GTX 1060 Low Usage below 50% (Overwatch on low settings)

[ziwei1440]

I just got my new AW17r4 (7700HQ+1060+16G ram) yesterday and used it to play Overwatch. I was shocked to see 120fps on low settings. I also tried epic settings and ironically I got 120~130fps. Then I used gpu-z to monitor the usage and found out 50% gpu load when playing on low. The number is above 90% when playing on epic. I contacted AW support and they checked everything was working fine. Is this the problem with Overwatch? Any opinions are appreciated.

 

[mlga91]

You're playing on a laptop, the CPU frequency is quite low, dont expect to see desktop numbers in there.

 

[cryoburner]

Does your Alienware have a 120Hz screen? If so, Vsync might just be just limiting the framerate to what your screen can display.

On the other hand, that could be the limit of what your CPU can process. A 7700HQ is clocked a fair amount lower than something like a 7700K, after all. Check your CPU usage for individual cores in task manager while running the game, and see if any are hitting 100%.

There isn't much benefit from having the game render more frames than your screen can display though, and in a laptop that would mostly just increase temperatures and fan noise. I'd hardly consider getting "only" 120fps an issue, in any case.

 

[ziwei1440]

You're playing on a laptop, the CPU frequency is quite low, dont expect to see desktop numbers in there.

I'm not asking for desktop number. All I want is a decent usage of my 1060 when playing on low...

 

[ziwei1440]

Does your Alienware have a 120Hz screen? If so, Vsync might just be just limiting the framerate to what your screen can display.

On the other hand, that could be the limit of what your CPU can process. A 7700HQ is clocked a fair amount lower than something like a 7700K, after all. Check your CPU usage for individual cores in task manager while running the game, and see if any are hitting 100%.

There isn't much benefit from having the game render more frames than your screen can display though, and in a laptop that would mostly just increase temperatures and fan noise. I'd hardly consider getting "only" 120fps an issue, in any case.

Thank you for you advice. Vsync is off the whole time. I'll check the cpu usage later but I'm just curious why my graphic card wont use its full strength on low settings. It can definitely do better than 120fps. I have a 144hz external monitor and try to play competitively on Overwatch. 120fps is just not enough for me.

 

[dontlistentome]

The demand on your card comes from two places. One, the game asks for resources. Overwatch is not that demanding though, it's not going to stress a 1060 by itself. Two, if the CPU is doing more work it can then make the videocard work harder to keep up. If your CPU is not that powerful though, it will hit its performance limit before it can stress the videocard. This is the 'bottleneck' people talk about.

It sounds to me like that's your situation. Your CPU is doing all it can, but it's not enough to keep the card busy especially since the game itself isn't demanding on the card either.

 

[cryoburner]

I'll check the cpu usage later but I'm just curious why my graphic card wont use its full strength on low settings. It can definitely do better than 120fps.

If the CPU is limiting your performance, then the graphics card will have to wait for it to finish its work each frame, which would result in the 1060 sitting around not doing anything as it waits for the CPU to finish processing things like physics and animation and other things that might not be affected by graphics settings. Hence why turning up the detail levels doesn't affect the framerate, since the card is spending time rendering that it would have otherwise spent just waiting for the CPU.

It might also be worth checking the Windows power options to make sure they are set to keep everything running at "high performance", at least when running on AC power.

 

[renz496]

You're playing on a laptop, the CPU frequency is quite low, dont expect to see desktop numbers in there.

I'm not asking for desktop number. All I want is a decent usage of my 1060 when playing on low...

alright lets be clear on one thing first. what actually you want to do? did you lower the setting and hope to play with very high frame rate? or simply want more "activity" from the gpu even with lowered setting?

 

[ziwei1440]

The demand on your card comes from two places. One, the game asks for resources. Overwatch is not that demanding though, it's not going to stress a 1060 by itself. Two, if the CPU is doing more work it can then make the videocard work harder to keep up. If your CPU is not that powerful though, it will hit its performance limit before it can stress the videocard. This is the 'bottleneck' people talk about.

It sounds to me like that's your situation. Your CPU is doing all it can, but it's not enough to keep the card busy especially since the game itself isn't demanding on the card either.

Thank you for your reply. If it's really the 'bottleneck' thing, then I shouldn't be getting 90+ GPU usage when I'm playing on high settings right? I know Overwatch on low settings is not that demanding, but shouldn't that mean I'm able to hit around peak fps and stay there?

 

[ziwei1440]

You're playing on a laptop, the CPU frequency is quite low, dont expect to see desktop numbers in there.

I'm not asking for desktop number. All I want is a decent usage of my 1060 when playing on low...

alright lets be clear on one thing first. what actually you want to do? did you lower the setting and hope to play with very high frame rate? or simply want more "activity" from the gpu even with lowered setting?

I just want higher frame rate on low settings. I don't care about how much "activity" I got unless I'm not getting what I want. I don't think 200~210fps is too much to ask for. I care about the usage because it seems to be the problem here...

 

[renz496]

You're playing on a laptop, the CPU frequency is quite low, dont expect to see desktop numbers in there.

I'm not asking for desktop number. All I want is a decent usage of my 1060 when playing on low...

alright lets be clear on one thing first. what actually you want to do? did you lower the setting and hope to play with very high frame rate? or simply want more "activity" from the gpu even with lowered setting?

I just want higher frame rate on low settings. I don't care about how much "activity" I got unless I'm not getting what I want. I don't think 200~210fps is too much to ask for. I care about the usage because it seems to be the problem here...

before we go further why such high frame rate is a must for you?

 

[ziwei1440]

You're playing on a laptop, the CPU frequency is quite low, dont expect to see desktop numbers in there.

