GPU Power never reaching 100 %

[frozensun]

Hi guys.

Just while gaming I asked myself why my GPU power in games is never reaching 100 % and then asked here.

It usually is between 75-85 %, never reaching 100 % (showing from MSI AB OSD-picture below).

I even changed Power Managment Mode to "Prefer Maximum Performance", in display driver options but that did nothing.

Power Managment inside MSI AB is 100%

Should I be worried or perfectly normal?

I do have to remind you that I have daisy chained power cable to GPU, it's one cable daisy chained with 2 connectors.

GPU: RTX 2080 Super Amp Extreme edition from Zotac.

 

 

[Levent]

1 minute ago, frozensun said:

Should I be worried or perfectly normal?

 

It is fine. That would only mean you have a bottleneck somewhere else, be it software or hardware.

[frozensun]

12 minutes ago, Levent said:

It is fine. That would only mean you have a bottleneck somewhere else, be it software or hardware.

So not necessary should be 100% GPU power all the time?

[Levent]

15 minutes ago, frozensun said:

So not necessary should be 100% GPU power all the time?

In a perfect per system optimized application, everything should be maxed out but in reality that never happens. Don't worry. If you are worried about performance of a game, check to see how it performs on other 2080S with better CPUs. That can give you some idea if your CPU is holding you back.

[frozensun]

40 minutes ago, Levent said:

In a perfect per system optimized application, everything should be maxed out but in reality that never happens. Don't worry. If you are worried about performance of a game, check to see how it performs on other 2080S with better CPUs. That can give you some idea if your CPU is holding you back.

I'm at 1440p so should not be CPU bottleneck, 6700K is perfectly fine for games I play (Resident Evil Biohazard,Rise of The Tomb Raider..)

[Alvin853]

In GPU-Z check "PerfCap Reason", it will tell you, why the GPU can't go faster, wether it's temp, power, load, voltage or whatever. HWiNFO should also show throttle reason, not sure if Afterburner is able to read that value. 

 

Basically the different reasons mean:
Temp: pretty obvious, card got too hot and is reducing the boost to prevent overheating

Power: maximum power rating for the card reached, some cards allow adjusting that value in Afterburner, or you have to do a hardware mod to circumvent this limit, only really for extreme overclockers, as that limit is in place to prevent components from being damaged

Load: the GPU is being bottlenecked by something else, upgrade your system to get higher FPS or increase the resolution/display settings for better visuals without losing FPS

Voltage: None of the other limits have been hit, but the card has reached the maximum frequency defined by its BIOS, only way to go faster is overclocking

[jones177]

My i7 6700k was great with a GTX 980 ti and later a GTX 1080 but with a GTX 1080 ti it did not get the most out of the GPU so I replaced it with an i7 8700k.

A GTX 2080S is a bit more powerful than a GTX 1080 ti so I am not surprised with 80% usage.

 

The down side with the upgrade was that getting 100% on the GPU only got 3 to 5 extra frames. On the plus side the 6 core was so much smoother that I never wanted to play on a 4 core ever again.  

 

 

[frozensun]

1 hour ago, Alvin853 said:

In GPU-Z check "PerfCap Reason", it will tell you, why the GPU can't go faster, wether it's temp, power, load, voltage or whatever. HWiNFO should also show throttle reason, not sure if Afterburner is able to read that value. 

 

Basically the different reasons mean:
Temp: pretty obvious, card got too hot and is reducing the boost to prevent overheating

Power: maximum power rating for the card reached, some cards allow adjusting that value in Afterburner, or you have to do a hardware mod to circumvent this limit, only really for extreme overclockers, as that limit is in place to prevent components from being damaged

Load: the GPU is being bottlenecked by something else, upgrade your system to get higher FPS or increase the resolution/display settings for better visuals without losing FPS

Voltage: None of the other limits have been hit, but the card has reached the maximum frequency defined by its BIOS, only way to go faster is overclocking

Will check and report back.

52 minutes ago, jones177 said:

My i7 6700k was great with a GTX 980 ti and later a GTX 1080 but with a GTX 1080 ti it did not get the most out of the GPU so I replaced it with an i7 8700k.

A GTX 2080S is a bit more powerful than a GTX 1080 ti so I am not surprised with 80% usage.

 

The down side with the upgrade was that getting 100% on the GPU only got 3 to 5 extra frames. On the plus side the 6 core was so much smoother that I never wanted to play on a 4 core ever again.  

