Question GPU usage is being weird ?

[Bartolominho]

I'm trying to figure out what the happened with my PC because nothing makes sense anymore.
I was playing Warframe and it was running normal as usual when I decided to go to the bathroom and when I came back the game suddenly was 20 fps with intense stutters and frame drops even just afk without anything happening on screen and my discord call started lagging, so I decided to restart my PC and see if that would help. When I restarted my PC I noticed that now my Wallpaper Engine was lagging, my mouse was freezing, and my browser was lagging.

I did the usual: Reinstall graphics drivers, close everything except the bare minimum and se if anything was messing with my PC in a weird way, checked temperatures, checked usage, checked if anything was hogging resources. Nothing helped, but I noticed that my GPU usage on Radeon Software was spiking from 0% to 100% even when idle, while task manager was showing it normally.

So I started searching for this issue specifically and found a reddit post about enabling unified GPU usage monitoring on MSI Afterburner and it helped his Radeon Software stop the spiking and it also made his games stop stuttering.

So I tried it and it helped it stop going from 0 to 100, now it still spikes when I'm playing or watching a video or screen sharing, but its WAY better than before and when I'm not screen sharing, games are now playable and Warframe even runs smoother now for some reason but everything falls apart when I screen share, which wasn't the case before this whole fiasco, even when I'm not gaming just screen sharing some YT videos for my friends it lags the video so it seems to be only a discord thing, but some games still run weirdly even without screen share.

Then I decided to check the MSI monitoring graph and I noticed something REALLY weird.
even when idle my Core Frequency spikes consistently and to a consistent frequency and when that happens my GPU Usage instantly drops.
It's weird because Radeon Software says the exact opposite, and every other statistic is normal.

While Idle graphs:

https://imgur.com/F7q3GMD

https://imgur.com/ddcjGlv

I was screen sharing on the start of the MSI graph that's why the high usage.

After a mission on Warframe graphs:

https://imgur.com/R0iKujI

https://imgur.com/ijKCCo6

Opened the game and did 1 mission, on the MSI graph I marked the time when I started the game with the line.

I don't play much demanding games, mostly Warframe, Overwatch 2, Genshin, osu!, DDNet, Brawlhalla, Celeste and some indie 2D games, so my PC isn't necessarily good, but it's good enough for it to run what I do actually play and even if I would screen share it, it should run at least 30fps and not make the game unplayable and the rest of my PC dying because of it.

I'm at a road block now because I can't find any solution that I already tried and don't have the money to buy another Graphics Card or any other PC component because I live in Brazil and any electronic stuff is expensive here. If anyone knows anything that could potentially help or be the issue I'm all ears. Here's everything that I already tried, and my specs under that.

• Reinstalled Graphics Drivers by the official website (uninstalled previous drivers with DDU)
• Checked system resources on Task manager and Radeon Software and MSI Afterburner while idle (before the msi option I didn't had it installed so I checked only the other two and it was a lot spikier than now)
• Checked system resources on Task manager and Radeon Software and MSI Afterburner while on game with the graphs on second monitor (after the msi option)
• Checked every running process and see if I don't recognize something and if something is hogging more resources than it should or need
• Reinstalled Chipset Drivers
• Tried to run Warframe and Brawlhalla while only the bare minimum (before the msi option)
• Reset BIOS by removing CMOS

My Specs:
MOBO: Asrock A320M-HD
Graphics Card: Radeon RX 550
Processor: Ryzen 3 3200G
Ram: 16GB 3200MHz
PSU: Redragon RGPS 500W
BIOS version: P6.20

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

You forgot to mention the make and model of your PSU as well as it's age. Please mention the BIOS version for your motherboard as well.

 

[Bartolominho]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

You forgot to mention the make and model of your PSU as well as it's age. Please mention the BIOS version for your motherboard as well.

Thanks, I edited the post and added my PSU model and BIOS version but I don't remember the age of the PSU, I assume it's about 2 years old, but I'm not really sure.
I also noticed that on Radeon Software my ram is stating 2667MHz but CPU-Z is showing 3200MHz so I'm not really sure what is going on there.

 

[Imperat0r]

Hello.
Since you own a Polaris card, there is no point in installing the newest drivers from AMD.
On the opposite, i would suggest to install drivers from 2020, ma 2022, ofc WHQL.
None of the divers are meant for this card.
The only thing that was improved in newer drivers are some glitches from games that are send by users and repaired by AMD.
Try older drivers.

 

[Bartolominho]

Hello.
Since you own a Polaris card, there is no point in installing the newest drivers from AMD.
On the opposite, i would suggest to install drivers from 2020, ma 2022, ofc WHQL.
None of the divers are meant for this card.
The only thing that was improved in newer drivers are some glitches from games that are send by users and repaired by AMD.
Try older drivers.

Ever since I bought this card around the time of the drivers you recommended I had trouble with them, so I decided to try the NimeZ custom driver to see if it would be more stable than the official drivers and they also let me change some settings that you can't on official ones to actually make it more stable.

I'm testing this options right now and most stutters I had on Warframe seems to be gone now, but Overwatch 2 is still unplayable, better than before but still too much stutter and frame drops out of nowhere and not even on 80% usage from CPU and GPU and RAM, screen sharing seems to be back to normal though.

The main point is that I'm trying to figure out what made this whole search begin, because what could happen for it to suddenly stop working by the 1 minute I go to the bathroom?

And I did disable Windows Update, I also set the "Pause Updates for 7 days" to the latest I can, because for some weird reason Windows Update just enables itself from time to time and breaks some stuff "Updating" my drivers on top of the drivers I already have installed.

 

[Imperat0r]

Well, i am glad that you've discovered also that windows will stab you in the back.
Just use the GPE (group policy editor) to stop windows to update itself when he decide.
At least i did.