GPU Usage not going above 92% anymore, 3dmark11 score lower as well

[jboom91]

I have crossfire 7950's and when running them in 3dmark11 they would both run at 98-99% gpu usage and I would get a score of 13879, this is paired with an i7-4770. But ever since I took my computer apart and put it back together(had to install and fix a heatsink for the cpu) GPU 1, my top gpu, now caps at 92% and gpu 2 is still able to get to 99%, so when I run 3dmark11 my score is now 13093.

I noticed this when I was playing a video game and in crossfire my gpu 2 usage was 5-7% higher than my gpu 1 usage, which is not normal gpu 1 is always higher or equal in usage with games, this is why I tested 3dmark, now I can't figure out what can be causing this?

Cards are both installed correctly in the same spots they were before with the same power and position, any idea?

Thanks.

 

[jboom91]

UPDATE: After restarting my computer a couple times and resetting msi afterburner, which is the program I was using for monitoring gpu usage, the problem seems to have corrected itself... my new 3dmark score is now 13915 and I had 99% gpu usage again on both cards, also in game the gpu usage was even as well instead of the 2nd one being several percent higher in usage.

I'll have to keep an eye out for this over the next few days, hopefully this does not reoccur, I'm still very curious as to why this blip happened and if anyone has any hunches or ideas I'm still happy to hear it.

Also, pretty minor I suppose, but even though my new 3dmark11 score is higher this time than the original one before the usage was weird, my graphics score only was 17350 for the new score, when the older score had a graphics score of 17400, this only meant that the average fps was around 0.5 lower, I'm assuming this is a random discrepancy? Is it normal for tests like these to vary each time you run them?

Thanks.

 

[jboom91]

I've determined that it's definitely something with MSI Afterburner, which I have the latest version of, I actually just did a full clean uninstall of msi afterburner and a re-install and it still has the problem of when I start a game is reports gpu usage of gpu 2 as 6-8% higher than gpu 1, but if I exit the game and hit reset on msi afterburner and turn the game back on the gpu 1 and 2 usage are even. Still doesn't make any sense, I don't have any special settings in MSI afterburner I don't know why hitting the reset button would do anything.