Low GPU Usage on Gigabyte Aero 15X

[Max_Settings]

I just got a Gigabyte Aero 15X laptop and I have noticed that I am having rather low GPU usage in games. I am bouncing between 50% and 75% usage which causes micro stutter and obviously lower FPS. My CPU I am running a -.190V undervolt on and it is topping out between 75C and 80C in games and keeping the full 3.9ghz turbo on all cores. The GPU, a GTX 1070 Max-Q is sitting right around 80C but with very low usage. The CPU isn't fully used so I am not bottlenecked. I am running all the latest drivers, windows updates, BIOS, and firmware updates. I am also running on high performance mode. I tried switching to older Geforce drivers with no success. At this point I don't know what else to try, does anyone have any ideas?

[RobbinM]

Tell me about your RAM. Size, speed, timings...

[Max_Settings]

Just now, RobbinM said:

Tell me about your RAM. Size, speed, timings...

1x16gb DDR4 2666mhz, not sure about timings.

[RobbinM]

Do you have options to overclock the memory, or adjust it's timings?

[Max_Settings]

Just now, RobbinM said:

Do you have options to overclock the memory, or adjust it's timings?

I don't believe so, I didn't see anything that allowed me to adjust RAM timings in the BIOS.

[RobbinM]

Are you sure the games you play are happy on multicore cpu's? In other words, do they scale well with more cores?

[Max_Settings]

16 minutes ago, RobbinM said:

Are you sure the games you play are happy on multicore cpu's? In other words, do they scale well with more cores?

Yes they do.

[KarathKasun]

What game?

 

You can CPU bottleneck at 25%, 50% or 75% CPU usage on a quad core and 16%, 33%, 50%, 66%, or 83% CPU usage on a six core. (double the number of steps if HT is on)

[Max_Settings]

23 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

What game?

 

You can CPU bottleneck at 25%, 50% or 75% CPU usage on a quad core and 16%, 33%, 50%, 66%, or 83% CPU usage on a six core. (double the number of steps if HT is on)

Every game I have tried. BF1, CSGO, Watch Dogs 2, PUBG. I doubt the CPU is the bottleneck because my desktop has a 4790K and a 1080 ti. The 4790K is slower than the 8750H and it is not bottlenecking the 1080 ti anywhere near this hard.

[PlayStation 2]

Sounds stupid but have you reinstalled Windows?

[KarathKasun]

51 minutes ago, Max_Settings said:

Every game I have tried. BF1, CSGO, Watch Dogs 2, PUBG. I doubt the CPU is the bottleneck because my desktop has a 4790K and a 1080 ti. The 4790K is slower than the 8750H and it is not bottlenecking the 1080 ti anywhere near this hard.

The only thing I see that would cause this would be the fact that you are only running a single memory channel.  Single channel impacts performance on Kaby Lake a noticeable amount, and I would only assume that the impact is worse with more cores to feed.

[Max_Settings]

11 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

Sounds stupid but have you reinstalled Windows?

No.

[PlayStation 2]

Just now, Max_Settings said:

No.

Hate to say it but that could do the trick, potentially.

[vanished]

3 hours ago, Max_Settings said:

The GPU, a GTX 1070 Max-Q is sitting right around 80C but with very low usage.

Have you tried looking with something like GPU-Z?  It will tell you the reason the card isn't working harder (needs more voltage, needs more power, isn't being asked to work harder (idle), etc.)

3 hours ago, Max_Settings said:

The CPU isn't fully used so I am not bottlenecked.

I doubt this is a CPU bottleneck, but for the record, this isn't true.  The way you test for CPU bottleneck is if the GPU isn't hitting 100%, not if the CPU is hitting 100%.  Reason being that if a game is not well multi-threaded, it may not be able to tax more than 2 cores for example, which on a quad core CPU would only register as 50% used, despite the fact that the cores that are in use are being pinned and would benefit from higher performance.

[Max_Settings]

10 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Have you tried looking with something like GPU-Z?  It will tell you the reason the card isn't working harder (needs more voltage, needs more power, isn't being asked to work harder (idle), etc.)

I doubt this is a CPU bottleneck, but for the record, this isn't true.  The way you test for CPU bottleneck is if the GPU isn't hitting 100%, not if the CPU is hitting 100%.  Reason being that if a game is not well multi-threaded, it may not be able to tax more than 2 cores for example, which on a quad core CPU would only register as 50% used, despite the fact that the cores that are in use are being pinned and would benefit from higher performance.

Ok but none of the cores are pegged really hard, they are all more or less the same. The GPU is micro stuttering really hard as well.

[KarathKasun]

3 minutes ago, Max_Settings said:

Ok but none of the cores are pegged really hard, they are all more or less the same. The GPU is micro stuttering really hard as well.

Windows shuffles tasks from core to core at a milisecond (or smaller) scale AFAIK.  I know for sure that you can code something explicitly single threaded, execute it in Windows, and it will show 25% load across all cores on a quad.

[Spotty]

2 hours ago, Max_Settings said:

Every game I have tried. BF1, CSGO, Watch Dogs 2, PUBG. I doubt the CPU is the bottleneck because my desktop has a 4790K and a 1080 ti. The 4790K is slower than the 8750H and it is not bottlenecking the 1080 ti anywhere near this hard.

