CPU spikes a bit dropping GPU usage

[mikoal]

Hi there,

I need some help diagnosing this....I have the following

GTX 1070 founders edition
GIGABYTE GA-Z170XP-SLI (rev. 1.0)
G.SKILL Aegis 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2133
Intel Core i7-6700K 8M Skylake Quad-Core 4.0 GHz

The issue I am encountering initially is lag in game, which I later narrowed down to the GPU dropping usage % at random intervals.

With MSI Afterburner I was able to identify the dips occur when the CPU spikes. It would spike with an increase around 10-25%. So my CPU would go from 50-60% to 70-85%. During this spike the GPU would drop correspondingly for some reason causing lag.

I've ran the GPU through Furmark (a bit) and unigine and everything is stable. I've tried the latest driver as well as the recommended ones.

I've ran prime 95 for 24 hours and CPU is stable. I've even tested playing the game with prime 95 running with about 25% load, automatically gave the CPU 85% load constant which did not trigger the lag/GPU usage drop. It would only occur during a spike.

The spike comes from Google Chome, probably during when I am watching twitch. Not certain if its an adblock extension that causes the spike or something with twitch.
Either way, I understand I can close chrome and delete extension etc to prevent it from happening. However I would like to know why a CPU that can function with 80% usage normally with no effect on the GPU, but would cause the GPU to drop usage % when the CPU is spiked to 80% and how to fix this.

I dont think this is normal. I dont think I've encountered this previously either.

Thanks in advanced!

Edit: Its not only chrome that causes this, whenever another program causes a 10-30% spike totaling to 85% or less, it would cause the gpu to drop.

 

[Supahos]

It may have nothing to do with overall cpu usage but more so it loads the primary thread of the game to 100% and can't feed the GPU as many frames.

Use something that monitors all cores and see if one is hitting 90+% when it happens

 

[mikoal]

Thanks for the prompt answer. That's a good point. If lets say one of the 8 core pops above 90% or goes to 100% even, what solution is there for me to balance the loads better?

 

[Supahos]

Possibly dropping the affinity of Chrome/other programs a bit, and setting the games to max.

Additionally ensuring your windows power plan is set to max performance could help if you haven't already done sk

 

[mikoal]

Affinity as in the priority?

I will observe each core with afterburner first then try changing the priorities and see if that helps

Is it weird that, this PC of this spec requires careful prioritizing of applications running when its only Overwatch (game) and Google Chrome with twitch playing?
It seems minimal in terms of load.

 

[Supahos]

Yes priority.

Overwatch will load the crap out of one core. So if it's trying to add anything else to it I don't see it as surprising. I just don't know why it wouldn't do it on another core

 

[mikoal]

Looking at the different cores, when the total went from 53 to 81 the following core went from
core 1
67 to 88
core 2
74 to 83
core 3
77 to 81
core 4
58 to 88
core 5
72 to 88
core 6
0 to 64
core 7
79 to 86
core 8
0 to 74

GPU dropped from
59 to 45

I'm not sure if the 0 to 60 or 70 are normal but no cores hit 90, yet theres still a drop in GPU and a noticeable stagger/lag in game.

Note: I swear i've seen all 8 cores loaded evenly just yesterday, not sure why when i tested today 2 cores were lightly loaded.

 

[Supahos]

I assume temps remain okay? Also what power supply? Any oc on your processor? Does the CPU clockspeed stay the same during the drops? Or does it slow down as well?

 

[mikoal]

Temps are good
PSU: CORSAIR RMx Series RM750X 750W 80 PLUS GOLD Haswell Ready Full Modular ATX12V & EPS12V SLI and Crossfire Ready Power Supply

No OC of any sort all stock, all hardware has passed stress tests

I want to say the clock speed stays the same at 4008 but i'll have to check it again in afterburner. since this was something i took off as it didnt seem abnormal.

 

[mikoal]

Yes cpu clock speed stays the same

 

[mikoal]

So after observing it for a long time, the spikes sometimes causes one of the threads/core to go to 90s or higher, but sometimes all of them stay under 90 yet that spike caused the drop in GPU.
It seems a bit random, but I want to say its tied to have the facebook tab opened.