GPU Pinned at 100% without V-Sync

[DirtyFish]

So recently I have discovered a strange problem with my graphics card, I opened up Rome 2 Total War and set the graphics to max only to find the GPU usage at 100% and strange horizontal lines running down my screen while just sitting in the home screen. As well as this, my graphics card was making a noise that I can only assume was coil whine. I turned V-Sync on and all of the symptoms disappeared straight away, no lines, no coil whine and GPU usage went down to ~4%, I can't for the life of me understand why.
This same thing happened a little while ago with Guild Wars 2, I thought nothing of it since it was just one game, but now that it happened with two I'm confused and intrigued.
I'm running a GTX780Ti so I shouldn't have any trouble running anything.
Does anybody have any ideas why this is happening and if there is anything I should do about it? Or will I just have to run V-Sync all the time, something that really doesn't bother me, I'm just curious is all.

Any help would be appreciated,
Cheers.

[ForsakenLive]

So recently I have discovered a strange problem with my graphics card, I opened up Rome 2 Total War and set the graphics to max only to find the GPU usage at 100% and strange horizontal lines running down my screen while just sitting in the home screen. As well as this, my graphics card was making a noise that I can only assume was coil whine. I turned V-Sync on and all of the symptoms disappeared straight away, no lines, no coil whine and GPU usage went down to ~4%, I can't for the life of me understand why.

This same thing happened a little while ago with Guild Wars 2, I thought nothing of it since it was just one game, but now that it happened with two I'm confused and intrigued.

I'm running a GTX780Ti so I shouldn't have any trouble running anything.

Does anybody have any ideas why this is happening and if there is anything I should do about it? Or will I just have to run V-Sync all the time, something that really doesn't bother me, I'm just curious is all.

Any help would be appreciated,

Cheers.

With V-Sync the GPU will attempts to achieve 60 fps, not any higher. This way GPU usage is actually reduced, if you disable V-Sync the GPU will try to go over 60fps causing it to work harder.

The coil whine you describe and artifacts are not fine, every GPU out there should work well and properly with our without V-Sync, without having to worry about noises and graphic issues, besides tearing/stuttering.

[Greenboyxz]

Maybe someone can correct me, but I think the coil whine is caused by having an extremely high framerate. I researched it a while back and some people said it was normal and I found very few sources (can't remember where) that said that it even goes away over time. I also know someone that has a GTX 780 that does it. He called evga and was told that it's normal (he was told to undervolt the card). My 7950 also coils whines at high framerates as well. It can actually be a combination of your graphics card and power supply. Try running something like Valley benchmark (where you won't be getting over 100 fps) with v-sync turned off and see how bad it really is.

The horizontal lines is probably tearing since your framerate is not synchronized with the refresh rate of your monitor. The purpose of v-sync is to synchronize the output of your graphics card with your monitor to eliminate tearing. It does have it's own drawbacks though since now your framerate is limited to factors of the refresh rate of your monitor. Say if your running a game at 60 fps on a 60 Hz monitor with v-sync turned on and something intensive happens in the game that your graphics card can't render at 60 fps. Instead of dropping down to say 53 fps, it would drop down to 30 fps. And if it can't handle 30 fps, it will go down to 20, 15, 12, and so on. The other problem with v-sync is that it can cause input lag (I don't notice it, but that might just be me). Considering that the games you are running aren't that intensive (especially for a GTX 780 ti), you can pretty much leave v-sync on and not worry about dipping down to 30 fps. What I usually do is use adaptive v-sync (it can be set in the nvidia control panel) on every intensive game. Adaptive v-sync turns v-sync on when your at 60 fps or higher and turns it off when you go below 60. That way you eliminate tearing by capping your framerate to 60 fps and synchronizing each frame with the monitor, but when something intensive happens, v-sync gets turned off and your frame rate would drop to 53 fps instead of 30. Also by capping your framerate at 60 fps, when v-sync is turned on, your graphics card doesn't work as hard, hence reducing power consumption and running cooler/quieter. It's sort of like the best of both worlds (And of course there's gsync/freesync which hopefully solves all our problems).

[bob345]

sounds like normal screen tearing to me. v-sync is simply there to prevent that by maintaining a constant frame rate that matches your monitors refresh rate. It is a problem pc's have always had to deal with.

[DirtyFish]

With V-Sync the GPU will attempts to achieve 60 fps, not any higher. This way GPU usage is actually reduced, if you disable V-Sync the GPU will try to go over 60fps causing it to work harder.

The coil whine you describe and artifacts are not fine, every GPU out there should work well and properly with our without V-Sync, without having to worry about noises and graphic issues, besides tearing/stuttering.

 

 

Maybe someone can correct me, but I think the coil whine is caused by having an extremely high framerate. I researched it a while back and some people said it was normal and I found very few sources (can't remember where) that said that it even goes away over time. I also know someone that has a GTX 780 that does it. He called evga and was told that it's normal (he was told to undervolt the card). My 7950 also coils whines at high framerates as well. It can actually be a combination of your graphics card and power supply. Try running something like Valley benchmark (where you won't be getting over 100 fps) with v-sync turned off and see how bad it really is.

The horizontal lines is probably tearing since your framerate is not synchronized with the refresh rate of your monitor. The purpose of v-sync is to synchronize the output of your graphics card with your monitor to eliminate tearing. It does have it's own drawbacks though since now your framerate is limited to factors of the refresh rate of your monitor. Say if your running a game at 60 fps on a 60 Hz monitor with v-sync turned on and something intensive happens in the game that your graphics card can't render at 60 fps. Instead of dropping down to say 53 fps, it would drop down to 30 fps. And if it can't handle 30 fps, it will go down to 20, 15, 12, and so on. The other problem with v-sync is that it can cause input lag (I don't notice it, but that might just be me). Considering that the games you are running aren't that intensive (especially for a GTX 780 ti), you can pretty much leave v-sync on and not worry about dipping down to 30 fps. What I usually do is use adaptive v-sync (it can be set in the nvidia control panel) on every intensive game. Adaptive v-sync turns v-sync on when your at 60 fps or higher and turns it off when you go below 60. That way you eliminate tearing by capping your framerate to 60 fps and synchronizing each frame with the monitor, but when something intensive happens, v-sync gets turned off and your frame rate would drop to 53 fps instead of 30. Also by capping your framerate at 60 fps, when v-sync is turned on, your graphics card doesn't work as hard, hence reducing power consumption and running cooler/quieter. It's sort of like the best of both worlds (And of course there's gsync/freesync which hopefully solves all our problems).

 

 

sounds like normal screen tearing to me. v-sync is simply there to prevent that by maintaining a constant frame rate that matches your monitors refresh rate. It is a problem pc's have always had to deal with.

Hmm, I wish I could say for certain that it is screen tearing, but it looks nothing like it, I don't know, I'll have a look at stuff and see if I can figure out for sure what it is and then try and find a solution.

Thanks for the help, I may turn on adaptive sync as well..

[Greenboyxz]

Are there things on the screen moving quickly when it happens or does it even occur when nothing is really moving? Usually with an fps you can get screen tearing by moving your mouse quickly. And if you're overclocking, try running it at stock settings and see if it still happens.