solved Low GPU load when gaming

[Michagin]

Hi guys,

 

I recently bought a new computer and wanted to play Witcher 3 to see what all the fuzz is about. I have been playing for about a week or so and gotten around 100fps give or take in average under 100% GPU load.

Now all of a sudden, my GPU won't go past 45% load. The temperatures are not even near the maximum. If I change the settings down, the load just goes down and vice versa. I haven't changed a thing and yet something changed.

 

Here are the specs of the computer
 

Intel 7700K

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080

Gigabyte Z270X-Gaming 5 (rev 1.0)

32GB Corsair Vengence @ 2666Mhz

Samsung M.2 SSD 960 EVO 250GB

 

What I have tried to far:
- I have updated my BIOS to the newest version

- I tried reinstalling the graphics driver. (This time without nVidia Experience)

- I have looked through the nVidia Control Panel to see if something had changed. It had not.

- I have tried disconnecting all but the main monitor.

 

I usually start MSI afterburner when diving into a gaming session to make it run on a custom fan curve. Playing with and without it in the background yielded not effect.

 

The thing is, it used to work and now it does not. I am running into a dead end here. Usually, something triggers something which can then be changed but this came out of the blue.

Any ideas? Anyone experiencing the same problem?

EDIT:
Alright so after more hours of reading, I am currently speculating whether the system is getting the correct voltage. However, voltage is probably the thing I know the least about and thus have no good way of measuring it. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

EDIT:
So there was nothing wrong with the voltage. Next step is trying to see if the CPU might be causing the issue.

We'll do this, but bumping up the multiplier in the BIOS for starters.

 

EDIT:

Problem solved! But not with the BIOS settings.
I never got to messing around with the BIOS settings.

After installing the Creator's Build Windows, the problem was solved!
Witcher 3 is back up to ~120FPS. We'll never know they underlying cause, but I am thinking it was some windows update, at some point.

*SOLVED!*

[SmashinMachine]

20 minutes ago, Michagin said:

Hi guys,

 

I recently bought a new computer and wanted to play Witcher 3 to see what all the fuzz is about. I have been playing for about a week or so and gotten around 100fps give or take in average under 100% GPU load.

Now all of a sudden, my GPU won't go past 45% load. The temperatures are not even near the maximum. If I change the settings down, the load just goes down and vice versa. I haven't changed a thing and yet something changed.

 

Here are the specs of the computer
 

Intel 7700K

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080

Gigabyte Z270X-Gaming 5 (rev 1.0)

32GB Corsair Vengence @ 2666Mhz

Samsung M.2 SSD 960 EVO 250GB

 

What I have tried to far:
- I have updated my BIOS to the newest version

- I tried reinstalling the graphics driver. (This time without nVidia Experience)

- I have looked through the nVidia Control Panel to see if something had changed. It had not.

- I have tried disconnecting all but the main monitor.

 

I usually start MSI afterburner when diving into a gaming session to make it run on a custom fan curve. Playing with and without it in the background yielded not effect.

 

The thing is, it used to work and now it does not. I am running into a dead end here. Usually, something triggers something which can then be changed but this came out of the blue.

Any ideas? Anyone experiencing the same problem?

Did you try to turn V-SYNC off??

[Michagin]

Hi, thank you for helping me out.

I disabled V-Sync in the Nvidia control panel and never enable it in games.

The FPS cap in the Witcher is set to unlimited and used to be around 100 - 120. Now it's aroud 40, never changed any settings.

 

It's a problem in every game. I normally have 200 fps in Overwatch and now it's around 50 to 60.

 

Perhaps I am going about it wrong. I am thinking GPU but perhaps it is something else. I use the CAM software from NZXT for my X62 cooler. The software is not known for its stability. However it does look fine. Just to throw that into the equation.

Any other ideas?

[wzrd]

Use something like HWmonitor to check the GPU voltage, and see what you're getting under load. As a guideline, the voltage limit on Nvidia cards is fixed at 1.093V, and you should ideally be near-ish this number at max load.

