TL;DR: I recently upgraded to an MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio from an ASUS 1070 and am now experiencing serious performance issues in certain games while Task Manager shows my GPU usage at 0%.
I first noticed the issue when I went to play League of Legends. I opened the client and everything was moving super slow like I was experiencing major network lag but then I got into the game and my ping was normal (sits around 32ms) but my frames were bouncing around from as low as 18 fps to a maximum of 78 fps. Before the upgrade, I played with the framerate capped to 120 fps at 1440p with no issues whatsoever. When I got out of the game, I noticed it wasn't just League that was running slow or abnormally, it was everything. Moving File Explorer around the screen would leave a trail of after-images, Chrome was taking forever to open, and the Windows Display Settings app was slow to load. Everything went back to normal after closing League and waiting a few seconds.
Thinking the issue was isolated to a bad patch from League, I uninstalled it, deleted all its files, restarted, and reinstalled. It worked... For a while. The issue came up again when a new patch was released so I went through the same steps and poof issue magically resolved again. However, I am experiencing the issue yet again and there was no patch this time. What is worse, I am now experiencing the same thing with Cyberpunk 2077. On the 1070, I could run Cyberpunk at High Settings at 1440p at what I assumed was a roughly stable 60 fps (I didn't benchmark or anything but I didn't notice any performance issues). Worst of all, when I first installed the 3080 I was running Cyberpunk on nearly max settings at 1440p with no issues. The game ran impressively smoothly so this is new and I have not made any changes.
I have not encountered this in other games I have played recently, namely Warframe, Hunt: Showdown, Divinity: Original Sin II, and Superhot: Mind Control Delete. I have noticed that my GPU usage sits between 0 and 2% when playing both Cyberpunk and League while experiencing the performance issues. Lastly, the install locations for the games are different. All of my Steam games (Warframe, Hunt, Cyberpunk, etc.) are on my secondary HDD and League is on my SSD with my OS install.
I've exhausted my troubleshooting options and capabilities (will itemize them below). What is left for me to do?
Troubleshooting steps taken so far:
System Information:
OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Version 10.0.19042 Build 19042
Processor i7-8700K CPU @ 3.70GHz
Motherboard ASUS PRIME Z390-P
BIOS 2808, 5/27/2020
RAM 32.0 GB @ 2133 MHz
GPU MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio
I would like to offer big thanks to anyone who offers any help, by the way. Quarantine has hit me especially hard and gaming has really been my only outlet for human interaction for the better part of year now so I really appreciate help resolving this.
I first noticed the issue when I went to play League of Legends. I opened the client and everything was moving super slow like I was experiencing major network lag but then I got into the game and my ping was normal (sits around 32ms) but my frames were bouncing around from as low as 18 fps to a maximum of 78 fps. Before the upgrade, I played with the framerate capped to 120 fps at 1440p with no issues whatsoever. When I got out of the game, I noticed it wasn't just League that was running slow or abnormally, it was everything. Moving File Explorer around the screen would leave a trail of after-images, Chrome was taking forever to open, and the Windows Display Settings app was slow to load. Everything went back to normal after closing League and waiting a few seconds.
Thinking the issue was isolated to a bad patch from League, I uninstalled it, deleted all its files, restarted, and reinstalled. It worked... For a while. The issue came up again when a new patch was released so I went through the same steps and poof issue magically resolved again. However, I am experiencing the issue yet again and there was no patch this time. What is worse, I am now experiencing the same thing with Cyberpunk 2077. On the 1070, I could run Cyberpunk at High Settings at 1440p at what I assumed was a roughly stable 60 fps (I didn't benchmark or anything but I didn't notice any performance issues). Worst of all, when I first installed the 3080 I was running Cyberpunk on nearly max settings at 1440p with no issues. The game ran impressively smoothly so this is new and I have not made any changes.
I have not encountered this in other games I have played recently, namely Warframe, Hunt: Showdown, Divinity: Original Sin II, and Superhot: Mind Control Delete. I have noticed that my GPU usage sits between 0 and 2% when playing both Cyberpunk and League while experiencing the performance issues. Lastly, the install locations for the games are different. All of my Steam games (Warframe, Hunt, Cyberpunk, etc.) are on my secondary HDD and League is on my SSD with my OS install.
I've exhausted my troubleshooting options and capabilities (will itemize them below). What is left for me to do?
Troubleshooting steps taken so far:
STEP | RESULT |
1. Ran GPU benchmark tests on the 3080 and logged performance in TechPowerUp GPU-Z | Stable framerate, GPU and CPU fans were running fine, GPU and CPU temperature were well within acceptable ranges, GPU performance cap reason was VREL |
2. Used Nvidia GeForce Experience to update drivers and restarted | There an update from 01/07/2021, no changes to performance following restart |
3. Checked for Windows Updates and Optional Windows updates, installed all available updates, and restarted | There was a security patch and a few optional updates, no changes to performance following restart |
4. Ran the Intel Processor Diagnostic Tool | CPU passed all tests, no issues found |
5. Updated motherboard's Bios | Big version update but no changes to performance |
5. Unseated and Reseated the GPU on the motherboard | Did not notice any issues with installation, no changes to performance |
6. Cleaned my drivers with DDU and reinstalled drivers using GeForce | No changes to performance following restart |
System Information:
OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Version 10.0.19042 Build 19042
Processor i7-8700K CPU @ 3.70GHz
Motherboard ASUS PRIME Z390-P
BIOS 2808, 5/27/2020
RAM 32.0 GB @ 2133 MHz
GPU MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio
I would like to offer big thanks to anyone who offers any help, by the way. Quarantine has hit me especially hard and gaming has really been my only outlet for human interaction for the better part of year now so I really appreciate help resolving this.