[SOLVED] RTX 3070 Usage Under 1% When Gaming

Jan 3, 2021
26
2
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Hi all,

I just got a RTX 3070. However, when I play Cyberpunk 2077 with mostly max setting, I observe from Windows Task Manager that GPU is under 1% most of the time.

The graphics generated is not as good as a expected. It was fuzzy and strange looking (I was getting reasonably smooth frame rate, however). My previous GPU was Radeon 5600 XT, and that card was rendering Cyberpunk better than the RTX 3070 I have.

I think the issue may lay in the fact that my GPU is being underutlized (under 1%) when gaming. I have already downloaded the best driver but it didn't make a difference. Could you guys give me some pointers in how to solve this issue?

Thanks a lot guys.

Cheers
 
Solution
The fuzziness is likely all down to the in game graphic options you're running. DLSS, screen resolution, motion blur, ambient occlusion, and anti-aliasing all play a part. Try running the High option with shadows set to medium and then switch DLSS on and off to see if that's causing the fuzziness.

Looking at your screen shots the game looks largely similar to mine...I do run a small amount of Radeon Image Sharpening but I don't know if nVidia has the same type of setting available.
The GPU usage page in Task Manager actually has more graphs than it can show. If you click on the header of the graph, you can change which graph to display. If the "3D" graph isn't showing activity, it's usually the "Graphics_1" graph on NVIDIA cards.

There's no clear pattern that I've found if 3D or Graphics_1 gets triggered. It just depends on the application.
 
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Jan 3, 2021
26
2
35
Hi all,

I just got a RTX 3070. However, when I play Cyberpunk 2077 with mostly max setting, I observe from Windows Task Manager that GPU is under 1% most of the time.

The graphics generated is not as good as a expected. It was fuzzy and strange looking (I was getting reasonably smooth frame rate, however). My previous GPU was Radeon 5600 XT, and that card was rendering Cyberpunk better than the RTX 3070 I have.

I think the issue may lay in the fact that my GPU is being underutlized (under 1%) when gaming. I have already downloaded the best driver but it didn't make a difference. Could you guys give me some pointers in how to solve this issue?

Thanks a lot guys.

Cheers

Update: I ran a quick Time Spy benchmark from 3D mark. My graphics score is 13730. The graphics score for RTX 3070 on 3DMark's website is 13752. So I am assuming that my graphics card isn't necessarily a defect since it is not that much lower than the posted score?
 
Update: I ran a quick Time Spy benchmark from 3D mark. My graphics score is 13730. The graphics score for RTX 3070 on 3DMark's website is 13752. So I am assuming that my graphics card isn't necessarily a defect since it is not that much lower than the posted score?
Correct. As I said no way was the gpu usage actually 1% while playing Cyberpunk. It seems like a false reading. I’d still remove all drivers with DDU then install the latest NVidia driver.
 
Jan 3, 2021
26
2
35
Correct. As I said no way was the gpu usage actually 1% while playing Cyberpunk. It seems like a false reading. I’d still remove all drivers with DDU then install the latest NVidia driver.
Ya I will try DDU and reinstalling drivers. I will update here the results. By the way, when I ran the 3dMark benchmark, my GPU usage from Task Manager was also under 1% most of the time...
 
Jan 3, 2021
26
2
35
Correct. As I said no way was the gpu usage actually 1% while playing Cyberpunk. It seems like a false reading. I’d still remove all drivers with DDU then install the latest NVidia driver.
Hi, I just ran DDU and reinstalled the driver. I don't see much improvement in my Cyberpunk gameplay. The generated graphics still had the same kind of fuzziness as prior to me reinstalling the drivers. The Task Manager GPU performance also only show 0 to 1 percent during most (if not all) of my game play. It did jump to around to 50% ish when I first loaded the game, although it went back to 0 - 1 % during actual game play.

Maybe I didn't use DDU properly. Here are the three areas of what I did that I found most suspicious:

1. I could never get to a state where DDU detect no graphics driver at all. After my first "clean and restart" attempt, the GPU detected became "Microsoft Basic Display Adapter". This driver never went away no matter how many time I "clean and restart"

2. I don't recall DDU detecting any AMD drivers in the log. Since I am using Nvidea GPU, "Nvidea" is selected by default. I have tried manually change the setting to "AMD" and then "clean and restart" again in that state. I don't recall DDU detecting any AMD drivers in that state though, however.

3. After I finished with DDU, I tried to download the latest Nvidea driver. However, my PC automatically installed "Nvidea Control Panel" first. I then proceeded to install "GeForce Experience", then downloaded the latest Nvidea driver from that application.

Do you think I did anything incorrectly with DDU?

Thanks a lot
 
Jan 3, 2021
26
2
35
Can you show screenshot of this?
(upload to imgur.com and post link)
Sure, here yo go:

View: https://imgur.com/3X1B5wn

View: https://imgur.com/mljS1Wp

View: https://imgur.com/sVwFXnW

View: https://imgur.com/tOE6vGM

View: https://imgur.com/a8B9U6C


I have two displays, so I loaded Cyberpunk in my main screen and Task Manager on the other.

I think the variation in usage from the graph came from me taking screenshot and saving it to MS paint, etc., and not really from my game play. (Basically the moment I navigate out of my game, the GPU usage goes above 1% and start showing what I think to be normal activities. The moment I navigate back to the game, the usage goes back to below 1%. Although I do see the usage jump to 4 or 5% sometimes when I am driving a car across complex landscape in the game)
 
The fuzziness is likely all down to the in game graphic options you're running. DLSS, screen resolution, motion blur, ambient occlusion, and anti-aliasing all play a part. Try running the High option with shadows set to medium and then switch DLSS on and off to see if that's causing the fuzziness.

Looking at your screen shots the game looks largely similar to mine...I do run a small amount of Radeon Image Sharpening but I don't know if nVidia has the same type of setting available.
 
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Reactions: helper800
Solution
Again, Task Manager has more graphs than it can show in the GPU page. If the "3D" graph is showing no activity when there's clearly activity, the activity is triggering another graph. For NVIDIA cards this is usually "Graphics_1"

You can also use GPU-z or a similar monitoring tool to check the GPU activity there.