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Question Certain PC games show graphics card usage at 0%. These games seem to be running poorly.

Sep 7, 2020
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Hi, I have been experiencing some weird problems when I play certain games. I use a software called NZXT cam to track my usage/fan speeds/temps when I play games. I've recently noticed that certain games, such as WoW or the new Avengers game, show 0% gpu usage when I play them. I can still run WoW decently, but I have to run Avengers pretty low and even then the game tends to lag a lot. Any help on fixing this would be great.

Specs:
nVidia 2080
Intel I9-9900k
Asus Prime z-390 A

P.S. My onboard graphics have been disabled through the Device Manager.

Pls let me know If any other specs are required
 
First of all, just to alleviate your concerns, If ANY game was actually using 0% of your GPU it would not run "poorly" it would not run at all. This is deffintely just the NZXT software not reading properly. Use something else

As for avengers there are multiple people reporting issues of lag even at high framerates with good systems, most threads are about 4 days ago to.

View: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/imdzik/avengers_high_frame_rate_looks_horrible/

 
The category titles in Task Manger's GPU page are actually drop down menus. Some games hit the "3D" graph, other games hit another graph (usually Graphics_0 or something).

If none of the graphs are being hit, then we can say something seems fishy.

EDIT: You could also run GPU-z and see what it says in the Sensor's tab.
 
So I downloaded gpu-z and started running avengers and it appears to be running as expected; however, I am still confused at what task manager says. I noticed for the games I was having problems with, task manager said that the GPU engine used was GPU - copy, and GPU - 3D for the games that run well. Does this mean anything important? Or am I worried about nothing. Also I could not get WoW to stop it's frame decay unless I switched from dx12 to dx11.

Thanks
 
I noticed for the games I was having problems with, task manager said that the GPU engine used was GPU - copy, and GPU - 3D for the games that run well. Does this mean anything important? Or am I worried about nothing. Also I could not get WoW to stop it's frame decay unless I switched from dx12 to dx11.
As I said, the labels for the graphs are actually drop-down menus. If the "3D" graph is not showing activity, it's likely some other graph that's not displayed by default. For example, NVIDIA GPUs have a separate "Graphics_1" graph that sometimes gets used in some games. As far as I can tell, there's no pattern as to which graph gets triggered.
 
Gotcha. Any info on the frame decay with dx12? It seems that my pc struggles to consistently use dx12 and I don't know why.

Also I cant get avengers to run smoothly unless I set the game to low. I know about the problems people have had, but this is ridiculous considering my specs are significantly better than the recommended
 
Hi, I have been experiencing some weird problems when I play certain games. I use a software called NZXT cam to track my usage/fan speeds/temps when I play games. I've recently noticed that certain games, such as WoW or the new Avengers game, show 0% gpu usage when I play them. I can still run WoW decently, but I have to run Avengers pretty low and even then the game tends to lag a lot. Any help on fixing this would be great.

Specs:
nVidia 2080
Intel I9-9900k
Asus Prime z-390 A

P.S. My onboard graphics have been disabled through the Device Manager.

Pls let me know If any other specs are required

I had the same issue with i7-10700k with 2070 super. It was the crappy MSI Dragon Center software and it's associated SDK that was causing the problem. I uninstalled the following:

MSI Dragon Center
MSI SDK

There may be other similar software with different branding other than MSI causing the same issue.

Hope this helps.