[SOLVED] Monitoring gpu usage

Craftron

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Feb 6, 2016
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Recently I bought an rtx 3080 and since then, both msi afterburner and windows task manager are reporting gpu usage at its current clock speed instead of its max clock speed. I am pretty certain it wasn't like this before. Is this how it's supposed to be? Can I change it back to how I had it with my old card?
Example: core clock at 210mhz, task manager showing 30% gpu usage while watching a youtube video
Side question, is it normal for my core clock to be spiking like this? I don't remember that happening with my old card either.
MSIAfterburner-7qke9q6z-YX.png
 
Solution
but my main question was specifically why the 3D graph usage is high when my core clock is at 210mhz, and drops down very low while my gpu boosts higher. Seems to me like its showing its usage as a % of what it can do at its current speed, but I really have no idea if thats how it works or not.
Utilization % is how long in a second the GPU was "not idling." For the same workload, lower clock speeds mean the GPU is "not idling" longer because the clock period is longer.
Task Manager shows "GPU usage" as the highest activity thing on the graphs that it shows. The 30% is likely from video decoding running the YouTube video. Video cards will also clock down when not doing much to save power.

Also there's no such thing as "max clock speed" in GPUs because of GPU Boosting. They'll just boost as fast as they can until they hit some wall.
 

jasonf2

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Dynamic clock adjustment is a feature used to significantly reduce power consumption and keep thermals in check. The fact that it is running that low means that the GPU is powerful enough that it is idling through what ever is being ran in that graph. Any time you are watching videos you are doing some level of decompression on the video side, which pulls on the GPU. If it is only running a minimum state 210 clock most of the time it means you are barely touching the cards potential which would be normal on a 3080 watching utube.
 

Craftron

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Feb 6, 2016
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Task Manager shows "GPU usage" as the highest activity thing on the graphs that it shows. The 30% is likely from video decoding running the YouTube video. Video cards will also clock down when not doing much to save power.
I just checked this and you're right, that 30% is the video decode, though my 3D graph is also pretty high at 20-25%. 3D seems to drop down to around 5% for a second whenever my gpu core clock boosts to 1755mhz in the graph I posted. It makes sense to see the 30% video decode usage now, but my main question was specifically why the 3D graph usage is high when my core clock is at 210mhz, and drops down very low while my gpu boosts higher. Seems to me like its showing its usage as a % of what it can do at its current speed, but I really have no idea if thats how it works or not.

Dynamic clock adjustment is a feature used to significantly reduce power consumption and keep thermals in check. The fact that it is running that low means that the GPU is powerful enough that it is idling through what ever is being ran in that graph. Any time you are watching videos you are doing some level of decompression on the video side, which pulls on the GPU. If it is only running a minimum state 210 clock most of the time it means you are barely touching the cards potential which would be normal on a 3080 watching utube.
That makes sense, its just that I'd expect it to run at something closer to 400mhz for light loads instead of going way up to 1755mhz for a second before going back to 210mhz. I didn't pay much attention to my old one so I'm not sure if this is actually different, but if this is normal though then I have nothing to worry about.
 
but my main question was specifically why the 3D graph usage is high when my core clock is at 210mhz, and drops down very low while my gpu boosts higher. Seems to me like its showing its usage as a % of what it can do at its current speed, but I really have no idea if thats how it works or not.
Utilization % is how long in a second the GPU was "not idling." For the same workload, lower clock speeds mean the GPU is "not idling" longer because the clock period is longer.
 
Solution