Question Ryzen 5 5600 + Arc B580 — Low GPU Usage in Games

[Blancnoirr]

Hi everyone!
I’m having some performance issues and would really appreciate any help figuring them out.

My system:

• CPU: Ryzen 5 5600
• GPU: Intel Arc B580
• Motherboard: Gigabyte B550M AORUS Elite
• RAM: G.Skill Aegis 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 3200MHz
• Storage: 3 SSDs
  XMP: Enabled | Resizable BAR: Enabled | PBO: Enabled | Temps: All normal

In general, everything runs fine, but in some games (like Spider-Man Remastered and God of War), I’m getting noticeably lower performance compared to YouTube benchmarks with similar setups.

I’ve been monitoring usage with the Steam overlay, and I noticed this pattern:
In demanding scenes, my CPU usage is around 80–100%, while GPU usage drops to 50–60%. However, in cutscenes or when facing a wall (i.e., when the CPU doesn’t have much to process), the GPU shoots up to 90–100%. It's the same when my character is in a closed, small location.
This suggests a potential CPU bottleneck, but I'm not entirely sure why this happens when others with the same setup show stable GPU usage near 100% even in gameplay in all scenes.

Any thoughts on what might be causing this?
Is there something else I should check or tweak?

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Please mention the make, model and age of your PSU. What BIOS version are you on for your motherboard?

Use DDU to remove all GPU drivers(AMD, Nvidia and Intel) in Safe Mode, then manually install the latest GPU driver sourced from Intel's support site in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator.

 

[Blancnoirr]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Please mention the make, model and age of your PSU. What BIOS version are you on for your motherboard?

Use DDU to remove all GPU drivers(AMD, Nvidia and Intel) in Safe Mode, then manually install the latest GPU driver sourced from Intel's support site in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator.

Oh true, I completely forgot that might even be a problem with PSU. My is a Chieftec CTG-650C, which I found out is considered pretty low quality. It shows up in multiple PSU tier lists in the lowest categories. So that might actually be contributing to my system’s instability.

I installed all the drivers with DDU during the initial setup, right after building the PC.

BIOS - American Megatrends International, LLC. FE, 22.03.2024