GPU usage R9 270

[Blair]

Hello today I noticed in MSI afturburner in some of my games the GPU is not running in the high 90's like I have read they are supposed to do. When I run MSI Kombustor and furmark it hits the high 90's,

 

So is this normal does it have to run close to 100% all of the time?

 

 

sorry for the idiot question but I am just worried about my new stuff.

[Tea1337]

While gaming it doesn't have to use all of the power the GPU has, so it will fluctuate depending on how much power it really needs. Something like MSI kombustor forces the GPU to use all of it's power.

[Totally-A-Hero]

Hello today I noticed in MSI afturburner in some of my games the GPU is not running in the high 90's like I have read they are supposed to do. When I run MSI Kombustor and furmark it hits the high 90's,

 

So is this normal does it have to run close to 100% all of the time?

 

 

sorry for the idiot question but I am just worried about my new stuff.

This has to be a driver i had this problem on my 7870 ghz and someone else on the forum had this problem too, plus if you google it nothing comes up so it is new.

[DetroitTechMan]

It's not reaching the high 90s in the games, because it is most likely not being fully utilized.  It will run as hot as possible in benchmarks, because it is going for maximum performance.

[SeanBond]

Hello today I noticed in MSI afturburner in some of my games the GPU is not running in the high 90's like I have read they are supposed to do. When I run MSI Kombustor and furmark it hits the high 90's,

 

So is this normal does it have to run close to 100% all of the time?

 

 

sorry for the idiot question but I am just worried about my new stuff.

If you do mean actual core usage and not power usage then yes it will mostly run at 99% usuage in most games if you have your framerate unlocked and your cpu is not bottlenecking your gpu. However you would need a really old cpu to even come close to bottlenecking the card. If you do not want to have your gpu fully utilized all the time and give it some head room, vsync your game at 30 or 60. And unless your monitor is more than 60hz the only reason not to use Vsync in games is when the game is constantly moving around in frame rate above and below 60, because the will cause stutter.

[Misanthrope]

If it's not peaking at all during the entire time your gaming then it is not maxed, meaning you can probably increase detail or the GPU is maybe held back by a slower CPU.

However, games almost never run your GPU at 100% all of the time or even most of the time: smaller maps or interior levels for rpgs and open world games always run faster, what happens on screen like how many players and character models being rendered, how many lighting effects are happening etc. You can easily verify this with FRAPS by just looking straight down to the floor you will see your FPS jump up dramatically (In fact when you have hiccups or freezing and it's not crucial you see the action you can do this thing of looking at the floor for the scripts or renders to finish hitting your performance) 

MSI Burner I believe has customizeable graphs, change it so it records a good half hour and look at the temp graph and see if it peaks at any point (pretty sure it will)

[Blair]

Ok thanks I was scared maybe I got a bum GPU. With AMD GPU's it's not hard to get a defective one nowadays. I already had to RMA it once. I feel better now.  You know this actually the smoothest Fallout NV has ever played for me.