I'm not asking for desktop number. All I want is a decent usage of my 1060 when playing on low...

alright lets be clear on one thing first. what actually you want to do? did you lower the setting and hope to play with very high frame rate? or simply want more "activity" from the gpu even with lowered setting?

I just want higher frame rate on low settings. I don't care about how much "activity" I got unless I'm not getting what I want. I don't think 200~210fps is too much to ask for. I care about the usage because it seems to be the problem here...

before we go further why such high frame rate is a must for you?

I'm trying to play Overwatch competitively and I've been told higher frames is always desirable. Besides, I have a 144hz monitor. It would be a waste if I can't produce that much frames.

 

[renz496]

i can understand want to go as high as the highest refresh rates can go but i never really understand why it must go well beyond that. at least for much more modern game like overwatch. with older game such as counter strike some people insist to have at least around 250-300FPS or else they will be at disadvantages because certain action can only be perform with such high frame rate due to the game glitch at very high frame rates.

anyway if you want your 1060 to work hard all the time go to nvidia control panel and look for 3D setting. then look for power management mode. by default the setting is set to optimal power. change them to prefer maximum performance.

but you have also to remember about CPU bottleneck. using much lower graphical setting will shift the bottleneck to CPU. if you still can't get high FPS even when power management mode set to prefer maximum performance then your cpu are the one that holding back the game to get more frame rates.

 

[ziwei1440]

i can understand want to go as high as the highest refresh rates can go but i never really understand why it must go well beyond that. at least for much more modern game like overwatch. with older game such as counter strike some people insist to have at least around 250-300FPS or else they will be at disadvantages because certain action can only be perform with such high frame rate due to the game glitch at very high frame rates.

anyway if you want your 1060 to work hard all the time go to nvidia control panel and look for 3D setting. then look for power management mode. by default the setting is set to optimal power. change them to prefer maximum performance.
but you have also to remember about CPU bottleneck. using much lower graphical setting will shift the bottleneck to CPU. if you still can't get high FPS even when power management mode set to prefer maximum performance then your cpu are the one that holding back the game to get more frame rates.

Sorry for the late response. I did some research into this and it turns out to be some optimization issue with the game itself. I've been around Battle forum these days and noticed that many people has the same problem as mine. They all have powerful systems but still can't get decent fps on low. Blizzard should be responsible for this. I also tried the maximum performance but still nothing happened except for louder fan noise. Anyways, thank you again for your help and patience.

 

[dontlistentome]

The demand on your card comes from two places. One, the game asks for resources. Overwatch is not that demanding though, it's not going to stress a 1060 by itself. Two, if the CPU is doing more work it can then make the videocard work harder to keep up. If your CPU is not that powerful though, it will hit its performance limit before it can stress the videocard. This is the 'bottleneck' people talk about.

It sounds to me like that's your situation. Your CPU is doing all it can, but it's not enough to keep the card busy especially since the game itself isn't demanding on the card either.

Thank you for your reply. If it's really the 'bottleneck' thing, then I shouldn't be getting 90+ GPU usage when I'm playing on high settings right? I know Overwatch on low settings is not that demanding, but shouldn't that mean I'm able to hit around peak fps and stay there?

No, you're making an assumption here that one component should always be at or near 100% usage. Games don't, for the most part, demand infinite resources.

Let's say there's a game that requires, on a scale of 1-10, a level of 6 in performance. Your CPU is a level 7 and your GPU is a level 9. In this scenario neither your CPU or GPU will be at 100% because the game simply does not require that much work from either of them.

Now let's say your CPU is a 5 but your GPU is a 9. Now your CPU is at 100% but your GPU isn't working hard, because the game demands more CPU than you have but you have more GPU than you need.

 

[ziwei1440]

The demand on your card comes from two places. One, the game asks for resources. Overwatch is not that demanding though, it's not going to stress a 1060 by itself. Two, if the CPU is doing more work it can then make the videocard work harder to keep up. If your CPU is not that powerful though, it will hit its performance limit before it can stress the videocard. This is the 'bottleneck' people talk about.

It sounds to me like that's your situation. Your CPU is doing all it can, but it's not enough to keep the card busy especially since the game itself isn't demanding on the card either.

Thank you for your reply. If it's really the 'bottleneck' thing, then I shouldn't be getting 90+ GPU usage when I'm playing on high settings right? I know Overwatch on low settings is not that demanding, but shouldn't that mean I'm able to hit around peak fps and stay there?

No, you're making an assumption here that one component should always be at or near 100% usage. Games don't, for the most part, demand infinite resources.

Let's say there's a game that requires, on a scale of 1-10, a level of 6 in performance. Your CPU is a level 7 and your GPU is a level 9. In this scenario neither your CPU or GPU will be at 100% because the game simply does not require that much work from either of them.

Now let's say your CPU is a 5 but your GPU is a 9. Now your CPU is at 100% but your GPU isn't working hard, because the game demands more CPU than you have but you have more GPU than you need.

Thank you for replying, To my understanding, games don't demand resources until it hit peak performance (in my case highest possible fps in game). I can't understand why the gpu doesn't maximize (low usage - low fps) while it has the power to do it. I have i7-7700HQ and I think that's enough for Overwatch. I'm not holding back by my CPU.

 

[mlga91]

I can't understand why the gpu doesn't maximize (low usage - low fps) while it has the power to do it. I have i7-7700HQ and I think that's enough for Overwatch. I'm not holding back by my CPU.

That's where you're wrong, it's a decent CPU, but it at the 120+ fps realm you see CPUs holding back a GPU quite often, if you want to be on the 200 fps club you need a desktop, that's why i told you that you cant expect desktop numbers there. High IPC is what matters here, and being a laptop CPU well, it' will hold you back in that matter.