Question Intermittent low GPU usage ?

[Liquid_Man]

Hey everyone, I hope you're doing well! I've been having this weird issue in a few games where my 3080 Strix usage will drop from 95%+ all the way down to 20-60% usage. Off the top of my head, the three games I can remember are Spider-Man Remastered, Resident Evil 3 Remake and most recently, the Dead Space Remake. In Dead Space, it seems to happen a lot when scripted events happen (IE the Kellion ship blowing up, or walking into a room where you have to interact with quest objects). For RE:3, turning off RayTracing seemed to fix the issue, but it does not in Dead Space. I don't recall if it worked in Spider-Man.

Along with the usage dropping, the power draw also drops as well. GPU-Z reports a drop from ~380W to 150-200W. Since the power draw and usage drop, my framerates also drop. While this issue is occuring, I usually get ~20fps, sometimes dropping all the way down to 2-3fps. It's incredibly frustrating, and I haven't been able to find a fix that stuck.

Specs:
5900x
Strix 3080 10GB
Liquid cooled both, so temps are a non-issue
MSI B550 Gaming Carbon
32 (2x16GB) GB G. Skill Trident Z @ 3600mhz
1000W EVGA 80+ Gold PSU
4K Monitor (Though I am using DLSS where available, and the issue persists)

I have tried:

1. Reinstalling drivers using DDU in safemode (this worked for Dead Space until I rebooted my computer, now the issue persists)

2. Changed the Windows power plan to balanced, then back to performance. Neither option made a difference

3. Reinstalled chipset drivers

4. Disabled overclocks/undervolts to run at stock clocks. Strangely, when I would swap between profiles on MSI Afterburner, the issue would be resolved for about a minute if the issue was happening while I did, but would come back after that short time

5. Updated BIOS

6. Disabled and re-enabled SMT, neither option made a difference

7. Fresh install of Windows 10 + 11, neither made a difference

8. Quadruple checked my memory is running at the correct speed, 3600mhz.

9. Disabling shadowplay and the nvidia in game overlay

10. Uninstalled RTSS

11. Quintuple checked my GPU cables are fully seated, are not daisy chained and even went as far as to ensure I'm not overloading my PSU's 12V rails

I'm about at my wit's end here. Besides an RMA, does anyone have any idea what could be going on? Thank you so much in advance!

 

[rgd1101]

and the cpu usage during the gpu drop?

 

[Liquid_Man]

and the cpu usage during the gpu drop?

CPU usage drops from ~5-7% to ~2-4% with SMT on, at least in Dead Space. I remember the usage was overall higher with SMT off, but usage would drop similarly. I don't recall the other titles, but I can definitely test them!

 

[Liquid_Man]

I was using Afterburner's OSD for monitoring, but just switched to using Aquasuite's hardware monitor on my second display. Aquasuite reports GPU usage stays at 90%+ regardless of whether or not I'm losing frames. However, power draw is still reporting ~150-200W during drops, so that was at least accurate.

Using GPU-Z, I've also noticed that Video Engine Load hovers ~90%+ during drops, but stays ~30-50% when things are running fine. Further investigation shows that Video Engine Load spikes during frame drops. Uninstalling geforce experience fixed the video engine load, but I'm still experiencing frame drops unfortunately

Is it possible that I'm just maxing out my VRAM? I didn't even consider that until now as it's never been a problem with previous builds.. 4K + RT, even with DLSS still uses ~9.5GB in Dead Space Remake.

 

[Liquid_Man]

Dropping resolution down to 1600P seems to have fixed it. VRAM hovers ~8.5-9.1GB and I haven't seen any drops since. I guess I'm gonna have to upgrade my 3080 earlier than I thought ):