Low GPU Usage R9 390 Sapphire Nitro

[xvi]

Perfcap is indeed only for NVIDIA.

Oops. Must have run out of coffee.

I'd be curious to see the sensors after running a game/benchmark.

 

[flmatter]

Sorry too big. Turned my star wars battle front res to 1600x900 closet I could to your max res. pulled up crimson and screen shot of it. Card pretty much ramps and down depending on load. In game it was about 980mhz and as you see 961 with it running tabbed out. I also run trixx in background for a custom fan profile to my liking.

 

[MorpHeer]

The 390 clock scales to GPU load. If you have v-sync on or you're running a frame rate capped game (or are using frame rate target control or you're hitting a bottleneck that isn't your GPU,) the 390 will clock up enough to give you full performance but not higher than it needs to in order to achieve it.

This is an example of a game that is limited by v-sync in the case of 60FPS but is CPU bound when you zoom in, which is why this instance never actually hits my full 1040Mhz; because 1040Mhz worth of GPU power wasn't demanded out of the GPU.

View attachment 70466

I don't have v-sync on.
I haven't played frame rate capped games.
Frame rate target control is disabled.
The CPU isn't bottlenecking.

I know the GPU does not run at full power in low gpu demanding games like CS:GO, LOL, HOTS and this is not a problem, but for me even if the game is gpu demanding the core clock its not raising if i play at low graphics settings to achieve high fps.

 

[MorpHeer]

Sorry too big. Turned my star wars battle front res to 1600x900 closet I could to your max res. pulled up crimson and screen shot of it. Card pretty much ramps and down depending on load. In game it was about 980mhz and as you see 961 with it running tabbed out. I also run trixx in background for a custom fan profile to my liking.View attachment 70470

Was the game running at low settings ?
What is the resolution you usually play at ?

 

[Aquinus]

Was the game running at low settings ?
What is the resolution you usually play at ?

Cities: Skylines. Full graphics, AA cranked up to 8xEQ for this game. I usually play at 1080p unless it's a game that runs surround well.

 

[MorpHeer]

Cities: Skylines. Full graphics, AA cranked up to 8xEQ for this game. I usually play at 1080p unless it's a game that runs surround well.

In Garry's Mod the GPU stays at 0% a lot.

The core clock is 450MHz
This gives me 22 fps

 

[Ferrum Master]

It's the power limit! AMD has perfcaps... since GCN1. Raise up the wattage for the card and see.... your freqs will jump up where they belong.

You can tamper around this tool http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=404465

or play with Afterburner OC additional settings to force your preferred likeness.

 

[MorpHeer]

It's the power limit! AMD has perfcaps... since GCN1. Raise up the wattage for the card and see.... your freqs will jump up where they belong.

You can tamper around this tool http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=404465

or play with Afterburner OC additional settings to force your preferred likeness.

ClockBlocker works fine, it makes my core clock stay at 1040MHz but the gpu usage is very low.
Raising the power limit or voltage in MSI Afterburner doesen't help.
In Garry's Mod for example GPU usage stay at 0% 5 seconds then 5% 1 second, i have 22 fps.
If i look directly at the ground the gpu usage its 45-50%.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Look, I'm not running AMD, but the same principle applies to this game for both camps, and I have spent many hours on AC:S. It's a beautiful game that runs on a slightly downgraded engine from AC: Unity.

Maxed out it is VRAM intensive, averaging about 3.6GB, but I rarely ever see the GPU load even hit 80%. If a game does not require full GPU load to present itself at 60fps, the GPU will not use it. There is no reason for it.

 

[MorpHeer]

Look, I'm not running AMD, but the same principle applies to this game for both camps, and I have spent many hours on AC:S. It's a beautiful game that runs on a slightly downgraded engine from AC: Unity.

Maxed out it is VRAM intensive, averaging about 3.6GB, but I rarely ever see the GPU load even hit 80%. If a game does not require full GPU load to present itself at 60fps, the GPU will not use it. There is no reason for it.

