GPU usage dips while gaming

[Artomes]

I'm having usage issues with my 980ti's with pretty much every game that I have tried. Some games it happens more often and others not as much. The issue I'm having good is the cards will be running at 80% usage or so and then they will have a dip down to 10% usage randomly which causes my fps to drop for say 90 fps down to 10 fps for a second which makes my games stutter, then the usage goes right back up to where it was and it plays fine until it happens again. I have no idea what's causing this issue and it's really annoying with the cards I have. My specs are linked below. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Http://pcpartpicker.com/p/xjWdpg

 

[Deadpool27]

so videocards are normally using 80%? cause when im playing online games i only get 65-75% usage of my card. is that normal? are you using the latest driver of your card? probably yes. if so. try older drivers. and whats your cpu?

 

[Artomes]

My GPU usage varies depending on the game I'm playing and how much it's taxing my cards. I used 80% as an example, sometimes it's higher other times lower but the issues is when it dips down and makes the game stutter. My cpu is a 6700k no OC.

 

[Kanan]

Which games produce problems? Tried newest GPU drivers?

 

[Artomes]

There's a few I've tried like mad max/rise of the tomb raider/divinity/path of exile/the Witcher 3. Some do it more than others but I still get a random stutter here and there. I currently have the newest drivers. I've also tried without sli to see if that's causing it but I still get the same issue.

 

[trog100]

every so often mad max will slow for maybe a second.. i think it due to the open world nature of the game.. it is possible to drive from one side of the game world to the other pretty quickly..

i think the game has to load new textures every so often and when it does you get the noticeable brief slow down.. i have been playing it a lot lately and it is something i have noticed..

i see the same thing to lesser degree running the heaven benchmark as it changes scenes.. i think its normal and not a problem..

some games get around it by limiting the scene area you can move around in.. you move somewhere fresh and the textures get loaded each time you move.. when you fast travel in mad max this happens then.. but when you just blast off across the game world fresh textures have to be loaded into the cards memory on the fly.. hence the slight pause in frame rates every now and then..

trog

 

[Kanan]

Insert your specs here pls: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/account/specs

Maybe it has to do with other hardware.

 

[Artomes]

Insert your specs here pls: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/account/specs

Maybe it has to do with other hardware.

I updated my specs on there. I'm not sure what other hardware might be causing the issue as it only happens during gaming.

 

[Artomes]

every so often mad max will slow for maybe a second.. i think it due to the open world nature of the game.. it is possible to drive from one side of the game world to the other pretty quickly..

i think the game has to load new textures every so often and when it does you get the noticeable brief slow down.. i have been playing it a lot lately and it is something i have noticed..

i see the same thing to lesser degree running the heaven benchmark as it changes scenes.. i think its normal and not a problem..

some games get around it by limiting the scene area you can move around in.. you move somewhere fresh and the textures get loaded each time you move.. when you fast travel in mad max this happens then.. but when you just blast off across the game world fresh textures have to be loaded into the cards memory on the fly.. hence the slight pause in frame rates every now and then..

trog

In mad max the problem is I'll be at 99/98% usage on both cards and then it'll drop to less then 10% usage randomly giving me a stutter then go right back up to normal.

 

[Kanan]

I updated my specs on there. I'm not sure what other hardware might be causing the issue as it only happens during gaming.

Temperatures are fine? I'm somewhat puzzled, because your system and everything seems fine, maybe someone else knows more.

 

[Artomes]

For my top card under heavy gaming it sits at 70c and the bottom card is around 60c. My CPU under load sits at 50c so I think my temps are good and there's no overheating.

 

[basco]

this board has got a lot of bios updates in a short time-so you got the latest?-- 1602

and in which slots you got your 2nd 980ti?
and where is your ssd + hdd plugged in?

keep care of pci-e lane sharing?

