What does 100% GPU (and) CPU usage mean?

[Woofboy13]

So if my GPU or CPU were to work on 100 % usage while playing a game, would something(anything bad) happen to the components (over time)?

Im not an expert but im building a pc so please be as detailed as possible so i can learn something new

[Skiiwee29]

The worst that will happen is stuttering and lag in games. If the GPU is at 100% usage (Completely fine and normal and the wanted behavior when gaming) this is a good thing. The problem is that when the CPU gets to 100% usage, the GPU usage tends to drop as a result of the CPU not being able to handle the data from the GPU and caused the GPU usage to drop below 100% usage, and produces very noticeable frame drops and stuttering and overall a very bad experience in games. 

[mockedarche]

You generally want 100% gpu usage because its working and getting you the best performance it can. There is no bad effects of this as long as temps are in check. Cpu usage at 100% can sometimes cause stutter or lag due to it bottleneck the gpu.

[Mick Naughty]

Nothing will happen to them over time assuming heat and voltage are in within preferred vales.

Gpu usage should be around 100% assuming its being used for gaming and such. Cpu could be at 100% assuming that's the intention, rendering or so. Gaming is hit or miss. Some of my games lag when the cpu is at 100, sometimes it doesn't. 

[Woofboy13]

11 hours ago, Ohsnaps said:

You generally want 100% gpu usage because its working and getting you the best performance it can. There is no bad effects of this as long as temps are in check. Cpu usage at 100% can sometimes cause stutter or lag due to it bottleneck the gpu.

Thanks for the answer, btw what temperature is considered okay?

[Mick Naughty]

2 hours ago, Woofboy13 said:

Thanks for the answer, btw what temperature is considered okay?

Temp for what exaclty?

[Woofboy13]

8 hours ago, Mick Naughty said:

Temp for what exaclty?

I dunno, gaming

[Mick Naughty]

14 minutes ago, Woofboy13 said:

I dunno, gaming

Yea mean the temp of the cpu and gpu? I have no idea, as I have no clue what hardware you have and how they are being use. But I cant leave a vague question un answered, so ill say 80c for both. Anything under that is acceptable.

[Mira Yurizaki]

22 hours ago, Woofboy13 said:

So if my GPU or CPU were to work on 100 % usage while playing a game, would something(anything bad) happen to the components (over time)?

Im not an expert but im building a pc so please be as detailed as possible so i can learn something new

Technically speaking, processor utilization of any sort is basically the percentage of time (usually 1 second) it did not spend idling. While I don't know if this is a thing for GPUs, for CPUs running a modern OS, there's an idle process that the OS schedules to run on the CPU if nothing else is available to do work. So the ratio of time the CPU spent running the "idle" process vs when it didn't is percent utilization. This also means that percent utilization does not mean, nor can you infer, how much resources are actually being used. So if something wants to calculate 1+1 on a core, that core is technically no longer idling, even though its resource utilization may be something like <10%.

 

For gaming though, having the GPU at 100% is more or less a good thing. This means the GPU is doing its hardest to push frames out. If it's the CPU that's at 100%, then this can be a problem. As the CPU still has to process game logic, if the CPU cannot process this fast enough, it cannot send commands telling the GPU what to render.  This is one of two root causes of CPU bottlenecking. The other is the application was not developed with multiple cores in mind, so it relies heavily on the performance of a single core.