GPU usage drops causing fps drops

[attackoftherainman]

My laptop specs:
CPU: intel core i7-4700MQ @2.4 ghz
RAM: 8.00 Gb
GPU: Geforce GT 740m and Intel HD Graphics 4600
Resolution: 1366x768 60Hz
OS: Windows 8.1

My graphics card seems to work perfectly fine on some games but there are horrible fps drops in other games. The problem is that in some games, mainly MMORPG, the GPU will be working at full or near full usage at a good fps according to the game but suddenly every few seconds, the GPU usage (tracked by gpuz) will drop to 40%-50% and the fps will therefore drop to 10-20 fps which is terrible. This is indeed worse in places where there are many players.

This has happened on the following games: Neverwinter, Guild Wars 2, Tera, League of Legends and Watch Dogs. It does not happen with the following: Far Cry 3, Skyrim, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, Divinity: Original Sin, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, Hitman: Absolution and others (I'm trying to show recent games to show that this is not a graphic requirements thing.). In the games that it does happen, the graphics settings don't matter. For example, in Guild Wars 2, when I play with High settings I will have 50-60 fps but it will drop to 10-20 fps randomly every few seconds (when the gpu usage drops) and then return back to higher fps. The same exact thing will happen if the game is played at low settings (I have the max fps locked at 60). When there are more people on the map the effect will be worse. In world vs world, with dozens of players on the same map, the gpu usage will drop low almost all the time and the fps will be around 10 while if few players are on a map, the drops will be at around 20 fps. I should also note that playing the game with the integrated graphics card plays perfectly fine at low-medium settings with 50+ fps and shows no fps drops so I'm sure it is the GT 740m's problem. It should also be noted that this happens from the start of a game session, so it is probably not an overheating problem.

So far I have used CCleaner to clean the cache and registry, I have used AVG to look for viruses and Spybot: Search and Destroy for malware but nothing threatening was found. I have rolled back to older drivers, and I also defragged my PC. The GPU usage drops still take place. Any help?

 

[bailojustin]

Make sure while you are playing these games you turn off Vertical Sync, Anisotropic filtering and Anti-alasing. it seems to happen when you play MMOs which will most likely lead to an internal network issue, Something clashing with your card. Make sure its not your internet connection dropping packets while playing because that itself will cause a lag spike.

On a laptop you should change the setting so that games are running off your Gt not the integrated.

Also your Card should not be the issue of lag spikes or FPS droppage. This is your ISP

Your internet connection will do exactly what you are describing, try playing any game with the internet of see, and then a game with the internet on and try.

If you share internet with others or do not have a good solid connection you can have slight packetloss or fps lag due to the bandwidth of the router/ or a whole series of things. But if it is just online games,

Contact
your
ISP and tell them to fix it.

You should have 0% packet loss, anything over 2% means there is a problem somewhere.

 

[attackoftherainman]

Make sure while you are playing these games you turn off Vertical Sync, Anisotropic filtering and Anti-alasing. it seems to happen when you play MMOs which will most likely lead to an internal network issue, Something clashing with your card. Make sure its not your internet connection dropping packets while playing because that itself will cause a lag spike.

On a laptop you should change the setting so that games are running off your Gt not the integrated.

Also your Card should not be the issue of lag spikes or FPS droppage. This is your ISP

Your internet connection will do exactly what you are describing, try playing any game with the internet of see, and then a game with the internet on and try.

If you share internet with others or do not have a good solid connection you can have slight packetloss or fps lag due to the bandwidth of the router/ or a whole series of things. But if it is just online games,

Contact
your
ISP and tell them to fix it.

You should have 0% packet loss, anything over 2% means there is a problem somewhere.

Thanks for the answer! Games do run on my GT, I just changed it to integrated to see if it was the card's problem. How would the internet problem explain my cards usage dropping? And also how would I check if it is the ISP when I'm playing an MMO which requires the internet to be on? By the way I am using the network provided by my university. How would I check my packet loss?

 

[bailojustin]

Universitys are always tough, and the cards droppage is from the loss of packets from your ISP(university), the FPS is how fast the game enviroment is rended and what your computer can handle, when you have a lag spike or a huge packet loss, that information from the game your playing, via World of warcraft servers, is lost and the game does not have anything to render.

