Question Very Low GPU Usage

[legocuber]

Ok. So this is my setup - https://pcpartpicker.com/list/

I have an Asus Rog Strix GTX 1070ti paired with an AMD Ryzen 5 1600.
In almost all games, my GPU usage is under 15%.
In GTA V, I have my graphics at high and I cannot run it at a consistent 60fps. My GPU usage is normally 7% and CPU usage is at 40-50%
In Overwatch, I have my graphics maxed out and it runs around 100fps yet task manage still says my GPU is running around 10% and CPU around 50%
I know that the Ryzen 5 1600 should not be a bottleneck for the 1070ti. And even if it was a big bottleneck, my GPU should not be running at that low of a percentage.
Does anyone have any ideas? I've already fiddled with the NVIDIA control panel and power settings (I even set it to Ultimate Performance).
NVIDIA GeForce Experience had "optimal settings" for many of my games, but in reality, I can't run most of those settings at its full potential because the GPU is practically not being used.

 

[dudeman509]

Are you watching GPU usage with Task manager? It flat out lies with the 10xx cards...use something like MSI Afterburner to monitor GPU usage.

I was pretty confused too after my 970 showed similar readings between both.

 

[legocuber]

Are you watching GPU usage with Task manager? It flat out lies with the 10xx cards...use something like MSI Afterburner to monitor GPU usage.

I was pretty confused too after my 970 showed similar readings between both.

Oh my gosh! Thanks so much for that. I benchmarked GTA V again while using MSI Afterburner, and it showed my GPU usage going up to around 50%. Although that is better, GTA showed an average of only 40fps (using GeForce Experience's optimal settings). It looks like my GPU still isn't performing its best. And considering I have a 1070ti with an R5 1600, I should be able to run GTA at way more than 60fps.

Edit:
I turned all of GTAV's settings down to the minimum and things that could be turned off were turned off. FPS was still at around 40 and my GPU usage instead went to around 10 percent average and its max was 23%. CPU usage stayed in the 40% area.
I played Overwatch, and managed to get around 100-150 FPS average at high settings with the GPU usage being around 60% and CPU usage in the 50%.
It kind of looks like its a GTAV exclusive problem, but obviously, GPU usage is still low across the board.

 

[dudeman509]

Oh my gosh! Thanks so much for that. I benchmarked GTA V again while using MSI Afterburner, and it showed my GPU usage going up to around 50%. Although that is better, GTA showed an average of only 40fps (using GeForce Experience's optimal settings). It looks like my GPU still isn't performing its best. And considering I have a 1070ti with an R5 1600, I should be able to run GTA at way more than 60fps.

Edit:
I turned all of GTAV's settings down to the minimum and things that could be turned off were turned off. FPS was still at around 40 and my GPU usage instead went to around 10 percent average and its max was 23%. CPU usage stayed in the 40% area.
I played Overwatch, and managed to get around 100-150 FPS average at high settings with the GPU usage being around 60% and CPU usage in the 50%.
It kind of looks like its a GTAV exclusive problem, but obviously, GPU usage is still low across the board.

What does your CPU usage look like - are any of the cores near maxed out?

GTAV used to hate my old FX-8320 at stock speeds, but I still think it ran faster than that.

 

[legocuber]

My cpu usage is stable around 40% oddly enough.

After doing some more experimentation, it looked like only Overwatch and GTA hated my hardware.
Benchmarking with The Witcher 3 at max graphics (everything) - stable 80fps with GPU usage at max (98%)
Benchmarking with Vampyr at max graphics - 60fps with vsync and normal hardware usage as well (oddly enough, the task manager showed correct usage percentages)
CPU usage did go up to 100% just a couple times when launching a game which is fine.
I also noticed something where I was using 2333 mhz ram instead of the labeled 3200 mhz with my 16-18-18-36 Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO. XMP was enabled, but realized that the motherboard didn't like even numbered frequency so I changed it to 2933 and it works perfectly now. Timings also changed on Corsair link to 20-20-20-49 (but bios says 16-18-18-36) Task manager also still says 1067 mhz. I felt like the increase in ram frequency did provide some extra speed as well.
During games, my CPU cores are almost never maxed out and are usually consistent across all cores and processors.

 

[dudeman509]

After doing some more experimentation, it looked like only Overwatch and GTA hated my hardware.
Benchmarking with The Witcher 3 at max graphics (everything) - stable 80fps with GPU usage at max (98%)
Benchmarking with Vampyr at max graphics - 60fps with vsync and normal hardware usage as well (oddly enough, the task manager showed correct usage percentages)
CPU usage did go up to 100% just a couple times when launching a game which is fine.
I also noticed something where I was using 2333 mhz ram instead of the labeled 3200 mhz with my 16-18-18-36 Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO. XMP was enabled, but realized that the motherboard didn't like even numbered frequency so I changed it to 2933 and it works perfectly now. Timings also changed on Corsair link to 20-20-20-49 (but bios says 16-18-18-36) Task manager also still says 1067 mhz. I felt like the increase in ram frequency did provide some extra speed as well.
During games, my CPU cores are almost never maxed out and are usually consistent across all cores and processors.

Yes - Ryzen is extremely sensitive to RAM speed; that was probably holding it back a good bit.

Something like CPU-Z will tell you the true frequency; double that frequency and you've got your DDR speed.

 

[legocuber]

Yes - Ryzen is extremely sensitive to RAM speed; that was probably holding it back a good bit.

Something like CPU-Z will tell you the true frequency; double that frequency and you've got your DDR speed.

It didn't help with my fps though.
Oddly enough, with Overwatch, it didn't matter what settings I put it to. I set it to low settings, and the game still ran at about 100fps. If I put it on max settings, it would still run at 100fps. Vsync is off and I uncapped the framerate.
For GTAV, same thing. I can set it to minimum settings, and it would still run at around 40fps. If I set it to max settings, it would run at 40fps. No vsync on.
And when I set those games at the lowest settings, my gpu would only run at 40%. If I set it to max details, it would still run at 40%.
It's kind of getting annoying now since my gpu and cpu should easily run these games at max, but I can't at the moment.