Nvidia causing strange behavior compared to AMD equivalent

[Futon]

So I had a 750 ti on my system and whenever I'd play games, my cpu would jump up to 100% usage and stay there no matter what game title. I got a hold of another 750 ti and the same thing would happen. I also have an AMD equivalent which is the Radeon HD 7850 2gb, and with that installed in my system, my games would show normal cpu usage with 60-70 usage with that rare 80 percent. It is strange because both cards seem to be alike in performance but the nvidia card makes my cpu jump up to 100 percent usage in any game.

I am stuck of what is causing this because when diagnosing my computer, I had a clean install of windows and and even used DDU to install new drivers. A little help from the forums could probably get me somewhere. Thanks.

screenshots, more detailed specs, etc will be provided when requested

mobo is ASUS Z170-A
cpu is i5-6600k at stock
ram is 16gb
psu is EVGA 650G2

 

[scout_03]

compare both gpu specs look like amd have more power https://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-750-ti/specifications and https://www.amd.com/en-us/products/graphics/desktop/7000/7800#

 

[Futon]

In real world usage, the cards are very similar through frames and it's the closest thing I could get to the nvidia card.

 

[renz496]

one question though, does the high CPU utilization impact your gaming performance negatively or not?

 

[Futon]

Yes it does. My games would run about the same FPS but on the nvidia side, I would get more stutters and overall gameplay is less smooth.

 

[scout_03]

see this http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-HD-7850-vs-GeForce-GTX-750-Ti

 

[renz496]

Try using vsync or cap your frame rate at 60. Sometimes there are games that try to push the frame rate as high as possible. Doing this will increase CPU utilization. If CPU utilization is peg at 100% usage then you will get stutter in games.

In general nvidia GPU did get much higher CPU utilization (since their driver have much less overhead than AMD) but it should let the game running much faster and smoother not otherwise.

 

[Futon]

vsync seems to work but I wonder why my cpu is literally pushed to the max on a 6600k at 4.5. Not to mention, I found this video on Youtube where a guy has basically the same specs and on the games he played, his cpu usage is "normal" by my standards and not at 100 constant compared to mine. https://youtu.be/OSwtJSz3fqE

 

[renz496]

probably there are some game updates that cause the behaviour? i have similar problem with dragon age inquisition before. even at start menu the game try to push for the maximum frame rate that the system are capable of. it seems the game disabling v-sync at start menu and only apply them when you play the game. it makes me hard to move around the start menu options because of heavy stutter. i've end up forcing vsync from nvidia CP so i can have 60FPS all the time and my CPU is not pushed to it's limit (100% utilization on all 4 core).

 

[Futon]

No clue if updates causes it because it was always been like that ever since I got my 6600k which was a few months after it came out. I guess I'll use vsync for now until I figure out what is actually happening lol

 

[Futon]

*UPDATE* So I've put in my 980 from another PC and it's also doing the same thing but this time worse. CPU is constant 100 usage with 70-80 gpu usage with a 4.5 ghz overclock on my i5 6600k. This is also with turning up the resolution to 4k to maximize the gpu usage and it's not a bottleneck or anything.

 

[renz496]

Hmm probably there is something wrong with the GPU after all? If you have no problem with doing system reset (reformat) you could try that to eliminate any possibilities of software related issue on your system.