 

 

Hmm for these games 6700K should be more then enough..it has high clock and both games don't require more then 8 cores.I even OC the CPU to 4.5 GHz all cores.

No way its CPU bottleneck at 1440p.

 

 

Maybe I shouldn't use daisy chain cable,and utilize one more pci-e cable,huh?

Though 260W is max power in MSI Kombustor.

Different games show different GPU Pwr but never 100% constant.

[frozensun]

54 minutes ago, jones177 said:

My i7 6700k was great with a GTX 980 ti and later a GTX 1080 but with a GTX 1080 ti it did not get the most out of the GPU so I replaced it with an i7 8700k.

A GTX 2080S is a bit more powerful than a GTX 1080 ti so I am not surprised with 80% usage.

 

The down side with the upgrade was that getting 100% on the GPU only got 3 to 5 extra frames. On the plus side the 6 core was so much smoother that I never wanted to play on a 4 core ever again.  

 

 

At what rez did u play?

[Alvin853]

1 minute ago, frozensun said:

Maybe I shouldn't use daisy chain cable,and utilize one more pci-e cable,huh?

 

The GPU can't sense, how much power a cable can deliver, it will always assume the cable is capable of delivering what the GPU wants. If the cable was underspecced, you'd see a burning cable and not the GPU throttling. But any decent PSU manufacturer will bundle the PSU with cables that support full power on all connectors, only cheap PSUs come with low quality cables.

[frozensun]

Someone posted this link:

I'm on bad wifi currently.

What is he explaining?

[frozensun]

I have more then this, so really I dunno damn reason for GPU not running at max PWR.

 

[frozensun]

2 hours ago, Alvin853 said:

In GPU-Z check "PerfCap Reason", it will tell you, why the GPU can't go faster, wether it's temp, power, load, voltage or whatever. HWiNFO should also show throttle reason, not sure if Afterburner is able to read that value. 

 

Basically the different reasons mean:
Temp: pretty obvious, card got too hot and is reducing the boost to prevent overheating

Power: maximum power rating for the card reached, some cards allow adjusting that value in Afterburner, or you have to do a hardware mod to circumvent this limit, only really for extreme overclockers, as that limit is in place to prevent components from being damaged

Load: the GPU is being bottlenecked by something else, upgrade your system to get higher FPS or increase the resolution/display settings for better visuals without losing FPS

Voltage: None of the other limits have been hit, but the card has reached the maximum frequency defined by its BIOS, only way to go faster is overclocking

 

[Alvin853]

1 minute ago, frozensun said:

 

If that's during game, then yeah, your GPU is being bottlenecked, probably by single core performance. Most games can't spread the CPU load equally on all CPU cores, so even if your CPU is not at 100% usage, it might be limiting your performance because some cores are at max load.

[jones177]

37 minutes ago, frozensun said:

At what rez did u play?

With the i7 6700k 1440p and later 4k.

For 4k gaming it used 2x GTX 980 tis and later 2x GTX 1080s.

 

1 hour ago, frozensun said:

Someone posted this link:

I'm on bad wifi currently.

What is he explaining?

The game is only utilizing the GPU in the 90s interiors. Out in the open it is in the 80s or less.

 

Shadow of the Tomb Raider was one of the games that convinced me to upgrade. 

 

My i7 6700k computer with the GTX 1080 was in use up until it was parted out and sold last December. 

 

 

[frozensun]

9 minutes ago, Alvin853 said:

If that's during game, then yeah, your GPU is being bottlenecked, probably by single core performance. Most games can't spread the CPU load equally on all CPU cores, so even if your CPU is not at 100% usage, it might be limiting your performance because some cores are at max load.

Hmm what Idle means? This is the log file while gaming...

GPU-Z Sensor Log.txt

[Alvin853]

1 minute ago, frozensun said:

Hmm what Idle means?

Idle means there's not enough for the GPU to do, because something else is taking longer to process the frame than it takes the GPU to render, so the GPU is just sitting there waiting for data

[frozensun]

12 minutes ago, Alvin853 said:

Idle means there's not enough for the GPU to do, because something else is taking longer to process the frame than it takes the GPU to render, so the GPU is just sitting there waiting for data

I don't have stronger CPU then 6700 K,I do have 3900X rig ofc but I believe it's single core performance is lower...

