Task Manager Shows GPU (RTX 3080 Ti) Being 100% Utilized While GeForce Experience Shows It Being 1-2% Utilized Only?

Abdelfattah Radwan · October 15, 2022

I booted up my computer and started the Task Manager because I noticed that my HDD was very noisy. It turned out that the EA App was updating a game so that's fine. I then noticed that my GPU (an RTX 3080 Ti) was being 100% percent utilized when I had no games or apps running (apart from the necessary Windows services and the aforementioned EA App). I opened up the GeForce Experience performance overlay and noticed that utilization was around 1-2% percent there.

Which one should I trust?

I've attached two screenshots from both the Task Manager and GeForce Experience performance overlay.

PineyCreek · October 15, 2022

If you check the processes tab in task manager and scroll over to the GPU column, check util, sort by percentage, look at the engine column next to it to see if it shows 3D, etc.

Here's an article talking about Task Manager's attempt to show usage.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/gpus-in-the-task-manager/

I.e. the 3D graph showing high usage doesn't really mean your GPU's under heavy load. This should be evident by nothing else agreeing with that, no GPU mem usage, low temps, etc.

Abdelfattah Radwan · October 15, 2022

5 minutes ago, PineyCreek said:

If you check the processes tab in task manager and scroll over to the GPU column, check util, sort by percentage, look at the engine column next to it to see if it shows 3D, etc.

Here's an article talking about Task Manager's attempt to show usage.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/gpus-in-the-task-manager/

i.e. the 3D graph showing high usage doesn't really mean your GPUs under heavy load. This should be evident by nothing else agreeing with that, no GPU mem usage, low temps, etc.

I checked and it seems like this "Desktop Window Manager" is what's causing the GPU usage to skyrocket.