Hi all.
Been starting up this game again recently, only to discover a strange noise coming from my tower when I played my first game.
I realised it was my GPU, and upon checking my monitoring software, I realise it was running at 100 % load at all times.
I’ve upgraded the Motherboard and CPU about a year ago, but kept my old trusty GPU, and as far as I am concerned, the hardware in my computer should to some extend not produce the worst kind of bottlenecks.
My specs:
Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z370 Aorus Gaming 5
CPU: Intel i5 8600k
GPU: GIGABYTE GTX 970 4GB Windforce
RAM: 4x4 GB 2666 MHz (16GB in total)
I havent had any issue in other games, and not with FPS drops or anything in SC2 aswell. I’ve tried a clean reinstall which didnt help, and by tweaking different setting I dont see any change.
The only thing that can lower the GPU usage is to put all settings to the absolute lowest, and then the GPU usage still runs around 50 % - 70 % which I find quite high at those graphics.
I should mentioned that I play on a 1440p 60hz monitor, and havent tried to scale the resolution down to 1080p yet.
Anyone with any input would be greatly appreciated.
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Howdy!
This isn’t a problem per se unless you are seeing overheating then that would be an issue with the system keeping the game cool under load. As for the best approach here.
Capping FPS will reduce both CPU and GPU load, same with lowering settings. The program here though is your CPU is a lot faster than the GPU thus it bottlenecked.
As to why this is occurring, let’s say your CPU is taking 8ms, and your GPU is taking 6ms. You are then CPU bound (since it is taking longer) with your CPU never getting a rest (i.e. 100% usage on one core), and your GPU resting 2MS of each frame. You have an FPS of 125. If you cap your FPS to 100 (i.e. 10ms frame), then your CPU will rest for 2ms, and your GPU will rest for 4ms fixing the issue.
The reverse is also true. If your GPU is taking 20ms, and your CPU is taking 10ms, you are then GPU bound at 50fps. If you cap your FPS to 30, then each frame gets 33ms. Your GPU would then rest for 13ms instead of being 100% active, and your CPU would rest for 23ms (whereas uncapped it was resting for 10ms while it waited for the GPU).
You are using a newer CPU with the ability to be overclocked and has a very fast single-core performance with an older GPU so you are GPU bound. I would recommend checking your GPU temperatures with a program like HWmonitor. If the GPU is staying under 80c while you play at load then you should be fine as being at load itself isn’t technically an issue unless overheating is occurring.
I hope this helps explain what is going on here. Overall unless there is a heating problem you should be fine to play at even higher settings if you maintain 60FPS at all times. I would recommend double-checking you’re not going over 60FPS by enabling Vsync (Show FPS in-game with Ctrl + Alt + F ). You could also mix this with lowering settings but in lowering settings you also make it easier on the CPU with certain settings unless you goto the lowest settings which will give the GPU a chance to catch up.
Thanks!