GPU Utilization drops whilst gaming

[DebatED Nothing]

I have an issue in a lot of game (DOTA, Planetside 2, Mirrors Edge: Catalyst to name a few) where my frame rate will occasionally just tank to 2-3 frames per second. When I monitor using MSI Afterburner on screen display the frame drops coincide with and seem to be caused by my GPU usage dropping from the 50-90% it is at when running the game to 10-20%. Assuming the GPU usage dropping is causing the frame drops and not vice versa, what could be causing my GPU to be occasionally just "giving up" for a few seconds and not trying? I could really use some help with this because it's really ruining my experience in a lot of games recently. (I've had the problem for a while, didn't begin after any change in system hardware, but it's particularly bad in Mirror's Edge Catalyst

 

If you need any info beyond what's in my signature then please respond and I'll get it.

 

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

[agent_x007]

Could you ran out of free VRAM/RAM ?
EDIT :
After seeing 8350 as your CPU I think that VRM throttling on MB is more probable.
Mount a fan direcly cooling VRM's and see if drops will continue (or use a CPU cooler that blows air directly on MB's PCB).
Another option is to lower Vcore in BIOS/UEFI (for example by -0,05V or -0,1V).

[HPWebcamAble]

It's almost unheard of for a GPU to "give up" for a few seconds. It's probably something else in your system bottlenecking the GPU.

 

Check your CPU usage, VRAM usage, and temps of all the components (CPU, GPU, etc)

[LabRat]

could be frame latency or lack of adequate vram ( buffer ). if you're trying to pull anything off that HD that might be doing it too.

[DebatED Nothing]

6 minutes ago, LabRat said:

could be frame latency or lack of adequate vram ( buffer ). if you're trying to pull anything off that HD that might be doing it too.

Not the storage, happens on games on my SSD and games on the HDD

[DebatED Nothing]

18 minutes ago, agent_x007 said:

Snip

16 minutes ago, HPWebcamAble said:

Snip

 

 

Does this help? You can see the drops quite clearly, dropping from a VSynced 60 to about 8 or so.

[HPWebcamAble]

Looks like your CPU periodically maxes out, limiting your GPU

[DebatED Nothing]

4 minutes ago, HPWebcamAble said:

Looks like your CPU periodically maxes out, limiting your GPU

What can I do about that (aside from the obvious move to intel remark)

[HPWebcamAble]

1 minute ago, DebatED Nothing said:

What can I do about that (aside from the obvious move to intel remark)

Lower settings

[LabRat]

i think it's latency and lack of vram. turn back motion blur,aa, shadows, etc. and see what happens. then you might want to turn back resolution.

is the ssd set up correctly?

[DebatED Nothing]

1 minute ago, HPWebcamAble said:

Lower settings

Just now, LabRat said:

i think it's latency and lack of vram. turn back motion blur,aa, shadows, etc. and see what happens. then you might want to turn back resolution.

Just tried ME:C at complete max min (how do you confuse max and min brain, like really?) settings, still happens.

[LabRat]

what's this?............... Just tried ME:C

[DebatED Nothing]

2 minutes ago, LabRat said:

what's this?............... Just tried ME:C

Mirror's Edge: Catalyst

[DebatED Nothing]

@LabRat @HPWebcamAble I tried with a few background processes disabled to free up some more RAM, same issue:

[HPWebcamAble]

8 minutes ago, DebatED Nothing said:

Just tried Mirror's Edge: Catalyst at complete min settings, still happens.

How does task manager look?

[DebatED Nothing]

Just now, HPWebcamAble said:

How does task manager look?

One sec, need to reopen game and stuff to get screen shots

[agent_x007]

Lower Vcore with "-" offset by 0,05V or 0,1V.

[LabRat]

look around the web............ http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=512976

.............................................. go to techreport and look for articles. I think they were the first to look into this, or opened the issue up top more eyes.

[DebatED Nothing]

43 minutes ago, HPWebcamAble said:

How does task manager look?

There were quite a few drops between the start and end of this period, is this helpful?

[HPWebcamAble]

2 hours ago, DebatED Nothing said:

There were quite a few drops between the start and end of this period, is this helpful?

Interesting how your CPU is being used so much... is anything else running? Try closing all other programs except the game (and maybe task manager)

[DebatED Nothing]

@HPWebcamAble So I tried this morning with all unnecesariy background tasks ended and it was definitely longer before I got one, but I still got one all the same. Here's a picture of the task manager window, the frame drops happened a few seconds before the massive CPU usage drop, that corresponds to me tabbing out of the game.

Not sure how useful that is, doesn't look liker there's much out of the ordinary there

 

[LabRat]

your HD/ssd filling up for no reason?

[DebatED Nothing]

3 hours ago, LabRat said:

your HD/ssd filling up for no reason?

Nope, SSD has got 40GB spare, HDD over 400 GB.