Gtx 970 low usage

[Sakiz105]

Hello,as the title above says,i'm experiencing low gpu usage in games.More precisely,in shadow of mordor i don't get more than 64% in ultra settings and i have frame drops from 60 (vsync on) to 15-20.The same thing happens to Watch dogs and even unigene valley.In watch dogs actually, i have overall low framerate (around 45) and gpu usage stucks at 63%.Only in Dragon Age origins i managed to get more than 70% but not anymore after 344.75 driver.Any help would be nice,

Thanks in advance. 

 

(System specs,i5 4590,8gb ram,750w 80+ bronze psu)

 

ps: The strangest thing is that in bios my gpu is set to pci gen 2 instead of 3.Wth nvidia

[Doughnutnator]

Welcome to the club! Look at this:

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/781982/gtx-970-possible-gpu-load-and-low-fps-issues-with-344-16-driver/

This issue is super weird, theres tons of people with it and Nvidia haven't released anything.

I used to have it, changing my RAM speed to Manual kinda fixed the issue. But I don't want to lie: the issue dissapeared, the RAM thing helped but one good day the issue just dissapeared. Yesterday I was playinf Far Cry 3, and suddenly the GPU Usage dropped and the issue came back. I uninstalled everything, installed 344.80 and now i'm fine.

Here's what I recommend since I have almost the same system as you (970, i5 4570, 8GB of RAM, Windows 7)

Follow this guide to completely clean your PC from any Driver:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1150443/how-to-remove-your-nvidia-gpu-drivers

When it's done, download 344.80 from here:

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3607

Pay attention to this for the installation of the driver:

- Boot into safe mode after you downloaded the driver

- Select Custom install

- Uncheck everything except Video Driver and HD Audio Driver (so no GFE, no 3D stuff and no PhysX)

- When done, reboot normally.

Use MSI Afterburner or GPU-Z to monitor GPU Usage, I recommend Afterburner because you can see if there's any issues with your CPU (i don't think so)

Also, in your BIOS manually set the PCI E gen to 3.0

It seems that this issue doesn't have a sepecifc reason to appear. When I had it I tried every driver since 344.11 and changing the driver didn't solved my issue

Give a shot at what I said, maybe it works.

EDIT: Please, tell me whether it works or not.

[Sakiz105]

Thanks for the advice.Well,for starters,in bios i can only select pci e gen 2 and 1 (thus why i mentioned it earlier in the first post) although in system information it says it's in pcie3 x16.

Now because i installed every single driver available yesterday with the same procedure you mentioned (even 344.80) and had the same problem in every one of them i won't do the same expecting something to miraculously change.

Now,i disabled igpu by changing primary option from auto to pcie.From nvidia control panel i set let 3d application decide in settings,and in Shadow of mordor i disabled vsync.This managed to get me up to 98% gpu usage and "stable" framerate. I mean i have a minimum of 70 but i do get occasional stuttering,so maybe that's a game problem?

I will try by disabling vsync in watch dogs too now.I will write back (ps,i can't disable vsync in dragon age inquisition because i get coil whine )

[Sakiz105]

Bump.It's definatelly vsync .Watch dogs with vsync on,usage never goes above 71% i get 60 fps and may get down to 35 (ultra settings,msaa x2 without aa i get around 77).Without vsync,Usage varies but goes up to 99%,fps on ultra + msaa x2 varies from 50 to 60 (didn't play a lot though,just some running,gunfighting on a highway with many cars and i exploded a car just to check )