This leads to the flash freezes and stutters, aswell as massive loss of FPS in busy areas, Like a raid alot is going on, thats alot of information being relayed over the internet and if any is lost your gpu cant replace it leading to the inconsistency of constant lag spikes and frame drops.

Its like sending a picture and you lost a part, now it stops pauses and waits to fill it. the best I can explain. Talk to your university IT guy, see if he can help.

 

[bailojustin]

try your games on a closed internet, brought by an isp such a brighthouse or cox, a direct link to a router and then see.

 

[attackoftherainman]

try your games on a closed internet, brought by an isp such a brighthouse or cox, a direct link to a router and then see.

All this is interesting but it would not really explain why the fps drop not happen when guild wars 2 runs on my integrated graphics card. I shall try it though, thanks

 

[bystander]

You should use MSI Afterburner to also track your CPU cores. It is very likely you are CPU bound during your GPU usage drops. Your i7 is at a very low clock speed by desktop standards, and if there is heat issues, they may even down clock more. The only problem is I'm not sure your CPU will show the usage in a meaningful way, as the newer i7's will spread the usage over several cores if there are unused cores, making it hard to see just how much they are actually being used, but you should see some spikes in CPU core usage when the GPU usage drops.

 

[bailojustin]

Some games use different ways of sending messages through packets, some may act different or i could just be off all together, but lke some games such as games that use upnp to transfer data are very reliant on packets and if you lose any it does have a noticeable performance decline.

 

[attackoftherainman]

You should use MSI Afterburner to also track your CPU cores. It is very likely you are CPU bound during your GPU usage drops. Your i7 is at a very low clock speed by desktop standards, and if there is heat issues, they may even down clock more. The only problem is I'm not sure your CPU will show the usage in a meaningful way, as the newer i7's will spread the usage over several cores if there are unused cores, making it hard to see just how much they are actually being used, but you should see some spikes in CPU core usage when the GPU usage drops.

I do not know if you are aware because I forgot to mention it but the cpu turbo boosts to 3.4 ghz under stress so it's pretty good for a laptop. I captured a photo of whats going on with my cpu and gpu during the usage drops when playing world vs world in guild wars 2 and as you'll see indeed the cpu usage rises when the gpu usage, and therefore the fps drops. The temperatures however are fine. Also don't be fooled by the "Usage 0%" in the gpu part, that's because I alt-tabbed to print screen so it stopped using it completely. As you see the gpu levels fall from 100% to about 40%. Here is the picture:

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img910/9944/lw48gM.png

 

[bailojustin]

You should use MSI Afterburner to also track your CPU cores. It is very likely you are CPU bound during your GPU usage drops. Your i7 is at a very low clock speed by desktop standards, and if there is heat issues, they may even down clock more. The only problem is I'm not sure your CPU will show the usage in a meaningful way, as the newer i7's will spread the usage over several cores if there are unused cores, making it hard to see just how much they are actually being used, but you should see some spikes in CPU core usage when the GPU usage drops.

I do not know if you are aware because I forgot to mention it but the cpu turbo boosts to 3.4 ghz under stress so it's pretty good for a laptop. I captured a photo of whats going on with my cpu and gpu during the usage drops when playing world vs world in guild wars 2 and as you'll see indeed the cpu usage rises when the gpu usage, and therefore the fps drops. The temperatures however are fine. Also don't be fooled by the "Usage 0%" in the gpu part, that's because I alt-tabbed to print screen so it stopped using it completely. As you see the gpu levels fall from 100% to about 40%. Here is the picture:

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img910/9944/lw48gM.png

Ok so first I think you should open your laptop and clean it out of ALL dust, thats a huge impact, and secondly, go into the BIOS menu and try turning OFF ,CPU stepping

 

[bailojustin]

Also while you play, make sure that your laptop is plugged in and on high performance, becuase it will switch the graphics cards in that laptop on you in the middle of games when things start taking more power aka fans start going alot more going on.