But even if the game requires GPU load to work, the GPU won't use it.
I have 22 fps in Garry's Mod and the GPU will not increase the load more than 5%

 

[Aquinus]

In Garry's Mod the GPU stays at 0% a lot.
View attachment 70482
The core clock is 450MHz
This gives me 22 fps

Depending on what you're doing, physics might be making it CPU bound. This is the same reason why Cities: Skylines bottlenecks on CPU; simulation takes more and more time the more there is to do. So bigger cities = lower frame rate even if GPU isn't fully utilized. You say that you don't have a CPU bottleneck but in simulation games, I would argue that a CPU bottleneck is very realistic. That i5 of yours is much more likely to be a bottleneck than my 3820 just because your using 1333Mhz memory and it's clocked lower but, even I encounter CPU bottlenecks for most simulation based games.

It wouldn't be the first time I've seen Garry's Mod slow down to a crawl because of physics run a muck either.

Once again, low clocks means something other than your GPU is the bottleneck. The only exception to that rule is if it's thermal or power limit throttling, which it doesn't appear to be doing.

 

[EarthDog]

+1 Aquinas!

Oy, the double posting tho'........................

 

[MorpHeer]

Depending on what you're doing, physics might be making it CPU bound. This is the same reason why Cities: Skylines bottlenecks on CPU; simulation takes more and more time the more there is to do. So bigger cities = lower frame rate even if GPU isn't fully utilized. You say that you don't have a CPU bottleneck but in simulation games, I would argue that a CPU bottleneck is very realistic. That i5 of yours is much more likely to be a bottleneck than my 3820 just because your using 1333Mhz memory and it's clocked lower but, even I encounter CPU bottlenecks for most simulation based games.

It wouldn't be the first time I've seen Garry's Mod slow down to a crawl because of physics run a muck either.

In Garry's Mod the CPU usage never surpassed 35% so its 100% not a CPU bottleneck.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Once again, low clocks means something other than your GPU is the bottleneck. The only exception to that rule is if it's thermal or power limit throttling, which it doesn't appear to be doing.

Except CPU load is not THAT high either. On mine I don't think it goes above 50%. I can certainly check again tonight though.

EDIT: I notice the OP is running 1333 RAM, and has 8GB. My system reports 7.9 to 8.5GB RAM usage in AC:S, fluctuating a little while playing. Could this be part of it for him?

 

[Aquinus]

In Garry's Mod the CPU usage never surpassed 35% so its 100% not a CPU bottleneck.

You assume that Garry's Mod is capable of scaling perfectly to 4 cores in every situation. I argue that's not a realistic expectation. Cities: Skylines might bottleneck on the CPU but, it doesn't need to utilize 8 full threads in order to do that because of the nature of how the game was written (and what's realistically feasible for a "realtime" application.) There are limits to how much an application can scale to the number of cores given time constraints and latency requirements. Simply put, you can have a CPU bottleneck without utilizing every core.

EDIT: I notice the OP is running 1333 RAM, and has 8GB. My system reports 7.9 to 8.5GB RAM usage in AC:S, fluctuating a little while playing. Could this be part of it for him?

Doesn't explain Garry's Mod, which I would argue still boils down to the CPU. The game should run fine so long as no more swapping happens after the game is fully loaded.

 

[MorpHeer]

Except CPU load is not THAT high either. On mine I don't think it goes above 50%. I can certainly check again tonight though.

EDIT: I notice the OP is running 1333 RAM, and has 8GB. My system reports 7.9 to 8.5GB RAM usage in AC:S, fluctuating a little while playing. Could this be part of it for him?

This is not a problem about ACS anymore.
The core clocks were low in less demanding games making them unplayable.
Now that i stopped the downclocking the core clock is 1040MHz in any game but the GPU usage is very low making the games still unplayable.

GPU usage in Gmod 0% most of the time.

 

[rtwjunkie]

This is not a problem about ACS anymore.

Oh, you probably should edit your thread title then.. Reading it still didn't seem you had a solution.

 

[MorpHeer]

Oops. Must have run out of coffee.

