980 TI Low GPU Usage

[CeJay]

I have no idea what is wrong.  I've been trying to solve this issue since I noticed it in September, I'm ready to just throw my computer out of the window.

 

I posted a similar thread but it seems to be dead and none of the solutions I've tried have worked. 

My gpu usage tanks while in game, usually hovering around 70%, and sometimes dips to around 50%.  This causes my fps to usually max out in the 70's and 80s, and getting as low as 30 in some scenarios. And oddly enough the usage seems to go down when there are more intensive moments that would demand more usage. My gpu temperatures don't get higher than 70c. My cpu hangs around ~75% usage and around 55c. All of this is from playing Battlefield 1. This problem still occurs no matter which game I play. 

 

The oddest part in all of this is that my benchmark scores are what you would expect from my build, but the performance in-game is just garbage.  In BF1 the performance on low is the same that I get on Ultra.   Could this be a bios setting that I'm not aware of?  Or a Windows 10 thing?

 

Things I've tried...

• Fresh driver install
• Fresh install of Windows
• Switching PCI-E ports
• Swapping out identical cards (did nothing)
• Made sure Nvidia control panel was set to prefer max performance
• Made sure power options in windows were set to high performance
• Updated bios
• Upscaled resolution in game (people asked me to do this, increased gpu usage but not performance, duh)

 

Someone told me on reddit it could be a psu issue, but that doesn't make much since to me since the performance is only affected in game, I could be wrong though.  I'm throwing a different psu in later this week to test.  The brain trust on the GeForce forums try and tell me it's cpu bottleneck, but with a 4790k, and the fact that I can see people getting almost double my performance with almost the same build, that makes no sense.  I think the only things left that could be causing this are....

• Faulty cpu (Don't know how my cpu could be bad if my overclock is stable)
• Faulty motherboard (Don't know how to diagnose, I don't have any booting issues that I'm aware of)
• Bad ram (ran windows memory diagnostic, had nothing come up.  Maybe a compatibility issue with the motherboard?)
• A setting in Windows 10?
• A bios setting I haven't found?

Here are some afterburner graphs of me playing Battlefield 1, and my Heaven and Fire Strike results.

 

Heaven

Fire Strike

Battlefield 1 Performance Graphs

 

Lastly, my specs:

 

i7 4790k @ 4.7ghz
MSI z97 g45 gaming
MSI 980 ti (375.70 drivers)
Corsair Vengeance Pro ddr3 16gb 8x2 1866

EVGA 750W 90+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
Playing @ 1080p 144hz

 

Thanks for the help, hopefully I can stop smashing my head against the wall.

[stealth80]

2 minutes ago, CeJay said:

I have no idea what is wrong.  I've been trying to solve this issue since I noticed it in September, I'm ready to just throw my computer out of the window.

 

I posted a similar thread but it seems to be dead and none of the solutions I've tried have worked. 

My gpu usage tanks while in game, usually hovering around 70%, and sometimes dips to around 50%.  This causes my fps to usually max out in the 70's and 80s, and getting as low as 30 in some scenarios. And oddly enough the usage seems to go down when there are more intensive moments that would demand more usage. My gpu temperatures don't get higher than 70c. My cpu hangs around ~75% usage and around 55c. All of this is from playing Battlefield 1. This problem still occurs no matter which game I play. 

The people blaming the CPU are talking ass, I ran a 4790k on 970SLI (pretty much same performance as 980ti) and still run it now with a 1080 without issues. Could you try again with a game and enable DSR, try maybe 4k and see if gpu and cpu usage go up

[CeJay]

26 minutes ago, stealth80 said:

The people blaming the CPU are talking ass, I ran a 4790k on 970SLI (pretty much same performance as 980ti) and still run it now with a 1080 without issues. Could you try again with a game and enable DSR, try maybe 4k and see if gpu and cpu usage go up

DSR didn't seem to do anything so I upped the resolution scale to max in battlefield 1 instead.  Heres the graphs.  Framerate hung around 50, and gpu usage was at 99.

 

 

[stealth80]

Ye i just think that 1080p just isnt utiltising everything as your rig is pretty powerful (same here) as you can see, once you increased the resolution your gpu usage is at 99% and CPU hovering around 80, buy a 1440p monito =p 

[CeJay]

1 minute ago, stealth80 said:

Ye i just think that 1080p just isnt utiltising everything as your rig is pretty powerful (same here) as you can see, once you increased the resolution your gpu usage is at 99% and CPU hovering around 80, buy a 1440p monito =p 

Ughh thats the worse possible thing for me.  I don't want to go back to 60hz and 1440p 144hz monitors are really expensive.  My roommate has the the same build but with a 6660k and 1080p isn't an issue for him.  Why is it an issue for me?

[stealth80]

is the card set to max performance in the NV control panel ? 

[CeJay]

3 minutes ago, stealth80 said:

is the card set to max performance in the NV control panel ? 

Yes

[stealth80]

Also, do you have V-sync enabled?

[CeJay]

22 minutes ago, stealth80 said:

Also, do you have V-sync enabled?

Actually for some reason it was on, but turning it off didn't do anything.

[SkilledRebuilds]

Even a stable overclock in 99% of all things and seemingly stable...

 

Users who have encountered issues with performance... wouldnt think its the OC. Yet once they reverted to stock clocks again, all was well and then they reset, put the OC back on and all was well.

 

Try stock clocks.

Just to rule the OC out of the equation.

[CeJay]

34 minutes ago, SkilledRebuilds said:

Even a stable overclock in 99% of all things and seemingly stable...

 

Users who have encountered issues with performance... wouldnt think its the OC. Yet once they reverted to stock clocks again, all was well and then they reset, put the OC back on and all was well.

 

Try stock clocks.

Just to rule the OC out of the equation.

The issue was occurring before I overclocked, but it seems that overclocking made it worse.  I put the gpu and cpu at stock and it's running better.  I'm guessing it was the gpu oc, but I'll look at it later.  Here are the graphs.

 

No Overclock

 

The gpu usage still fluctuates a lot, though it is hitting higher percentages in the 80's and 90's, just not very consistently.  It even dips to 40% which should not be normal.  I turned fans to 100 after this screen shot just to make sure it wasn't thermal throttling, and it ran the same.