I mean this is not bad,I do get around mostly 60 fps and I'm satisfied,but then again in some scenes drops to around 40...I did crank up all the settings to max...smaa2x.

[Alvin853]

13 minutes ago, frozensun said:

This is the log file while gaming...

GPU-Z Sensor Log.txt 135.82 kB · 1 download

For a very short time, you got Perfcap Reason 12, which basically means the GPU is going as fast as it is allowed by the vBIOS, any higher would require overclocking. Then it goes back to 16 which means: GPU doesn't need to go faster because it's already doing all there is to do. If the CPU takes 20ms to prepare a frame, there's no point trying to get the GPU to render a frame in 15ms, it can just conserve power and match the 20ms and the result is the same.

[frozensun]

3 minutes ago, Alvin853 said:

For a very short time, you got Perfcap Reason 12, which basically means the GPU is going as fast as it is allowed by the vBIOS, any higher would require overclocking. Then it goes back to 16 which means: GPU doesn't need to go faster because it's already doing all there is to do. If the CPU takes 20ms to prepare a frame, there's no point trying to get the GPU to render a frame in 15ms, it can just conserve power and match the 20ms and the result is the same.

So this is normal or I have the problem (bottleneck)?

[Middcore]

3 minutes ago, frozensun said:

So this is normal or I have the problem (bottleneck)?

 

Bottlenecks are normal. 

 

 

[Alvin853]

Just now, frozensun said:

So this is normal or I have the problem (bottleneck)?

You have a very slight bottleneck, but if you're happy with the FPS you get I wouldn't call it a problem. Seems to be right on the edge of fully utilizing the GPU, so a CPU upgrade might increase FPS, but probably only very little. Like @jones177 said early in the thread, upgrading the CPU only got him 3-5 extra FPS.

[frozensun]

6 minutes ago, Middcore said:

 

Bottlenecks are normal. 

 

 

Gosh,I was thought from these famous youtubers that at 1440P CPU is NEVER a bottleneck...wtf???

5 minutes ago, Alvin853 said:

You have a very slight bottleneck, but if you're happy with the FPS you get I wouldn't call it a problem. Seems to be right on the edge of fully utilizing the GPU, so a CPU upgrade might increase FPS, but probably only very little. Like @jones177 said early in the thread, upgrading the CPU only got him 3-5 extra FPS.

Okay bro, so no reason to worry about?

[Alvin853]

7 minutes ago, frozensun said:

Gosh,I was thought from these famous youtubers that at 1440P CPU is NEVER a bottleneck...wtf???

Hardware Unboxed had a lot of tests in their recent 5800x3D vs 12900K vs 5800x series, where they showed, it depends extremely on the game. In some games, the CPU doesn't make a difference at 1080p, in some games the CPU is the bottleneck even in 2160p, there is no general rule. Yes you are less likely to be CPU bottlenecked, the higher the resolution is, but it's not impossible. And more youtubers need to start including 1440p and 2160p tests in their CPU benchmarks, Hardware Unboxed is just the most thorough with CPU tests.

 

10 minutes ago, frozensun said:

Okay bro, so no reason to worry about?

I wouldn't worry about it, keep your CPU while you're using the 2080 Super, but keep in mind that a GPU upgrade will be useless without a CPU upgrade

[frozensun]

9 hours ago, Alvin853 said:

Hardware Unboxed had a lot of tests in their recent 5800x3D vs 12900K vs 5800x series, where they showed, it depends extremely on the game. In some games, the CPU doesn't make a difference at 1080p, in some games the CPU is the bottleneck even in 2160p, there is no general rule. Yes you are less likely to be CPU bottlenecked, the higher the resolution is, but it's not impossible. And more youtubers need to start including 1440p and 2160p tests in their CPU benchmarks, Hardware Unboxed is just the most thorough with CPU tests.

 

I wouldn't worry about it, keep your CPU while you're using the 2080 Super, but keep in mind that a GPU upgrade will be useless without a CPU upgrade

I own 3900X so I dont need CPU upgrade.

But my opinion is that CPU is bad for gaming (low single core speed) and its high core numbers wont matter much in games.

But then again I didn't choose that CPU for games.

I wont buy anymore these stuff (I have my reasons for it).

I can not financially change PC every 2 years just because games.

Then Im better off with buying PS5.