 

[trog100]

i have never had the time to look at the actual frame rate count during the very brief slow downs in mad max.. they usually occur during fast driving scenes.. but as i say i am pretty sure its perfectly normal.. the game has to load more textures every so often and the cards cant load more textures at the same time as banging out the frames..

you are creating problems that dont exist.. its normal.. my mad max does exactly the same thing and there is bugger all wrong with my system.. he he

just to make sure we are talking about the same thing.. you are blasting along at super speed with the scenery flashing past at super speed and suddenly for maybe one or two seconds it all slows (lags) and then instantly speeds up to normal again..

it dosnt happen that often but often enough to notice when it does.. tis a bit disconcerting when it happens.. but i am pretty sure its normal as the cards load fresh textures into vram from ram....

on a power usage graph.. it will show up as brief but very sharp dips (downward spikes) from the steady line read out..

trog

 

[Vayra86]

Regarding the games you have tested, so you have some reference info

- Path of Exile stutter can be network related, and the game has an ingame latency graph. This can be useful for analyzing the stutters in that game. I know for a fact this game can stutter, and when it does it is always 100% network related. Check what network mode you have the game on, there are two, and see which works best with your connection. If you have stutter nót network related with this game, then yes its a problem with your PC. The game itself runs butter smooth and requires very little CPU/GPU.

- The Witcher 3 brings virtually every config to its knees at this time, although 980ti SLI will have more than enough grunt for this game, the game pushes a lot of data around in the PC, including CPU physics (Speedtree). Any kind of bottlenecking is likely to show very well in this game, but overall the game should run without actual stutter, but with occasional frame drops in especially more crowded areas. Most of these frame drops are CPU related, and even faster CPUs suffer from this. Apart from that, when walking casually in the countryside, it should most definitely be stutter free.

The other games I have no extensive experience/testing in, so cant comment.

A very good testing title will be GTA V. It is open world, streamed content, so very similar to TW3 in that respect and it taxes CPU/GPU sufficiently. It has also received all the necessary patching and driver updates. If thát stutters on a regular basis, definitely look at your PC further and not at the games. I run this game 100% stutter free on the specs you see under my name.

I doubt this requires pointing out, but you can rest assured that this stuttering is not due to some bottleneck somewhere, you've got a very powerful rig that is well balanced.

I would personally start with checking BIOS updates and making sure you have the best/most recent one, use DDU or something to really get a clean install on drivers, INCLUDING the chipset drivers (!), and perhaps double check or redo your windows install. If the problems still persist, you need to start looking into hardware. Also,, check the Intel site for any Skylake related fixes, the platform is rather new.

If you upgraded your Windows 7 / 8 / 8.1 install to Win 10, perform a clean install of Win 10 instead.

@trog100 about stutter and streamed content. A well coded game does NOT stutter when streaming the game world. Far Cry 4 doesn't stutter, but it did at release, just like GTA V, any and all GTAs before that, Borderlands doesn't stutter... well I could go on. But you get the point. Mad Max is just not as optimized as it should be, which figures as its a cheap console port on an older engine. Frame drops are also not stutter, and losing GPU usage while gaming is a different kind of stutter than what you get when assets are loaded. CPU/RAM related stutter (basically that means you hit a data transfer bottleneck somewhere in the pipeline) is generally also not 'one small stutter' but a very rapid series of microstutters, a bit like a car braking hard on ABS.

 

[trog100]

i know what mad max does on my system.. its not a problem.. lets say it is something that "happens".. i have my own theories as to the cause.. it might be described as a very rapid series of micro stutters lasting a tad less than two seconds.. the bottleneck is a simple one in my opinion.. fresh textures being loaded from ram to vram.. it happens and is noticeable when it does but not often enough for me to bother about it..

i dont see it with witcher but that is a much slower moving game.. cars going faster than horses..

it is hard to accurately describe.. a very short series of micro stutters is as god a description as any..

i recon this is what the OP is seeing.. simple as that..

trog

ps.. this place loves a good "problem" to solve.. maybe even when there aint one.. he he

 

[Artomes]

i know what mad max does on my system.. its not a problem.. lets say it is something that "happens".. i have my own theories as to the cause.. it might be described as a very rapid series of micro stutters lasting a tad less than two seconds.. the bottleneck is a simple one in my opinion.. fresh textures being loaded from ram to vram.. it happens and is noticeable when it does but not often enough for me to bother about it..

