GPU usage "spikes" while gaming.

[needssdasap]

So I've been playing The Witcher 3 now for a while on ultra settings (minus nvidia hairworks because I think it's a bit silly and not worth it) and I get above 60 fps 90% of the time. However in the big cities it manages to BARELY stay above 60 when running around a lot, however while doing this I see that my GPU usage goes from the normal 100% all the way down to 78% and spiking up and down around 95% - 80%. What could be the cause of this and how would I go about fixing it? I am running a GTX 1060 6GB and a i5 2500k 3.30ghz. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks :-) 

[Techicolors]

big cities like Novigrad or city of Toussaint are taxing on the CPU. but try turning on CPU usage and see whether your CPU is maxing when these spikes occur. 

[needssdasap]

2 minutes ago, Technicolors said:

big cities like Novigrad or city of Toussaint are taxing on the CPU. but try turning on CPU usage and see whether your CPU is maxing when these spikes occur. 

Just tried this and CPU usage seemed to do the same going all the way down to 82 and back to higher numbers and just spiking up and down around that while doing laps in the city, rarely ever went to 100% usage.

[Techicolors]

try reducing settings to medium or low. 

[TheRandomness]

This just looks like the CPU is bottlenecking in those areas, but returns to normal everywhere else.. you could overclock your CPU, but that's really only a temporary fix, but will last quite a long time anyway. 

[ARikozuM]

CD Projekt Red overdid it with the number of AI in Novigrad.

 

Can you try installing the game to an SSD?

[needssdasap]

4 minutes ago, Technicolors said:

try reducing settings to medium or low. 

I put the settings on the medium preset and that really didn't give me any increase in fps, but the game definitely looks worse. However it seems that the spiking is still happening but both the GPU usage and CPU usage seem to spike down to even lower numbers than before. 

 

2 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

CD Projekt Red overdid it with the number of AI in Novigrad.

 

Can you try installing the game to an SSD?

I sadly cannot. Can an SSD affect actual gaming performance like that and not just load times? 

[ARikozuM]

Just now, needssdasap said:

I sadly cannot. Can an SSD affect actual gaming performance like that and not just load times? 

For most open-world games, like adventure RPG's, SSD's can make a difference with loading scripts and models.