I'd be curious to see the sensors after running a game/benchmark.

During a benchmark everything is perfect.
1040MHz core clock , 100% GPU usage

 

[Ferrum Master]

Haven't you put a FPS limiter somewhere actually? Your registry is a mess probably.

Try using DDU to get rid of the catalyst/crimson mess. They conflict. Before that uninstall afterburner and delete traces of settings. Afterburner settings mess up each new driver due to different registry/xml values.

If the power limit ain't the reason. And his CPU is healthy, no throttling... zero ram errors.

Reinstall. Clear cmos, to ensure the thing boots uefi mode and adresses right memory space... and yes... no darn raptr software... plain driver and control center.

 

[MorpHeer]

Haven't you put a FPS limiter somewhere actually? Your registry is a mess probably.

Try using DDU to get rid of the catalyst/crimson mess. They conflict. Before that uninstall afterburner and delete traces of settings. Afterburner settings mess up each new driver due to different registry/xml values.

If the power limit ain't the reason. And his CPU is healthy, no throttling... zero ram errors.

Reinstall. Clear cmos, to ensure the thing boots uefi mode and adresses right memory space... and yes... no darn raptr software... plain driver and control center.

There is not FPS limiter anywhere.
I used DDU to get rid of crimson drivers before i installed catalyst drivers.
I uninstalled MSI Afterburner and used TRIXX from Sapphire for some time but there was no difference.
I never installed the raptr gaming evolved app.

 

[Ferrum Master]

I have an idea...

For garrys mod get gedosato.

Or use VSR... crank up the resolution to 4K an see the load... report the results.

 

[MorpHeer]

I have an idea...

For garrys mod get gedosato.

Or use VSR... crank up the resolution to 4K an see the load... report the results.

I used VSR to crank up the resolution in Garry's Mod to 2560x1600, max settings, 8x MSAA and this are the results:

The GPU usage is very unstable: 100% 81% 0% 50% 95% 75% 35%
I get 70-100 fps.

 

[Aquinus]

I used VSR to crank up the resolution in Garry's Mod to 2560x1600, max settings, 8x MSAA and this are the results:

View attachment 70489

The GPU usage is very unstable: 100% 81% 0% 50% 95% 75% 35%
I get 70-100 fps.

That's normal with dynamic clocks. See my screenshot again.

 

[Ferrum Master]

I used VSR to crank up the resolution in Garry's Mod to 2560x1600, max settings, 8x MSAA and this are the results:

View attachment 70489

The GPU usage is very unstable: 100% 81% 0% 50% 95% 75% 35%
I get 70-100 fps.

The card is a dud I suppose. Something (probably VRM) tells her to quit working as long it starts rolling current. BTW... are your voltages fine? The main rails? This some sort of voodoo stuff going on... a nuke is probably needed.

Okay then the board... B85M-K BIOS 1010? Is that department OKAY? The changle log says dramatic magical term increase performance... it means the board had a serious derp un bios once... The CPU itself on those freqs is not enough for the GPU actually... but not is such a drastic behavior manner.

So upgrade BIOS. Reseat everything, GPU in PCIE slot and RAM... (actually I don't like the sucker, it slow and alone, the board starves from ram speed, not only from the lack of CPU horsepower).

As a last resort... try OCCT... the GPU section, see if it doesn't count artifacts already there, mark the memory test also (2000 is max). If you wish you can test the CPU/RAM domain too. GPU problems reveal itself very fast, usually 10-15mins and an error shows up.

That's normal with dynamic clocks. See my screenshot again.

Could you put up a bigger pic please? I don't remember such behaviour on mine 7970, it usually steamed off to the max... but yeah... I did mod the bios and set the power limit so high, that it didn't dare to throttle.

 

[Aquinus]

Could you put up a bigger pic please? I don't remember such behaviour on mine 7970, it usually steamed off to the max... but yeah... I did mod the bios and set the power limit so high, that it didn't dare to throttle.

I updated the post with the full sized version but here we are again: