Question GPU usage % issue, help?

Oct 2, 2022
18
0
10
Hello, I have a question regarding my GPU usage. Maybe everything is fine. I'm, pretty good with PC's and just something I've noticed. I have everything tuned pretty well.

My system is:
i7-12700KF
XFX 6700 XT
32GB DDR5 5200
MSI B660M mortar wifi ddr5
gen 4 M.2
850W 80+ gold PSU
1080p 165Hz IPS Monitor
Windows 11, all updates All drivers for everything are updated and BIOS.

At idle everything runs as it should. Normal low for CPU % , GPU is like 1%. Issue is ; certain games the GPU is at 99-100% in the main menu. Games like strange brigade, age of empires 4, battlefield 2042, Hunt Showdown. Some go down a little when playing into the 95-97% range. Temps while gaming for 2 hours at max like that are like 65°C for the average, and 77°C for the "hot spot".
On the converse, I loaded up Assassin's Valhalla and the menu showed GPU usage at like 26%, and then I opened Apex and the GPU was like 9% in the menus. Is this a software (the game) issue or is something off? I'm not about to do a huge reinstall of windows or anything. Adrenalin software driver is newest and was clean installed. I have resizable bar enabled, power limit slider up to 15%, min clock up to 2000, max is 2609. No voltages were messed with. I noticed with Apex in the menu the CPU % was higher and GPU was low. Am I getting worried for nothing? Is this a normal, or even good thing? Maybe utilization that high means its unbound and not bottlenecked? This being said, games run well, no stuttering. No overheating. I no not want to use vSync or FreeSync or cap any frames/performance just to fix menu usage.

Any insight or experience with this would be great!
 
Last edited:
Hello, I have a question regarding my GPU usage. Maybe everything is fine. I'm, pretty good with PC's and just something I've noticed. I have everything tuned pretty well.
My system is:
i7-12700KF
XFX 6700 XT
32GB DDR5 5200
MSI B660M mortar wifi ddr5
gen 4 M.2
850W 80+ gold PSU
Windows 11, all updates All drivers for everything are updated and BIOS.

At idle everything runs as it should. Normal low for CPU % , GPU is like 1%. Issue is; certain games the GPU is at 99-100% in the main menu. Games like strange brigade, age of empires 4, battlefield 2042, Hunt Showdown. Some go down a little when playing into the 95-97% range. Temps while gaming for 2 hours at max like that are like 65C for the average, and 77C for the "hot spot". On the converse, I loaded up assassin's Valhalla and the menu showed GPU usage at like 26%, and then I opened Apex and the GPU was like 9% in the menus. Is this a software (the game) issue or is something off? I'm not about to do a huge reinstall of windows or anything. Adrenalin software driver is newest and was clean installed. I have resizable bar enabled, power limit slider up to 15%, min clock up to 2000, max is 2609. No voltages were messed with. I noticed with Apex in the menu the cpu % was higher and gpu was low. Am I getting worried for nothing? Is this a normal, or even good thing? Maybe utilization that high means its unbound and not bottlenecked? This being said, games run well, no stuttering. No overheating.
Any insight or experience with this would be great!

Some modern games institute a frame cap in the menus to avoid the GPU rendering as many frames as possible. A lot of older games have no such feature.
Turn on V-sync, free sync, or use radeon software to force a frame cap to avoid unnecessary power usage.
 
Oct 2, 2022
18
0
10
Some modern games institute a frame cap in the menus to avoid the GPU rendering as many frames as possible. A lot of older games have no such feature.
Turn on V-sync, free sync, or use radeon software to force a frame cap to avoid unnecessary power usage.

All of these games do not have a menu FPS limiter - and I also do not want to use vysnc, I play at 1080p and many times I can get more FPS
 
Oct 2, 2022
18
0
10
what's the refresh rate of your monitor? no point in rendering frames that'll never be presented.
I have a 1080p 165Hz monitor, sorry I didn't include that, I edited main post now. I guess I am just confused when someone should or should not use VSync/FreeSync. Thought if you had a powerful PC and decent refresh rates to leave it off so it uncaps everything and performance?
 
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All of these games do not have a menu FPS limiter - and I also do not want to use vysnc, I play at 1080p and many times I can get more FPS
Games and/or their engines may have an absolute FPS cap, such as Source games capping at 300 FPS. If these menus are relatively easy to render, you may be hitting the cap. Otherwise game developers can still impose an FPS limit anyway in some form or fashion regardless if a setting is available or not.
 
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WPostma

Prominent
Jan 5, 2021
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Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 also does this to me at menus, and they actually addressed it in Update 10 of MSFS to let you have a lower CPU usage menu system.

Basically, a lot of games have some pretty intense workloads being rendered during their menus, and it's fundamentally a design flaw caused by these developers coding very complex and detailed things into their menu systems.

A well designed game should always have modest CPU and GPU usage during the menus.
 
For strange brigade I get like 200-300's, but that is not the case for some of the other ones while gaming like AoE4, and Hunt Showdow

Just to clarify, your monitor can only actually display 165 FPS, so any FPS produced by your system beyond 165 FPS is just wasting power, especially in those types of games. If you're rendering 300+ FPS, your system is working twice as hard as it otherwise would have to, but your monitor is still displaying only 165FPS.

Personally I'd enable V-sync, Freesync, G-sync whatever you have or implement a manual frame cap of 165FPS.
 
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