bottlenecked in those games... (like Doom again).

Literally nothing you can do about it with those specs. You will get drops under 60fps with any cpu that has 4 or less threads.

[Arooon]

4 hours ago, alatron978 said:

Literally nothing you can do about it with those specs. You will get drops under 60fps with any cpu that has 4 or less threads.

Luckily I very very rarely drop under 60 FPS with the optimisations I’ve done to my laptop, but yeah my cpu really holds me back. However this is just a temporary setup until I build a gaming PC later in the year and works fine for my needs at the moment.

[missVerizonKkx]

On 3/26/2019 at 6:23 AM, Arooon said:

Hey everyone,

 

I have a pretty temporary gaming setup while I save up for a full pc build at the end of the year. I use an overclocked GTX 960 2GB which I picked up for a very low price and it’s been serving me really well. I play Doom 4 on it perfectly with FPS never dropping below 60 at nice looking graphics.

 

However on Overwatch it’s another story. In the training arena or even bot games my GPU usage will be at 80-95% usage giving me tonnes and tonnes of FPS - which is what you want with a competitive game like overwatch. However in real matches my GPU will often fall down to as low as 60% usage and drop my FPS to the low 40s! Creating horrible drops that are more than noticeable.

 

I’ve tried many things like capping FPS to 60, turning up resolution scaling and graphics settings (the latter I think made a bit of an improvement), feeding my GOU more voltage, even enabling constant voltage (afterburner) and kboost (precision 16), removing my OC as I know Overwatch has issues with OC’d GPUs sometimes but I still get frame rate drops when my GPU decides to stop working as hard!

 

When I capped my frame rate to 60 my GPU went to an even lower usage which is understandable - it shouldn’t need to work hard to keep 60 FPS in Overwatch, but the drops went *even lower*!

 

I have spent many hours trying to find some miracle way to “always have my GPU working at 100%” with no luck as GPUs aren’t meant to do this and only work as hard as they should. Mine works less hard when it should be working more hard - but only in Overwatch...

 

Any help would be much appreciated!

 

Thank you!

 

TL;DR GPU drops to low usage in more demanding scenarios **only in Overwatch** and gives me low FPS

Hi,

 

I think it may have to do with HPET. I had this problem with my graphics card where the core speed keeps fluctuating. I disabled 'HPET' in my BIOS and it worked. Try googling 'hpet overwatch' to research it further. Anyway here are some useful links:

 

• https://www.ghacks.net/2013/04/18/try-changing-hpet-settings-to-improve-your-pcs-performance/
• HPET ON vs HPET OFF ( WINDOWS 10 ) | Ryzen 5 2600 + VEGA 56 Gaming Benchmarks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YssdyMOCLQU&t=170s
• Overwatch Low GPU Usage & FPS Solved Disable HPET: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEBjV7AYANY
• Another Performance Killer - High Precision Event Timer HPET - Benchmarked and Tested in Overwatch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFn1eFOtzpA&t=22s

If you have EVGA, you can 'boost lock' instead where it locks your core speed and does not allow it to fluctuate: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/66861/evga-precision-4-8-intros-new-boost-lock-feature/index.html