 

[bystander]

You should use MSI Afterburner to also track your CPU cores. It is very likely you are CPU bound during your GPU usage drops. Your i7 is at a very low clock speed by desktop standards, and if there is heat issues, they may even down clock more. The only problem is I'm not sure your CPU will show the usage in a meaningful way, as the newer i7's will spread the usage over several cores if there are unused cores, making it hard to see just how much they are actually being used, but you should see some spikes in CPU core usage when the GPU usage drops.

I do not know if you are aware because I forgot to mention it but the cpu turbo boosts to 3.4 ghz under stress so it's pretty good for a laptop. I captured a photo of whats going on with my cpu and gpu during the usage drops when playing world vs world in guild wars 2 and as you'll see indeed the cpu usage rises when the gpu usage, and therefore the fps drops. The temperatures however are fine. Also don't be fooled by the "Usage 0%" in the gpu part, that's because I alt-tabbed to print screen so it stopped using it completely. As you see the gpu levels fall from 100% to about 40%. Here is the picture:

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img910/9944/lw48gM.png

The CPU usage is really high where you printed. Don't be fooled by all the cores at near 0% usage. That game clearly uses 1 core heavily.

2nd, if you'd use MSI Afterburner, you could print a graph of the GPU usage and CPU usage all right next to each other. I'm not sure if that 78% CPU usage is at its max or not. As you said, you alt-tabbed out to see it.

 

[attackoftherainman]

You should use MSI Afterburner to also track your CPU cores. It is very likely you are CPU bound during your GPU usage drops. Your i7 is at a very low clock speed by desktop standards, and if there is heat issues, they may even down clock more. The only problem is I'm not sure your CPU will show the usage in a meaningful way, as the newer i7's will spread the usage over several cores if there are unused cores, making it hard to see just how much they are actually being used, but you should see some spikes in CPU core usage when the GPU usage drops.

I do not know if you are aware because I forgot to mention it but the cpu turbo boosts to 3.4 ghz under stress so it's pretty good for a laptop. I captured a photo of whats going on with my cpu and gpu during the usage drops when playing world vs world in guild wars 2 and as you'll see indeed the cpu usage rises when the gpu usage, and therefore the fps drops. The temperatures however are fine. Also don't be fooled by the "Usage 0%" in the gpu part, that's because I alt-tabbed to print screen so it stopped using it completely. As you see the gpu levels fall from 100% to about 40%. Here is the picture:

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img910/9944/lw48gM.png

The CPU usage is really high where you printed. Don't be fooled by all the cores at near 0% usage. That game clearly uses 1 core heavily.

2nd, if you'd use MSI Afterburner, you could print a graph of the GPU usage and CPU usage all right next to each other. I'm not sure if that 78% CPU usage is at its max or not. As you said, you alt-tabbed out to see it.

You can see from the graph that that core is usually above 80% in usage, while all the others are much lower. However, when the gpu usage drops, all of the cores' usage rises to 60-70%. I'm not sure what this means though. I can't understand why my gpu behaves like that in some games and not in others.

 

[bystander]

When all the cores rise, something is using your CPU heavily. Either the game, or some background app. You might also notice that that core 7 keeps spiking to 100%, that means you are CPU bound during those moments, which is why the GPU usage drops.

 

[attackoftherainman]

When all the cores rise, something is using your CPU heavily. Either the game, or some background app. You might also notice that that core 7 keeps spiking to 100%, that means you are CPU bound during those moments, which is why the GPU usage drops.

So you think it is the cpu usage that's rising and causing the gpu usage drops and not the other way around? Any ideas on why that would happen?

 

[bystander]

When all the cores rise, something is using your CPU heavily. Either the game, or some background app. You might also notice that that core 7 keeps spiking to 100%, that means you are CPU bound during those moments, which is why the GPU usage drops.

So you think it is the cpu usage that's rising and causing the gpu usage drops and not the other way around? Any ideas on why that would happen?

I already said why. There is either a background application running at those moments; a virus, virus scanner, backup program or something else. Or the game just gets very CPU demanding at those moments, which is very common, but because many cores become active at those points, and normally they are barely used, I'm guessing you have a background application or virus going off.

 

[bailojustin]

Possibly you are have a PSU failure or issue to where it can't give enough power to both at the same time, not really too sure.

is this a stock laptop that you bought or have you messed with it at all?
What ram are you running? and if you can check the temp on your South and north bridge, let us know what those are at.