gpu usage issue? gtx 1060

[R24]

So I bought this Gigabyte gtx 1060 yesterday and  from my tests it's not performing up to par fps wise and the gpu usage is always around 60% in all games, sometimes dropping down to 20% and also sometimes going up to 98% for a few seconds and then it just goes down again, when the usage goes up the fps goes up accordingly and when it goes down the fps goes down with it. I shouldn't have a a cpu bottleneck since i'm running on a ryzen 5 1600, I made sure to allow threaded optimization and I have high performance in the power plan in windows and prefer maximum performance in the nvidia control panel and I also reinstalled drivers with DDU.

 

Games I tested that have this issue: Overwatch, Battlegrounds, Far Cry 3 and Battlefield 1

Could there be something wrong with the card or am I missing something? 

 

edit: I just ran Rocket League and my GPU usage was a stable 97% throughout the game.

also this is how my gpu usage during an overwatch game look like: http://prntscr.com/flfddj

 

Full specs are:

ryzen 5 1600

GTX 1060

Asus Prime b350m-a motherboard

Seasonic 520w PSU

1x8GB from sk hynix

[jsdsparky]

Although you theoretically shouldn't be getting a CPU bottleneck with the R5 1600, I would graph the CPU usage while gaming just to be sure that isn't the issue.

[R24]

13 minutes ago, jsdsparky said:

Although you theoretically shouldn't be getting a CPU bottleneck with the R5 1600, I would graph the CPU usage while gaming just to be sure that isn't the issue.

on 1 thread i'm getting about 85% utilization, on 5 others I'm getting about 50-70% and on the other 6 i'm getting around 20-30% not sure if that's normal. That was in overwatch.

[jsdsparky]

1 minute ago, R24 said:

on 1 thread i'm getting about 85% utilization, on 5 others I'm getting about 50-70% and on the other 6 i'm getting around 20-30% not sure if that's normal. That was in overwatch.

Hmm... my only other idea is to make sure that neither the CPU or GPU are thermal throttling.

[R24]

3 minutes ago, jsdsparky said:

Hmm... my only other idea is to make sure that neither the CPU or GPU are thermal throttling.

the graphics card is running on 75c up to 82c but that's not thermal throttling temps right?

 

and the cpu certainly isn't throttling it's at around 50c

[R24]

Okay I tried overwatch now on epic settings and i'm getting 98% constant gpu usage, is that just a thing with low-medium settings where the card doesn't utilize fully?

[jsdsparky]

3 minutes ago, R24 said:

Okay I tried overwatch now on epic settings and i'm getting 98% constant gpu usage, is that just a thing with low-medium settings where the card doesn't utilize fully?

The GPU would potentially be not utilized fully if the game has a frame limit imposed. Pascal begins to throttle at 83C by default, and since you said I seems to be maxing out at 82C, throttling is a possibility. Watch the GPU core clock as you run the game (or a benchmark) over time. If the clock goes down when it gets close to that 82C mark, you'll know that it's throttling. To alleviate this, you can use an OC tool like MSI Afterburner both to increase the temperature target and to set a more aggressive fan curve.

[R24]

9 hours ago, jsdsparky said:

The GPU would potentially be not utilized fully if the game has a frame limit imposed. Pascal begins to throttle at 83C by default, and since you said I seems to be maxing out at 82C, throttling is a possibility. Watch the GPU core clock as you run the game (or a benchmark) over time. If the clock goes down when it gets close to that 82C mark, you'll know that it's throttling. To alleviate this, you can use an OC tool like MSI Afterburner both to increase the temperature target and to set a more aggressive fan curve.

I did try that and I got my temps down to 75c in games but it didn't make any difference, another thing I noticed is that this card does get thermal throttled when I try running unigine heaven and when I set the power and temp limit higher it goes up to 86c without any overclocking.. my old gigabyte r9 380 was going getting as high as 68c

[R24]

Any help? I just tried black ops 3 and this was the usage I was getting: https://prnt.sc/fmavj1 and every time it spiked down I would also get a lag spike.