Please help. GPU usage hitting 100% on non-GPU-intense games

Harblz

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Jul 30, 2015
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4,510
First and foremost: I have used this community for years for my computer troubleshooting and just want to thank everyone who contributes here. I have fixed so many problems with this community's advice.

Anyway, here's whats happening.

I have been having an issue lately and I cannot figure out why it is happening..

Occasionally when I am playing something, my GPU usage will spike up to 99-100% while my CPU usage will drop to around 20-40% between the 4 cores. Normally I restart the computer, re-launch the game, and it would be back to normal (doesn't always work... sometimes I just give up and go do something else). This will randomly occur when I start playing a game. The CPU usage drops below normal and GPU usage increases way above normal. The games I have seen this happen on: Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, CS:GO, GTA V. I know this kind of FPS drop is expected in a game like GTA V, but hearthstone/CS:GO?

Now, I know in an ideal situation, 100% of your GPU will be utilized. However, Hearthstone should be (usually) using about 20% of my GPU for me. CS:GO usually runs at around 250 fps, with 60%ish usage. When this problem happens, I drop to <30fps in-game. I have a GPU monitor on my other screen, and it shows my GPU at 95-100% when this occurs. I also look at ProcessExplorer, and whatever game I'm playing will be at 99-100% GPU usage. There's nothing else that is using up the processing power, at least from what I can see.

When this happens my GPU sits around 55°C and my CPU around 60°C, so it's definitely not overheating. So far I have tried messing around with video settings in the games, but nothing seems to work. Switching from fullscreen to fullscreen borderless, V-Sync on/off, changing resolution, etc, nothing works. It almost seems that my CPU usage is dropping, therefore more is required by the GPU in terms of processing the frames. I don't know why in the world it would be doing that. I have spent hours googling trying to find a solution, and can't seem to figure it out. I went a good 3 or 4 weeks without this happening, and all of a sudden it started up again today.

Here's a tl;dr of my system.

CPU: i5 4690k (not OC'd)
GPU: Radeon 7970 3GB 950MHz GDDR5
RAM: 8GB
SSD/HDD (games installed on HDD, OS on SSD)
Mobo: Gigabyte z97

I am running Catalyst Version 15.7.1

Has anyone else had this occur before? Thank you for any information you can give.
 

Harblz

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Jul 30, 2015
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4,510
So I was thinking a bit more about this today.. Would this have anything to do with RAM and virtual memory? When this is happening, it only shows 4-6GB of RAM being used. My RAM is somewhat old.. about 5-6 years old now.

Do you guys think this is a hardware issue? Here's what I've done so far...

Cleared all AMD/ATI files and drivers and re-installed the latest versions.
I have updated to Windows 10 (this was occurring well before the update)
Ran a full malware scan on computer and cleared it
Ran CCleaner
Opened case and cleaned it. Re-set the GPU while I was in there.

I played some CS late last night and it was only giving me ~130fps rather than 250-300 that I normally get. Obviously, not a big deal, but still curious as to why it is happening.

So completely lost on why this is happening. Never been this dumbfounded with a computer problem in my life :(

 

Harblz

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Jul 30, 2015
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4,510
Still looking for an answer on this :( It went a few days without happening and randomly happened today playing WoW... Anyone have any ideas at all? I opened the case again today and re-set the card and sprayed any dust out.. Could this be related to RAM? PSU? Please help :(
 

zyntra

Honorable
Apr 6, 2014
114
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10,690
dont know if this helps but here in the last few days my smite fps has droped about 15fps was averageing 80-90 and now im only getting 65-75 im also on the 15.7.1 drivers and also a haswell user

 

ghost cat

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Jan 7, 2015
7
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4,510
buddy i faced the same issue after updating to 15.7 thought it might fry my card ! go to device manager select your display driver (under display adapters) go to its properties and click on roll back driver ! this solved my issue hope it helps ! upgrade it later when AMD releases a more stable driver ! :)