High GPU Usage in Old Game

quidello

Prominent
Feb 9, 2018
4
0
510
I'm dealing with high GPU usage in an older game. I bought a gaming PC to play higher end stuff like The Witcher 3, and it works for that perfectly, but when I open task manager while playing classic Everquest (the game is nearly 20 years old now) on an emulated server, my GPU usage, depending on the frame rate I set, can be kind of high.

The ram and cpu usage is very, very low, but the game is running at 40% of my GTX1070s capacity at 60fps. This is a game that was pretty much designed to run on a potato, in 1999 no less, and even when I turn the resolution down as low as it can go, it has no effect.

Is there anything I can do to get it to run better? Is there some kind of log that I can look at to see why it is taking up so many resources?

Also, at what point does GPU usage become a problem for the longevity of my graphics card? This is my first PC with a dedicated GPU, so I'm pretty new to this.
 
Solution
I can assure you if a graphics card from 1999 tried to run this game at 1080p 60fps it would shit the bed. Keeping the game running at a steady 60fps (assuming with Vsync enabled) is the toughest task your card is doing with this game, which is why resolution doesn't change it much. It's nothing to worry about however. 40% on a GPU is hardly working it at all. GPU's are designed to run at 100% load at all times while gaming. The heat it generates is what shortens the lifespan, not the usage percentage.

quidello

Prominent
Feb 9, 2018
4
0
510
Windows® 98/2000/ME/XP, Pentium® II 400 equivalent or greater

256 MB RAMATI Radeon 7500/NVidia GeForce 1 equivalent or greater, DirectX 9.0c or greater, DirectX Compatible Sound Card, 28.8k + Internet Connection, 4X Speed CD-ROM or greater, 500MB - 2.6GB Available Hard Drive Space (depending on how many expansions are installed)

These are the system requirements. So, I guess DirectX 9c....or greater?

Is there any way to fix driver optimization?
 

zoltan.boese

Estimable
Jan 30, 2018
1,550
0
2,960


Yes version 9. Disable Gsync, if it does not help, then try downloading and running the dx runtime installer.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=35&tduid=
 

Ethan Murphy

Honorable
Feb 6, 2014
32
0
10,560
I can assure you if a graphics card from 1999 tried to run this game at 1080p 60fps it would shit the bed. Keeping the game running at a steady 60fps (assuming with Vsync enabled) is the toughest task your card is doing with this game, which is why resolution doesn't change it much. It's nothing to worry about however. 40% on a GPU is hardly working it at all. GPU's are designed to run at 100% load at all times while gaming. The heat it generates is what shortens the lifespan, not the usage percentage.
 
Solution