i dont see it with witcher but that is a much slower moving game.. cars going faster than horses..

it is hard to accurately describe.. a very short series of micro stutters is as god a description as any..

i recon this is what the OP is seeing.. simple as that..

trog

ps.. this place loves a good "problem" to solve.. maybe even when there aint one.. he he

Mad max isn't the only game I'm having good issues with. In mad max my stuttering issue isn't only when I'm driving it's also happened while walking or fighting. It's also happened with GTA V but not very often it only happens very seldom in that game. I've also experienced the same issue in project cars and dying light so I don't think it's specific to one game it happens in pretty much every game the only difference is how often The issue occurs. I'm not sure which bios version I'm l running but I will check that and update it if there's a new version available.

 

[trog100]

do you see it when when running a benchmark like say heaven.. the small little dips on the gpu usage and power lines show it up.. i think its when new scene textures are being loaded..

this is purely my opinion but i think these things including most games are built to work with 2 gig or less of vram.. they would be better if they took advantage of whatever vram was available.. they seem to have load textures too often..

the little dips show up as very brief stutters.. you have to look closely to spot them..

if you think what i am waffling on about isnt the same as your own problem just ignore my comment.. he he..

trog

 

[Artomes]

I have seen the dips in GPU usage while running heaven benchmark also. I see the dips on your usage and I get those also and they don't affect my gameplay. My dips go all the way down to 10% or less usage which drops my frames to 10 or so but every briefly. I can post a screen of my afterburner for you to see how much mine dips down.

 

[kn00tcn]

why are we assuming the gpu usage is 'dipping'? if the cpu or ram or hard drive cannot send data to the gpu, the gpu starts going idle, framerate drops & usage is low

you have to be monitoring cpu & drive activity to see if there is any correlation with the dips

you probably also want to monitor every other possible gfx sensor, maybe it's a boost clocking issue, maybe it tried to go into idle clocks, etc

another thing to try is to run the game windowed, then click out of it into another window or the desktop, if that is identical usage & framerate, then maybe the game is losing focus

 

[Artomes]

I've monitored my GPU usage and cpu usage with afterburner and what I've noticed is that the only thing that fluctuates is the GPU usage when I have issues. My cpu stays the same. I can monitor all this parameters but what program would you suggest to use?

 

[Kanan]

I've monitored my GPU usage and cpu usage with afterburner and what I've noticed is that the only thing that fluctuates is the GPU usage when I have issues. My cpu stays the same. I can monitor all this parameters but what program would you suggest to use?

Firestrike / Firestrike Ultra. For now I think it's a software problem. Maybe a driver problem or your windows is bad.

 

[Artomes]

I know I can run firestrike to test the system out but what would be a good monitoring program to see all the info that I need to check to see what might be wrong?

 

[trog100]

GPU-Z set to record to a txt file.. it a bit hard to figure out what read out is what and it dosnt give you a graphical read out.. but it does record everything that happens over as long a time period as you like..

as i say i think those dips are when fresh game textures are being loaded.. they are small dips in heaven because the amount of textures being loaded is small.. in a game the textures would be bigger and the dips greater..

in any open world game textures will have to be loaded on the fly at some point.. when they are the card literally stops dead in its tracks.. until proven wrong i am gonna stick with this theory.. he he

trog

 

[Kanan]

I know I can run firestrike to test the system out but what would be a good monitoring program to see all the info that I need to check to see what might be wrong?

MSI Afterburner, GPU-Z, your own observation based on experience, task manager.

So, does it run at 100% in Firestrike all the time?

 

[RejZoR]

It is possible to starve the GPU with other means, like slow HDD. Though, that can't be the case since you're on SSD.

What antivirus are you using? Some like Comodo Cloud AV, Comodo Internet Security and Windows Defender cause lag with scanning files for the first time. But then they cache data so these dips shouldn't repeat in short timeframe (like a matter of day or two).

Try opening Eventi Viewer (right click start button -> Event Viewer -> Windows Logs)

Scroll through "Applications" and "System" entries and look for yellow and red warnings. Maybe that will reveal something (I had cases where my old CPU was falling into C states during heavy loads when it shouldn't).