R9 290 low gpu usage

[Kerplex]

How do i take advantage of mantle?

 

Only certain games use mantle, like BF4.

[THGM]

Right, speaking of BF i noticed a funny thing... on some maps i get 90-99% gpu usage and decent fps(120+), but on some maps its just terrible(metro for example)... it gets down to 50-70% gpu usage and it becomes unplayable

[THGM]

More of the supposed issue:

[miagisan]

The fact that you have issues on metro is odd. That's the one which requires the least amount of graphical power. My r9 280x loves that board.

Have you tried wiping and reinstalling the drivers? If it wasn't for the Xeon I would have said it's a CPU bottleneck but I doubt it

[snert98]

xeon is a good cpu

[THGM]

The fact that you have issues on metro is odd. That's the one which requires the least amount of graphical power. My r9 280x loves that board.

Have you tried wiping and reinstalling the drivers? If it wasn't for the Xeon I would have said it's a CPU bottleneck but I doubt it

what fps and gpu usage are you getting on metro? im playing all on ultra on 1680x1050 with 2x msaa

[miagisan]

Usually 60 fps on 1080p. High settings but using mantle and vsync on. My gpu usage is 98%

[THGM]

Usually 60 fps on 1080p. Same settings but using mantle and vsync on. My gpu usage is 98%

mantle on battlefield 3? how do i turn that on? is your usage always at 98%?

[miagisan]

mantle on battlefield 3? how do i turn that on? is your usage always at 98%?

sorry man, I was thinking of bf4 my bad.

[SteveGrabowski]

So is this just standard with the R9 290? I gotta stop recommending these cards if driver overhead is keeping this from being used to its potential. Is anyone using i5 or i7 CPUs having the same problem? Or anyone else with a Haswell Xeon E3?

[Monarch]

 

More of the supposed issue:
-snip-

 

Keep in mind that GPU usage drop doesn't always mean CPU bottleneck. It could be game or driver optimizations as well. Don't know what that game is but it doesn't seem like a CPU heavy game so it could be just bad optimization. But either way, performance sucks. 

 

So is this just standard with the R9 290? I gotta stop recommending these cards if driver overhead is keeping this from being used to its potential. Is anyone using i5 or i7 CPUs having the same problem? Or anyone else with a Haswell Xeon E3?

 

There's a ton of evidence around. It's shocking that no one's talking about this. It is a big deal. I've seen people starting the discussion on some forums but got bashed by AMD fans, that were unwilling to admit AMD has a serious issue.

Funny thing is that Nvidia's DX11 has way less overhead thanks to Mantle. It was Nvidia's response to Mantle with the 337.50 drivers. So AMD did Nvidia GPU owners a favor, but did almost no good for themselves and their customers. Most games don't and will not support Mantle.

[SteveGrabowski]

 

 

 

 

Keep in mind that GPU usage drop doesn't always mean CPU bottleneck. It could be game or driver optimizations as well. Don't know what that game is but it doesn't seem like a CPU heavy game so it could be just bad optimization. But either way, performance sucks. 

 

 

There's a ton of evidence around. It's shocking that no one's talking about this. It is a big deal. I've seen people starting the discussion on some forums but got bashed by AMD fans, that were unwilling to admit AMD has a serious issue.

Funny thing is that Nvidia's DX11 has way less overhead thanks to Mantle. It was Nvidia's response to Mantle with the 337.50 drivers. So AMD did Nvidia GPU owners a favor, but did almost no good for themselves and their customers. Most games don't and will not support Mantle.

 

 

This is just really sad to read. I stopped recommending Radeons to people on i3 budgets after the Eurogamer.net review of COD AW that showed an i3 + GTX 750 Ti outperforming an i3 + R9 280 at times and an i3 + GTX 760 just demolishing the i3 +R9 280 combination. I always figured the DX11 overhead wasn't a big deal if you had an i5 or better. But I guess review sites do most of their testing with heavily overclocked 4770k, 4790k, 5820k, and 5960x so you don't see the driver overhead problem. So do you also get this bad GPU usage with your R9 290x + OC i5-4670k combo? And what if you run the i5 at stock?

 

Brings me back to when I had an ATi Radeon 8500 that was the strongest hardware on the market but was crippled by really bad DirectX and OpenGL implementations back in 2001 or so.

[VortexS]

So this is with the Omega drivers too? I thought these were supposed to bring huge performance increases.

It's not bad driver optimization, my 290x always runs full power and performs great.

[Monarch]

I always figured the DX11 overhead wasn't a big deal if you had an i5 or better. But I guess review sites do most of their testing with heavily overclocked 4770k, 4790k, 5820k, and 5960x so you don't see the driver overhead problem. So do you also get this bad GPU usage with your R9 290x + OC i5-4670k combo? And what if you run the i5 at stock?

 

Yep I get it too, at both stock and OC. And the overhead is a big deal even if you have an i5/i7 in CPU heavy games like BF4.