 

Also check your temperatures under load if you haven't already. It might be thermal throttling due to a cooling fault.

 

It could also be a software throttling issue brought on by the MSI software. To make sure this isn't the cause, uninstall the MSI software, then download EVGA Precision, set the power target to 110%, enable K boost, and leave everything else as standard. K boost forces the clock speed to run at boost clock all of the time (i.e. to max out), and upping the power target should encourage it to draw power.

 

Let us know how this goes.

[pyrojoe34]

Did you use DDU before reinstalling the drivers? When you monitor the hardware do you see anything abnormal? (low voltages, low freq, high temps, high CPU usage, etc) I use AIDA64 but there are a ton of other options that can be used (like HWInfo or whatever).

[Michagin]

18 hours ago, wzrd said:

Use something like HWmonitor to check the GPU voltage, and see what you're getting under load. As a guideline, the voltage limit on Nvidia cards is fixed at 1.093V, and you should ideally be near-ish this number at max load.

 

Also check your temperatures under load if you haven't already. It might be thermal throttling due to a cooling fault.

 

It could also be a software throttling issue brought on by the MSI software. To make sure this isn't the cause, uninstall the MSI software, then download EVGA Precision, set the power target to 110%, enable K boost, and leave everything else as standard. K boost forces the clock speed to run at boost clock all of the time (i.e. to max out), and upping the power target should encourage it to draw power.

 

Let us know how this goes.

 

 

 

Thank you for the information.

The temperatures are well under 80C degrees CPU and GPU both.

I started out with EVGA Precision X but for some reason, it doesn't have K-boost. I came to the conclusion that it is because my GTX 1080 is not from EVGA and perhaps it was an exclusive feature. Since it is from MSI I started using Afterburner instead.

 

I ran Heaven instead of K-boost but without Precision-X or Afterburner (no custom fan curve) and interestingly enough it did use more of the GPU 107% according to HWMonitor. The Voltage was around 1.04V and the temp got as high as 83C 



However, when gaming the load continues to be lower. Also, the numbers in Hardware Monitor are inconsistent with the numbers from CAM (red box). None of the numbers are actually the same.
The numbers from CAM didn't change much even if I moved and traveled around.

 

On a positive note, the voltage seems fine though.

 

To answer the questions from the next post.
I did not use DDU but I will try that now.

 

Again thanks for helping me out.

[wzrd]

15 minutes ago, Michagin said:

Thank you for the information.

The temperatures are well under 80C degrees CPU and GPU both.

I started out with EVGA Precision X but for some reason, it doesn't have K-boost. I came to the conclusion that it is because my GTX 1080 is not from EVGA and perhaps it was an exclusive feature. Since it is from MSI I started using Afterburner instead.

 

I ran Heaven instead of K-boost but without Precision-X or Afterburner (no custom fan curve) and interestingly enough it did use more of the GPU 107% according to HWMonitor. The Voltage was around 1.04V and the temp got as high as 83C 



However, when gaming the load continues to be lower. Also, the numbers in Hardware Monitor are inconsistent with the numbers from CAM (red box). None of the numbers are actually the same.
The numbers from CAM didn't change much even if I moved and traveled around.

 

On a positive note, the voltage seems fine though.

 

To answer the questions from the next post.
I did not use DDU but I will try that now.

 

Again thanks for helping me out.

OK, so on the positive side it means the card is almost certainly 100% fine on a hardware level, as it seems to be capable of running correctly.

 

My mistake, that was a brain fart, K-Boost does not work on non-EVGA cards. The voltage does seem a little low though, with the power target maxed out you should be seeing close to the NVidia limit of 1.093V.

 

What kind of FPS were you getting in Heaven?

 

It is also possible that a different component is failing and bottlenecking the GPU. What do your CPU stats look like during games/benchmarks? And what PSU do you have installed?

[Michagin]

There's always that.

I noticed that the card speeds up to 100% when in menus (all games) and then lowers the usage when in an actual game. Which I think it strange.