Not the best games to be testing GPU performance on in my opinion.

CSGO is relatively not graphically demanding/GPU intensive.
Battlefield is heavily CPU dependent with its physics and destructible environments.
Watchdogs 2 isn't well optimised and uses Denuvo which is known to cause performance issues and require heavy CPU resources.
PUBG is just an optimised mess which has lots of stutter regardless. (Was playing yesterday and was running at constant 100FPS+, but frame times were constantly bouncing between 6ms to 100ms indicating microstutters. This is just a problem with PUBG itself)

 

Do you have any other games you can use to test? Preferably games that have their own built in benchmark tools that can give consistent and repeatable tests? GTA V, Metro 2033/Last Light, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Deus Ex Mankind Divided, etc? If not even artificial benchmarks such as 3DMarks TimeSpy or Superposition would be your next avenue, and they're free to download.
 

Run MSI Afterburner in the background and enable on screen monitoring of GPU usage, GPU Core Clock, GPU temps, GPU VRAM, GPU Voltage Limit, GPU Power limit, CPU Clock (show all individual cores) CPU Usage (show all individual cores), CPU temps (show all individual cores), RAM usage, FPS, and Frametime (ms).

 

Also make sure things such as Vsync or FPS caps aren't set in the game settings. Games such as PUBG have separate individual settings for Vsync and another setting for framecaps.

[vanished]

10 minutes ago, Max_Settings said:

Ok but none of the cores are pegged really hard, they are all more or less the same. The GPU is micro stuttering really hard as well.

Basically this:

8 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

Windows shuffles tasks from core to core at a milisecond (or smaller) scale AFAIK.  I know for sure that you can code something explicitly single threaded, execute it in Windows, and it will show 25% load across all cores on a quad.

It looks like it's only loading each a bit but in reality, it's pinning one (or a few), then moving to the next, and so on.  I don't know why more devs don't use SetThreadAffinityMask() or something like it to prevent this... maybe it actually doesn't matter in the end performance-wise.  Regardless, try GPU-Z like I said.  Hopefully that can shed some light on the situation.

[Max_Settings]

On 9/14/2018 at 1:45 AM, Spotty said:

Not the best games to be testing GPU performance on in my opinion.

CSGO is relatively not graphically demanding/GPU intensive.
Battlefield is heavily CPU dependent with its physics and destructible environments.
Watchdogs 2 isn't well optimised and uses Denuvo which is known to cause performance issues and require heavy CPU resources.
PUBG is just an optimised mess which has lots of stutter regardless. (Was playing yesterday and was running at constant 100FPS+, but frame times were constantly bouncing between 6ms to 100ms indicating microstutters. This is just a problem with PUBG itself)

 

Do you have any other games you can use to test? Preferably games that have their own built in benchmark tools that can give consistent and repeatable tests? GTA V, Metro 2033/Last Light, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Deus Ex Mankind Divided, etc? If not even artificial benchmarks such as 3DMarks TimeSpy or Superposition would be your next avenue, and they're free to download.
 

Run MSI Afterburner in the background and enable on screen monitoring of GPU usage, GPU Core Clock, GPU temps, GPU VRAM, GPU Voltage Limit, GPU Power limit, CPU Clock (show all individual cores) CPU Usage (show all individual cores), CPU temps (show all individual cores), RAM usage, FPS, and Frametime (ms).

 

Also make sure things such as Vsync or FPS caps aren't set in the game settings. Games such as PUBG have separate individual settings for Vsync and another setting for framecaps.

 

On 9/14/2018 at 1:53 AM, Ryan_Vickers said:

Basically this:

It looks like it's only loading each a bit but in reality, it's pinning one (or a few), then moving to the next, and so on.  I don't know why more devs don't use SetThreadAffinityMask() or something like it to prevent this... maybe it actually doesn't matter in the end performance-wise.  Regardless, try GPU-Z like I said.  Hopefully that can shed some light on the situation.

Hi I tried reinstalling Windows even did a new ISO on a new drive and still low usage. Games like Fortnite I am getting 30% CPU and only 70% GPU. I am using high performance mode on everything and no battery savers.

[Spotty]

1 minute ago, Max_Settings said:

Games like Fortnite I am getting 30% CPU and only 70% GPU. I am using high performance mode on everything and no battery savers.

Is that with Vsync on? What FPS were you getting in Fortnite? What resolution?
Did you download MSI Afterburner and set the on screen display?

On 9/14/2018 at 3:45 PM, Spotty said:

Run MSI Afterburner in the background and enable on screen monitoring of GPU usage, GPU Core Clock, GPU temps, GPU VRAM, GPU Voltage Limit, GPU Power limit, CPU Clock (show all individual cores) CPU Usage (show all individual cores), CPU temps (show all individual cores), RAM usage, FPS, and Frametime (ms).

Then if you can please take a screenshot in game while you're playing with the information on screen to share with us so we can see exactly what is going on.

[Max_Settings]

3 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Is that with Vsync on? What FPS were you getting in Fortnite? What resolution?
Did you download MSI Afterburner and set the on screen display?

Then if you can please take a screenshot in game while you're playing with the information on screen to share with us so we can see exactly what is going on.

No V Sync set to unlimited FPS. And yes I have OSD. I will provide a SS in a bit/