1080ti Low Usage

[HazardousPotato]

Hey so I just upgraded my Video Card to a 1080ti (from a Radeon R9 290) a few days ago and I was wondering if anyone here could help with something.

To start off here's my PC: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/KeanMorris/saved/#view=VGnJVn

I have a 2560x1080 75 hz ultrawide monitor (freesync). 

I have my CPU at 3.8 ghz and my ram is running at 2933 (unstable at any higher and I don't really know how to mess with RAM settings..)

 

I first noticed this issue when playing Overwatch on low settings. In the beginning my FPS was going straight to the cap of 300 but then I noticed it kind of

fluctuated and went down a bit (going down to like 250, sometimes lower; including a couple times it went down to 180 for a little bit).

I thought this was weird so I started watching the usage in HWMonitor only to find that my GPU's utilization was starting out at 99 percent and then going

down to roughly 50-60 and then constantly changing to values in-between. The utilization also seem to go down if I started recording with OBS, 

which doesn't make much sense to me as even when I'm playing OW and recording my CPU usage is still only at like 40 percent. 

Then I set my graphics set all the way up to epic and it seems to run fine; it doesn't hit 300 FPS but the

utilization seems to stay at 99 and I get around 250 FPS. However NOW I have (or I just noticed that I have) quite a bit of screen tearing that I can't seem to fix no matter what I do,

and while it isn't unplayable, it is certainly annoying....

 

But back to the GPU utilization, the same exact thing seems to happen when I play Doom. GPU utilization stays around 50-60 percent all the time. Ill put a clip that I recorded at the end showing this.

Some other games seem to be fine from what little bit I've played; Witcher 3 and Just Cause 3 on ultra run pretty similarly at around 90-120 FPS, and the GPU utilization stays at 97 percent.

Googling around I've read some posts and things from people who have a similar problem but I never really saw a definitive solution... 

 

Anyway sorry for the gigantic novel of a post but I figured its best to provide as much info as possible. Also thanks in advance to anyone who helps, and here's the Doom video:

 

 

 

[themctipers]

as long as you're not dipping below 75 you're good

[xg32]

a ryzen at 3.8 cannot fully utilize a 1080 ti above a certain frame rate depending on the game, gonna guess anywhere 100+ fps, it's a cpu bottleneck.

[Shiftstealth]

As others have stated this is related to your Ryzen (I have one myself!). Due to the clockspeed utilization is going to be lower than an intel system with a higher clockspeed. The good news is when Ryzen 2 (Not Ryzen + in a few months) comes out you should be able to grab one of those that will clock fairly high, and resolve this issue. (7nm GloFo is quoting 5Ghz+ i don't believe we'll see 5Ghz+, but it will be better than 3.8Ghz)

[BarackOBatman]

Even CPU usage is 40% or whatever, I'm pretty sure its a CPU bottleneck. The R7 has more threads than most games know what to do with, so the CPU is being underutilized, therefore; low CPU usage. To push  more frames, you'll need higher clockspeed.

[HazardousPotato]

Alright, thanks everyone

[pyrojoe34]

Slightly off topic:

 

You have a 75hz monitor? Why wouldn't you cap the framerate at 75 so you're not wasting power?

The screen tearing is because your frame-rate is above 75fps. Cap it at 75 and you won't get tearing (the free-sync doesn't help at all with a 1080Ti and even if it did it wouldn't help above 75hz anyway).

[HazardousPotato]

2 hours ago, pyrojoe34 said:

Slightly off topic:

 

You have a 75hz monitor? Why wouldn't you cap the framerate at 75 so you're not wasting power?

The screen tearing is because your frame-rate is above 75fps. Cap it at 75 and you won't get tearing (the free-sync doesn't help at all with a 1080Ti and even if it did it wouldn't help above 75hz anyway).

I've tried that already  the tearing for some reason gets worse when I cap the FPS. When its higher it is much less noticeable but if I look closely I can still see it. It seems no matter what I do it doesn't fully go away.

I also have to keep free sync turned on because if it is off than my monitor won't run at 75hz.

[Crunchy Dragon]

4 minutes ago, HazardousPotato said:

I also have to keep free sync turned on because if it is off than my monitor won't run at 75hz.

I haven't had any problems at just 60Hz, I run a GTX 780 on a FreeSync monitor. Unless the games you play actually need a higher refresh rate in order to get higher scores or something, I'd turn FreeSync off and let it run at 60Hz.

[HazardousPotato]

7 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

I haven't had any problems at just 60Hz, I run a GTX 780 on a FreeSync monitor. Unless the games you play actually need a higher refresh rate in order to get higher scores or something, I'd turn FreeSync off and let it run at 60Hz.

True. I guess its not that big of a difference; I just would prefer 75 if possible. For now I am actually running it at 60 though because my smaller second monitor is 60 and having two different refresh rate monitors makes everything feel choppy; even dragging a file explorer window around. I guess I didn't notice this before because I think freesync fixed this (at least on my main monitor) when I was able to use it on my old card. I plan on getting a 75hz monitor to replace my second one so then I'll have matching refresh rates.

 

Also small update on the Doom thing: I changed the API setting in Doom from OpenGL to Vulkan and now I have much higher FPS (stays at 200 pretty consistently with some dips to 180 now and then) and higher GPU utilization... So that kind of fixed that I guess :).