 

Here are my Heaven results

 

..also I did a clean driver install with DDU to the newest driver which didn't change anything.

 

Perhaps it's my CPU that's going haywire. I'll run everything again and check.

There isn't much to see on the CPU side of things during the Heaven Benchmark (unsurprisingly).

I'll have a look at HW monitor when opening The Witcher 3.

CAM:

 

HWM:

 

The CPU is not overclocked (yet) so all the BIOS settings are default.

The PSU installed in this system is a Corsair RM 650x

Oh and btw I am using Windows 10 Pro Anniversary Update (not Creator update).

 

[wzrd]

2 hours ago, Michagin said:

There's always that.

I noticed that the card speeds up to 100% when in menus (all games) and then lowers the usage when in an actual game. Which I think it strange.

 

Here are my Heaven results

 

..also I did a clean driver install with DDU to the newest driver which didn't change anything.

 

Perhaps it's my CPU that's going haywire. I'll run everything again and check.

There isn't much to see on the CPU side of things during the Heaven Benchmark (unsurprisingly).

I'll have a look at HW monitor when opening The Witcher 3.

CAM:

 

HWM:

 

The CPU is not overclocked (yet) so all the BIOS settings are default.

The PSU installed in this system is a Corsair RM 650x

Oh and btw I am using Windows 10 Pro Anniversary Update (not Creator update).

 

On the power supply front, you should be fine, 650W is more than enough for a single card.

 

It does look like the CPU utilisation is falling along with the GPU, although it is unclear which one is the root cause. It could be that the CPU is the problem, and FPS is being bottlenecked by the CPU. This would also explain why Heaven is largely unaffected, as it is much less CPU intensive than most games.

 

Try manually setting a voltage and clock in the BIOS, to make sure it has plenty of voltage. To be on the safe side, set the clock to 4.5GHz (45 multiplier) and VCORE to 1.26v, just to make sure it has plenty. Also increase the load line calibration slightly.

[Michagin]

23 hours ago, wzrd said:

On the power supply front, you should be fine, 650W is more than enough for a single card.

 

It does look like the CPU utilisation is falling along with the GPU, although it is unclear which one is the root cause. It could be that the CPU is the problem, and FPS is being bottlenecked by the CPU. This would also explain why Heaven is largely unaffected, as it is much less CPU intensive than most games.

 

Try manually setting a voltage and clock in the BIOS, to make sure it has plenty of voltage. To be on the safe side, set the clock to 4.5GHz (45 multiplier) and VCORE to 1.26v, just to make sure it has plenty. Also increase the load line calibration slightly.

 

I'll try and do it but it does not solve the underlying problem. I used to get 100% load in games with the current BIOS settings. 
I guess it'll work as a diagnostic tool, however.

[wzrd]

1 hour ago, Michagin said:

I'll try and do it but it does not solve the underlying problem. I used to get 100% load in games with the current BIOS settings. 
I guess it'll work as a diagnostic tool, however.

It's not meant as a permanent solution, but we have to identify the problem before we can fix it. Even if this doesn't actually work, it's an easy way to try and differentiate the VRM from PSU for troubleshooting without a multimeter.

[Michagin]

On 6/5/2017 at 10:49 PM, wzrd said:

It's not meant as a permanent solution, but we have to identify the problem before we can fix it. Even if this doesn't actually work, it's an easy way to try and differentiate the VRM from PSU for troubleshooting without a multimeter.

 

You are right. I'll try and give it a shot.

On other forums and Reddit I am reading about people having the same problem as me in similar games. All with gen 10 nvidia graphics cards and a variety of intel CPUs.

[Michagin]

Alright, so I didn't get to tampering with the BIOS settings because it's exam season and I had to reallocated some time.

But I just updated from Anniversary Build to Creator's Build, which got Witcher up to 120FPS again. The GPU is now at full steam ahead!

I am, of course, happy about all this, but also a little sad, as I never figure out what the underlying cause was. I am thinking some Windows Update messed it all up, but I guess I will never know.

 

Anyways, thanks for the help! It's been extremely helpful!