[SOLVED] GPU Usage drops in certain areas in some games

[Denganim20]

In some games my GPU utilization will drop to like 50-60% for no reason when playing in an area with lots of enemies for example or sometimes will just drop for no reason when looking at a certain area in a map in say COD. In BFV and BF1 utilization stays at 98-99% as it should. In Far Cry 5 utilization is 60-70%. In MGSV it is 80-90%. In COD WW2 it will drop to 60-70% for no reason sometimes. I have found disabling shadows in these games help but I shouldn't have to do that. I have tried turning off HPET and overclock too. Should I try disabling cores or turning off SMT?

PC Specs:
-Ryzen 5 1600 @3.75Ghz
-RTX 2070 stock
-16gb RAM 3200Mhz
-750w PSU

 

[volkgren]

I would not disable cores or SMT. If you are at 1080p resolution that is probably somewhat normal with that CPU/GPU combo.

 

[gasaraki]

In some games my GPU utilization will drop to like 50-60% for no reason when playing in an area with lots of enemies for example or sometimes will just drop for no reason when looking at a certain area in a map in say COD. In BFV and BF1 utilization stays at 98-99% as it should. In Far Cry 5 utilization is 60-70%. In MGSV it is 80-90%. In COD WW2 it will drop to 60-70% for no reason sometimes. I have found disabling shadows in these games help but I shouldn't have to do that. I have tried turning off HPET and overclock too. Should I try disabling cores or turning off SMT?

PC Specs:
-Ryzen 5 1600 @3.75Ghz
-RTX 2070 stock
-16gb RAM 3200Mhz
-750w PSU

It's your CPU. BF5 and BF1 the GPU stays near 100% usage because those are graphically intensive games. COD WW2, Farcry 5, and MGSV are all CPU intensive games and not stressing the GPU. In those games the CPU is the bottleneck and the GPU is waiting for work from the CPU, that's why the the utilization is lower.

What you should be doing to turn on everything you can for your Ryzen cpu, overclock it, SMT, turn on high performance power mode in Windows, etc. The Ryzen 1600 is not that fast unfortunately.

 

[volkgren]

^I would agree with that. CoD is CPU-bound, but is more single-threaded than it is multi-threaded. So you can't utilize all your threads, but you're still limited by the IPC and clock speed of the Ryzen 5 1600.

 

[geofelt]

CPU utilization can be misleading.
Windows will spread the activity of a single thread over all available threads.
So, if you had a game that was single threaded and cpu bound, it would show up on a quad core processor as 25%
utilization across all 4 threads.

Many games depend on the performance of the single master thread.

 

[Denganim20]

CPU utilization can be misleading.
Windows will spread the activity of a single thread over all available threads.
So, if you had a game that was single threaded and cpu bound, it would show up on a quad core processor as 25%
utilization across all 4 threads.

Many games depend on the performance of the single master thread.

My issue though is the GPU utilization

 

[Denganim20]

CPU utilization can be misleading.
Windows will spread the activity of a single thread over all available threads.
So, if you had a game that was single threaded and cpu bound, it would show up on a quad core processor as 25%
utilization across all 4 threads.

Many games depend on the performance of the single master thread.

Also I don't think CPU is the bottleneck as CPU utilization is low like 40%

 

[kerberos_20]

bf5 uses 6 cores (threads), with your 12threaded cpu u should be lookin at around 50% cpu usage

u mind sharing your userbench score? that could tell s if your cpu/ram is workin as they should

 

[geofelt]

If your cpu can not drive the graphics card hard enough, the graphics card will seem to be under utilized.

Be careful how you interpret task manager cpu utilizations.
Windows will spread the activity of a single thread over all available threads.
So, if you had a game that was single threaded and cpu bound, it would show up on a quad core processor as 25%
utilization across all 4 threads.
leading you to think your bottleneck was elsewhere.
It turns our that few games can usefully use more than 2-3 threads.
How can you tell how well threaded your games or apps are?
One way is to disable one thread and see how you do.

You can do this in the windows msconfig boot advanced options option.
You will need to reboot for the change to take effect. Set the number of processors to less than you have.
This will tell you how sensitive your games are to the benefits of many threads.
If you see little difference, it tells you that you will not benefit from more cores.
Likely, a better clock rate will be more important.

 

[volkgren]

As mentioned CPU usage especially with AMD can be misleading. You can still be limited by the CPU when less than 100% utilized.

 

[Denganim20]

bf5 uses 6 cores (threads), with your 12threaded cpu u should be lookin at around 50% cpu usage

u mind sharing your userbench score? that could tell s if your cpu/ram is workin as they should

As mentioned CPU usage especially with AMD can be misleading. You can still be limited by the CPU when less than 100% utilized.

Issue is when I run the benchmark it starts up then crashes a few seconds later.

 

[geofelt]

bf5 uses 6 cores (threads), with your 12threaded cpu u should be lookin at around 50% cpu usage

u mind sharing your userbench score? that could tell s if your cpu/ram is workin as they should

As mentioned CPU usage especially with AMD can be misleading. You can still be limited by the CPU when less than 100% utilized.

Issue is when I run the benchmark it starts up then crashes a few seconds later.

Sounds like your overclock is not stable.
Too much heat or too much voltage for the chip.

 

[Denganim20]

bf5 uses 6 cores (threads), with your 12threaded cpu u should be lookin at around 50% cpu usage

u mind sharing your userbench score? that could tell s if your cpu/ram is workin as they should

As mentioned CPU usage especially with AMD can be misleading. You can still be limited by the CPU when less than 100% utilized.

Issue is when I run the benchmark it starts up then crashes a few seconds later.

Sounds like your overclock is not stable.
Too much heat or too much voltage for the chip.

Well temps are always normal below 70 degrees, even 65 degrees. The overclock has never crashed my system, and I have kept all voltages at default settings. It must be something else causing the benchmark to fail. But I will try the benchmark again with all stock settings and see how it goes

 

[Denganim20]

bf5 uses 6 cores (threads), with your 12threaded cpu u should be lookin at around 50% cpu usage

u mind sharing your userbench score? that could tell s if your cpu/ram is workin as they should

As mentioned CPU usage especially with AMD can be misleading. You can still be limited by the CPU when less than 100% utilized.

Issue is when I run the benchmark it starts up then crashes a few seconds later.

Sounds like your overclock is not stable.
Too much heat or too much voltage for the chip.

UPDATE: Overall score I got was 62nd percentile, and even with overclocking everything, including GPU, everything was performing as expected except it says the GPU is performing way below expectations.