 

This is exactly the performance I'm getting. 60 average, drops below 60 a lot, sometimes even down to around 40 fps, while with Mantle stays 60+.

 

 

Drops below 60 even with an overclocked 4770k.

 

Now, in this example:

 

 

it's present as well, you can see it even with the 5960X, but we're talking framerates around 200 fps so the overhead obviously doesn't matter here.

 

 

 

It's not bad driver optimization, my 290x always runs full power and performs great.

 

It depends on the resolution. If your GPU hits its limit before the CPU does due to high res you won't see the overhead issue.

[THGM]

It's not bad driver optimization, my 290x always runs full power and performs great.

Would you like to run quick cinebench openGL test and show us graph(gpu usage) from msi afterburner?

And yea, i feel pretty scammed with my R9 290 considering this issue, much worse than the issue with the 970 for example. Shame on AMD and reviewers they missed out that important part.

sorry man, I was thinking of bf4 my bad.

Its my bad man, i didn't mentioned its about 3, but now that i think of it, i'll contact ea to give me some gimetime for bf4 and see what happens there.

[Monarch]

And yea, i feel pretty scammed with my R9 290 considering this issue, much worse than the issue with the 970 for example. Shame on AMD and reviewers they missed out that important part.

 

Technically they didn't. You still get the performance you've seen from benchmarks. It's just that reviewers don't talk about GPU usage. I bought my 290X before 970/980 came out. It was on sale and being a flagship GPU i didn't bother to check the benchmarks, I just bought it while the store still had it in stock. So I guess shame on me lol.

[R_Golden]

Sounds like a bad driver, maybe try an older driver and see if it helps otherwise you're out of luck until AMD releases one that fixes said issue.

[THGM]

Well its a bit tricky, because minimum can be as low as 30 and maximum can be 200 in actual gaming, but still be under 60 in most cases... average accoring to the review can be about 80 and this seems perfectly fine at first sight, but theres moments that the game kinda becomes unplayable due to low fps and high frametime, it's really frustuating for gamer like me, who wants it to be all smooth.

Sounds like a bad driver, maybe try an older driver and see if it helps otherwise you're out of luck until AMD releases one that fixes said issue.

Yea i tried with all kinds of drivers man, nothing seems to really work better than 14.12(latest), but its still quite shitty.

[miagisan]

It's not bad driver optimization, my 290x always runs full power and performs great.

agreed. my 280x runs full bore, and my younger brother's 290x same deal.

[Kerplex]

Guessing you got the card recently? Return it and either get your money back or exchange for another card.

GPU usage flucuates with my cards sometimes, but frames don't.

[THGM]

agreed. my 280x runs full bore, and my younger brother's 290x same deal.

As i already mentioned:

Would you like to run quick cinebench openGL test and show us graph(gpu usage) from msi afterburner?

Guessing you got the card recently? Return it and either get your money back or exchange for another card.

GPU usage flucuates with my cards sometimes, but frames don't.

Well, the card was purchased 1 year ago, but it was warranty replaced less than 14 days ago and i bought it off from site(like ebay) really cheap(about 200 euros), brand new, unopened, so not sure if i can just call in and replace it.

[miagisan]

As i already mentioned:

Would you like to run quick cinebench openGL test and show us graph(gpu usage) from msi afterburner?

Well, the card was purchased 1 year ago, but it was warranty replaced less than 14 days ago and i bought it off from site(like ebay) really cheap(about 200 euros), brand new, unopened, so not sure if i can just call in and replace it.

Cinebench for gpu opengl testing is not very good. It locks the scene in 25 fps if i remember correct...so right off the bat it wont use 100% of your gpu.

 

2nd....low gpu usage is not restricted to AMD for Cinebench. My gtx 560 never exceeds 36% usage on my htpc, 47% on my R9 280x. Just ran both tests on both systems. I can upload them both if you like.

[ComradeHX]

They are not difficult games to run.

And I'm pretty sure call of duty has a hard cap on fps.

Is any cpu core parked?

[THGM]

Cinebench for gpu opengl testing is not very good. It locks the scene in 25 fps if i remember correct...so right off the bat it wont use 100% of your gpu.

 

2nd....low gpu usage is not restricted to AMD for Cinebench. My gtx 560 never exceeds 36% usage on my htpc, 47% on my R9 280x. Just ran both tests on both systems. I can upload them both if you like.

Yea i though its only for amd that way in cinebench.

For me its about 50% gpu usage on r9 290 and 126 fps, up to 130fps sometimes so its not "locked", but you can try some game benchmarks such as hitman absolution, batman etc. so we can compare better

[D3MON]

Try dialing back the overclock see if that helps

You dont need to quote everything, try snipping.

 

I already tried that dude, think the full format and installing fresh windows pretty much sums it up.

what resolution?

this gpu is meant for 1440p+ im not surprised if its at 900p..