Not enough GPU Utilization, what gives?

[DeadlyTitan]

My system specs - 

• i7 8700
• GTX 1080 Ti (MSI Gaming X Trio) 
• 2 x 16 GB Cas 15 3200 MHZ Ram (Crucial Ram)
• Samsung 850 Evo 500 GB 

I usually play some older games, and i was wondering why am i not getting HIGH FPS. I mean its really not bothering me or anything cause am happy as long as i can play my games regardless of FPS or settings i play them, but i am really curious to know why.

 

Using MSI After burner i have noticed that my GPU is not getting utilized properly (only about 20 ~30 % of it is getting utilized) 

 

As you can see Here, at least i know that in skyrim i have capped the frames and the GPU is getting utilized more, but see the other game its only around 30% usage. 

 

This happens in all the games. GPU utilization usually hovers at around 30% ~ 50% most of the times in Older games. 

 

its not a problem like i said, i just want to know why. Oh between i play @ 2k 144hz GSync. 

[♠FlamieMeister♠]

4 minutes ago, DeadlyTitan said:

My system specs - 

• i7 8700
• GTX 1080 Ti (MSI Gaming X Trio) 
• 2 x 16 GB Cas 15 3200 MHZ Ram (Crucial Ram)
• Samsung 850 Evo 500 GB 

I usually play some older games, and i was wondering why am i not getting HIGH FPS. I mean its really not bothering me or anything cause am happy as long as i can play my games regardless of FPS or settings i play them, but i am really curious to know why.

 

Using MSI After burner i have noticed that my GPU is not getting utilized properly (only about 20 ~30 % of it is getting utilized) 

 

As you can see Here, at least i know that in skyrim i have capped the frames and the GPU is getting utilized more, but see the other game its only around 30% usage. 

 

This happens in all the games. GPU utilization usually hovers at around 30% ~ 50% most of the times in Older games. 

 

its not a problem like i said, i just want to know why. Oh between i play @ 2k 144hz GSync. 

Probably the built-in software going "Nah, no need to use full gpu." Consider it a way of keeping the gpu in good condition.

[AskTJ]

Maybe your not pushing your card enough. Try the heaven benchmark and take note of your GPU utilization. Good luck

[Electronics Wizardy]

Gonna ask, how do you get your overlay like that.

[DeadlyTitan]

3 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Gonna ask, how do you get your overlay like that.

Msi Afterburner. 

 

3 hours ago, tj_420 said:

Maybe your not pushing your card enough. Try the heaven benchmark and take note of your GPU utilization. Good luck

Yea it only happens in older games, in newer games i usually see 85% ~ 99% GPU Utilization. See, Crysis 2 at 99% GPU utilization while Singularity is only using 30%? So yea generally in older games. 

 

 

3 hours ago, ♠FlamieMeister♠ said:

Probably the built-in software going "Nah, no need to use full gpu." Consider it a way of keeping the gpu in good condition.

Yea am not really bothered by that, i just wanted to know what's happening. 

[Streetguru]

3 hours ago, DeadlyTitan said:

 

You are CPU bottlenecked or the older game has a frame rate cap

[DeadlyTitan]

8 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

You are CPU bottlenecked or the older game has a frame rate cap

I dont think am CPU bottlenecked cause i dont see CPU utilization beyond 10% ~ 15% in most cases. And even if am CPU bottlenecked i think an i7 8700 with GTX 1080 Ti should get far more FPS than those, especially in older games. 

[Streetguru]

3 minutes ago, DeadlyTitan said:

I dont think am CPU bottlenecked cause i dont see CPU utilization beyond 10% ~ 15% in most cases. And even if am CPU bottlenecked i think an i7 8700 with GTX 1080 Ti should get far more FPS than those, especially in older games. 

Are you watching your task manager? Is the game only using one thread? It probably is, if not use CPU affinity to force it onto one thread, or 2 threads.

Most likely it's just a game engine thing. See how much fps you get in an older Source game like half life 2. They basically have unlimited fps limits.

[DeadlyTitan]

23 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

Are you watching your task manager? Is the game only using one thread? It probably is, if not use CPU affinity to force it onto one thread, or 2 threads.

Most likely it's just a game engine thing. See how much fps you get in an older Source game like half life 2. They basically have unlimited fps limits.

Hmm most likely its the game engine thingy cause i did not see any of the cores being utilized more than 50% in older games. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

9 hours ago, DeadlyTitan said:

I dont think am CPU bottlenecked cause i dont see CPU utilization beyond 10% ~ 15% in most cases. And even if am CPU bottlenecked i think an i7 8700 with GTX 1080 Ti should get far more FPS than those, especially in older games. 

 

9 hours ago, DeadlyTitan said:

Hmm most likely its the game engine thingy cause i did not see any of the cores being utilized more than 50% in older games. 

CPU utilization alone is not exactly a good indicator anymore of a CPU bottleneck. The reason being is that applications may not have enough threads that are ready to run on average. If an application only has say four threads ready to run on average, then on an 8-thread processor it will appear to be 50% utilized. But if the per-core performance isn't good enough, then performance will falter (then again, a lower per-core performance will cause the thread to run on the core longer, raising its utilization)

 

Also note that Windows will schedule a thread to run on any available core (bar specific performance optimizations like in the case of Bulldozer or Ryzen) and that utilization is sampled over a period of a second. A lot can happen in a second if you convert that to CPU time.

 

In the case with older games though, those won't necessarily have more than a few threads in the ready state at once since the programming models back then were largely synchronous. And even then, there may be performance caps because of the impracticality of leaving the game uncapped (like for example, Space Cadet 3D Pinball in Windows XP has a performance cap of 120 FPS, because otherwise it would eat up the entire CPU)

[DeadlyTitan]

4 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

 

CPU utilization alone is not exactly a good indicator anymore of a CPU bottleneck. The reason being is that applications may not have enough threads that are ready to run on average. If an application only has say four threads ready to run on average, then on an 8-thread processor it will appear to be 50% utilized. But if the per-core performance isn't good enough, then performance will falter (then again, a lower per-core performance will cause the thread to run on the core longer, raising its utilization)

 

Also note that Windows will schedule a thread to run on any available core (bar specific performance optimizations like in the case of Bulldozer or Ryzen) and that utilization is sampled over a period of a second. A lot can happen in a second if you convert that to CPU time.

 

In the case with older games though, those won't necessarily have more than a few threads in the ready state at once since the programming models back then were largely synchronous. And even then, there may be performance caps because of the impracticality of leaving the game uncapped (like for example, Space Cadet 3D Pinball in Windows XP has a performance cap of 120 FPS, because otherwise it would eat up the entire CPU)

 

Well, i though of that but then that does not seems to be the problem, as you can see HERE  not even a single core is getting utilized 100% which feels weird.

[Mira Yurizaki]

3 minutes ago, DeadlyTitan said:

Well, i though of that but then that does not seems to be the problem, as you can see HERE  not even a single core is getting utilized 100% which feels weird.

Windows will schedule a thread on any available CPU core. It doesn't make sense to run say four threads on the same CPU core when you could've spread them out on four even though all four threads won't keep the CPU busy long enough.