Low gpu & cpu usage, horrible fps

Robbied · October 1, 2018

Hi,

I'm sure this topic has been here long time ago and probably comes from time to time and I should've searched for it but, in my opinion, every single case deserves a different approach.

So to start with, 6 days ago I've bought a new rig:
- Aorus Z370 Gaming 2.0
- i7 8068k
- GTX 1080 Ti from Gigabyte
- 16GB DDR4 3200MHz

The day I got it from service where it was assembled, I've started it, everything ran smoothly, I've downloaded Steam then Arma3, Squad.

I was downloading Escape from Tarkov, War Thunder while playing Arma3 with my friend on heavily modified hosted server, designed for us 2 only for some Spec Ops missions. Everything was like heaven, I didn't have to change any settings, ultra settings which were set by default were "low enough" for my game to run at 80-100 fps even in heavy fights. I've later played Escape from Tarkov which is in Beta, by people playing it in Alpha, developing stage and I've had nearly the same results. Most unoptimized map, most players on one map, easily managed to get 90+ fps on top settings. Here are 2 screenshots from that game I've made that day: https://imgur.com/a/WxF00KV
(RTT reffers to ping, it's high because I was downloading other game)

So I've played Arma3 with my friend whole night, went to sleep, woke up and couldn't resist myself to play again. Then it was like a shock to me, I've launched Arma3 on the same settings, same server, same map with my friend on a hosted server and I've barely had 40 fps. I've checked other games and it also got worse there. Escape from Tarkov was having a stroke with 30 fps(Here is a screenshot of the location I was at day one: https://imgur.com/a/4tCd8BP) The point is, that fps have dropped drastically and just 10 hours ago it was all above 80-90 no matter where I was and what I did.

Here are some screenshots from Arma3 I've made couple of days ago: https://imgur.com/a/5tYuFIW

The first 4 are from our base where there are many objects and AI soldiers patrolling / doing stuff for immersion and it has ~45-55 fps no matter where I move and whatever I do there(day first was me having ~80 stable fps at that exact same base).

The next are in the mountains we were at day one, I have 70-60 fps, you can say that's fine, it is and would be even greater if not for the 40 fps drop whenever we start to fight. That location was at stable 100 fps while fighting day one.

War Thunder I'm not counting since I get ~144fps, which is my monitor refresh rate, but a thing to note is that I've had 250+ fps day one in this game.

Something I've noticed and what people told me to look for is that I have incredibly low cpu and gpu usage. It's not going past 20%. In Arma3 it stays around 10-15% on both cpu and gpu. Here's a video of our Arma 3 scenario I was told to provide to the Nvidia support: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBwCqM2YuM0&feature=youtu.be
It's out of sync, I was recording it with MSI Afterburner because otherwise the data from the program would not show up.

One more thing to add is that when I was powering down the pc, I was forced to update it(Windows 10)

Couple of things I've done so far:
- Changed Nvidia Control Panel settings for specific program

- Increased pagefile size

- Restored the system to the point where there was no issue, failed because of some internal problem

- Disabled VT-d & HPET in my Bios

- Installed fresh drivers all the time, made sure everything is up to date

- Reinstalled the game many times and added some starting parameters to it aswell as specify how many cores I have etc.

All things I've done so far and what NVIDIA Support Center has suggested me to do, has failed. So here I am, 5th day into this problem I cannot solve on my own. I'm completely green in this topic and I need somebody to help me solve my "issue" or help me get on a right track to find a solution on my own. Anybody has any ideas or experience with this from the past?

LukeSavenije · October 1, 2018

10 minutes ago, Robbied said:

- Increased pagefile size

you should never do that

have you checked for any power savings in the windows settings?

also, do you have your display plugged into the card and not the mobo?

Robbied · October 1, 2018

Ah yes, power savings. I'm not entirely sure where would that be but one thing I did is to set a maximum performance under "Power" tab.

Yes, the monitor has a DVI cable going from it straight to the graphics card. And it was like that all the time, even on my previous machine.

The pagefile size was set to default when I've realized it did nothing and when I've reset my pc to default settings and Windows was installed freshly. It is now back to 2944Mb.