Measured gpu usage with afterburner, questions

[NedLynch]

I use afterburner to overclock my EVGA gtx470 at times without any problems and of course in games I am displaying to what percentage the game uses the gpu, together with clockspeeds and temp.

Overclocked or not, afterburner shows a gpu usage of great variety in flight, around 50% (maybe lower) to 80% ish at framerates that would make you think, if the gpu was being used at 99% I'd have more fps, one side effect is that the card stays very cool in flight (64 -66 celsius).

Overclocking the card seems to have only a marginal impact on in flight fps contrary to other games ( used Crysis2 to test the overclock I had further and with high res texture pack and dx11 I had 55 - 75 fps @ 99% gpu usage, 40 - 60 fps @ stock speed ).

My question is, is this the game or maybe the current nvidia driver (280.xx) and is anyone else observing low gpu usage?

My setting in the nvidia cp is to prefer maximum performance on the card.

I am also going to try the 270.xx whql driver to see if that has an impact on gpu usage.

I do apologize if this has been brought up before.

[Koroshima]

I have the same card (EVGA GTX 470) using 280.26 and read mid-to-very-high (often a constant 99% in "heavy detail" situations) GPU usage in-game. At what settings and resolution do you run the game?

Also, while those are nice card temperatures, in the future you should also post idle temps, since temperature readings by themselves are highly subjective and harder to use without a gradient to compare against.

[Vengeanze]

Originally Posted by Koroshima

I have the same card (EVGA GTX 470) using 280.26 and read mid-to-very-high (often a constant 99% in "heavy detail" situations) GPU usage in-game. At what settings and resolution do you run the game?

Also, while those are nice card temperatures, in the future you should also post idle temps, since temperature readings by themselves are highly subjective and harder to use without a gradient to compare against.

Ambient temp (room temp) is useful too.

[335th_GRAthos]

Originally Posted by NedLynch

is anyone else observing low gpu usage?

GPU usage tests as much as you want:
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=23199

(hope you have a very big monitor and high speed connection, the GPU monitor is on the far right...... )


~S~

[NedLynch]

I rolled back the driver to 270.xx whql.

My ambient temp is around 25 celsius.

Idle temp for the card is around 42 celsius.

Rolling back the driver did not really do anything for fps, but in any case that is the driver I am most comfortable with (can explain if needed).

I have to say it is fairly difficult to keep ambient temps down at the moment here in Florida, it is hot, really, really hot. Airconditioner is running all day struggling to keep the temps down.

Oh, not sure if it really makes a big difference for the card, my case is an HAF 922, door fan and front fan (200mm) blowing in, rear (140mm) and top (200mm) exhaust. Card fan depending if overclocked or not set appropriately (80 - 100%).

Game set to 1xAA (looks better than 2x for me), ssao on, clouds on, shadows, roads, grass on, model detail high, textures original, everything else medium, resolution 1600x900, vsync on (really strong flickering of prop in clouds without vsync).

Monitor 22inch, 1920x1080 native@60hz.

For comparison, in Crysis2 the card runs up to 75 celsius overclocked.