GPU usage only 97% during benchmarks?

[Mark Kaine]

I have tried heaven, valley, timespy, firestrike etc, also during games the most I ever see is 97/98% usage. 

 

Also note I'm not running into any power or perfcap limits (see pic) 

 

What could be causing this? 

 

Also,  overclock,  stock doesn't matter... i may get better performance with OC, but it still mostly hangs around 97% I've not seen it go to 100 ever... 

 

 

 

 

[FakeFBI]

4 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

I have tried heaven, valley, timespy, firestrike etc, also during games the most I ever see is 97/98% usage. 

 

Also note I'm not running into any power or perfcap limits (see pic) 

 

What could be causing this? 

 

Also,  overclock,  stock doesn't matter... i may get better performance with OC, but it still mostly hangs around 97% I've not seen it go to 100 ever... 

 

 

 

 

i think that its either driver issue, or custom setting from factory. And if the drivers are up to date you can always reinstall with DDU 

[Nathanpete]

Have you turned on any sort of Eco mode in any hardware application (like Ryzen Master, or even windows power options), and if you find the benchmark program in the details tab of task manager, right click, go to priority, make sure it is set to above normal or high. (Don't set it to Realtime! It will cause your computer to freeze, or maybe even BSOD. Also don't run a CPU benchmark simultaneously as a GPU benchmark because most GPU benchmarks still require a portion of the CPU's horsepower to run. I have done it before and it causes by GPU to be under utilized and my scores to be low)

[Nathanpete]

I'm sorry, but I thought OP said CPU, not GPU. I should have see that he was talking about Heaven, which is a GPU test. I'm dumb. But I'm going to leave my comment up because it is still good advice, just not for the OP. 

[Mark Kaine]

19 minutes ago, FakeFBI said:

i think that its either driver issue, or custom setting from factory. And if the drivers are up to date you can always reinstall with DDU 

Yeah, it also happens at stock, no over clocks...  the card runs constantly into some PerfCap limits at stock... doesn't with my undervolt tho, and performance is *better* with the undervolt too,  thing is it's just never using more than ~98% still...

 

I think I've seen it go to 99 "once" in Monster Hunter at 4k... so maybe it's just the programs not utilizing it fully... but that's just speculation. 

 

 

18 minutes ago, Nathanpete said:

Have you turned on any sort of Eco mode in any hardware application (like Ryzen Master, or even windows power options), and if you find the benchmark program in the details tab of task manager, right click, go to priority, make sure it is set to above normal or high. (Don't set it to Realtime! It will cause your computer to freeze, or maybe even BSOD. Also don't run a CPU benchmark simultaneously as a GPU benchmark because most GPU benchmarks still require a portion of the CPU's horsepower to run. I have done it before and it causes by GPU to be under utilized and my scores to be low)

Currently i have CPU negative Voltage offset (0.375),  plus 200mhz PBO 'overclock' and custom voltage curve for GPU that makes it boost to 2025mhz ,compared to ~1950mhz at *stock*, but as i said this '97% effect' also happens at stock settings,  it'll just clock lower...

 

So either this is normal or it's like FakeFBI said some factory settings (vbios?) Or something else entirely! 

 

And ok I'll try setting priority

 

[Mark Kaine]

12 minutes ago, Nathanpete said:

I'm sorry, but I thought OP said CPU, not GPU. I should have see that he was talking about Heaven, which is a GPU test. I'm dumb. But I'm going to leave my comment up because it is still good advice, just not for the OP. 

Lol ok, no worries,  and I'm actually seeing im almost cpu bottlenecked in heaven,  but the thing is it happens in stuff like firestrike too where I'm almost certainly not being cpu bottlenecked during the graphic tests. 

[Nathanpete]

2 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

And ok I'll try setting priority

So the thing I said about priority was actually about the CPU, hence my apology. Because few applications will need the horsepower of a GPU concurrently, meaning Windows should always put your game or benchmark as the highest priority, so the priority menu really doesn't do anything. However it can affect your CPU performance. 

[Mark Kaine]

12 minutes ago, Nathanpete said:

So the thing I said about priority was actually about the CPU, hence my apology. Because few applications will need the horsepower of a GPU concurrently, meaning Windows should always put your game or benchmark as the highest priority, so the priority menu really doesn't do anything. However it can affect your CPU performance. 

right,  it's a good tip generally though,  i just don't think I'm cpu bottlenecked in most games and applications,  especially not stuff like timespy, firestrike etc.

 

Usually,  i would say this is power limit or similar,  but there's no "perfcap reason' and max power draw is also higher than the official limit ~274w vs 270w ...

 

Plus it happens regardless of wattage,  if it's at 97% and 240w you'd think usage goes up with 270w... but it does not,  so really kinda odd.

[Mark Kaine]

Ok, i tried with nvcp power settings 'prefer max performance' no difference whatsoever,  except worse performance (of course) because it's running into pwr all the time (obviously)

 

Also yeah, I tried many drivers,  this behavior is completely unaffected by them. 

[Mark Kaine]

Ok, finally I found something that at least tries to use my gpu fully. 

 

ROTTR, 99% almost always, weirdly changing from fxaa to 2xmsaa doesn't change that at all and even fps stay the same (which is a bit baffling? )

 

But it at least proves my card can go to 99%, maybe even 100% considering the measurements aren't quite 100% correct anyway most likely.