Question RTX 2060 low usage

[Ajarix]

PC Specs:
i7 4790k @stock
16GB RAM
MSI Ventus RTX 2060 OC

So I have been pleased with this card (RTX 2060) as it is a big upgrade in performance vs my old R9 380 despite not reaching 100% usage. My concern however is that when gaming, my GPU never seems to hit 99/100% usage. Often it is around 50-85% usage with vsync off! I ran MSI Afterburner monitoring the temps and usage of each core and thread to see if the cores being used by the game were at 100% or something. They were at anywhere from 50 to 75ish (only 1, possibly 2 core(s) would reach 75-80% every now and then). Like I said, I am happy with the performance of this card but i hate not knowing why a certain problem is occurring with my PC.

My past experience with AMD is that the card would push as many frames as it could possibly manage maxing at 100% usage so I do not understand why Nvidia is not the same. I have changed the power management mode inside NVIDIA control panel to "Prefer maximum performance" and windows power settings to "high performance" but this seems to have made no difference in my results.

Games I have tested with these problems are PUBG, Fortnite, Anthem and Apex Legends. I ran Heaven benchmark and GPU usage was at 99% so no problem there. Also, I am aware that with my 144hz monitor, I will not be benefiting from more frames but it is more out of curiosity that it is annoying me.

I get about 85% to low 90s when running 'Epic' preset in fortnite for example however, lowering to low settings gives me 40-60% usage. I have attatched a screenshot to show 'Low' settings.

Could this simply be a rivatuner bug since I am getting more frames when lowering settings despite the lower gpu usage?

 

[LTC8K6]

CPU bound in the games?

 

[Campy]

Either you are CPU limited or there may be a frame rate limit in the game's options.

 

[Ajarix]

CPU bound in the games?

Would the cores used by the game being played not be pegged at higher usage if this were the case? Also, my guess is that considering I am getting almost 300fps on 'low' and over 100 on 'epic', i would have said that the CPU usage im seeing here is quite low/normal implying the game itself isnt very CPU bound? I'm not really sure and whilst like i said it isn't a big deal when im getting good fps, it still bothers me to know i could potentially get even better performance.

Thanks for your reply!

 

[Ajarix]

Either you are CPU limited or there may be a frame rate limit in the game's options.

How can I be CPU limited when the cores are not at full usage? I have the 'unlimited' fps option set so unless there is some sort of fps cap in the game engine, i dont know. However, I would assume that if there was some sort of cap, the GPU usage would rise and work harder to achieve that cap instead of seeing the variations in frame rate with little to no increase in GPU usage. I'm so confused lol.

 

[Rayman30]

296FPS? it could be the case that you are being limited by game's engine, could you provide some information about the game and resolution/graphic settings?

 

[postmortemIA]

Try Kingdom Come: Deliverance, it will max both your CPU and GPU. Good luck getting more than 60FPS.

There aren't many games that would need to utilize multiple cores completely, usually one core will be maxed.

 

[ZGR]

I highly recommend overclocking the CPU if you can. I am CPU limited all the time at 180hz and rarely do I see a core remain at 100%. Faster DDR3 also helps but it is so old at this point.

Try using DSR @ 4k and keep 144hz as a test.

What motherboard, power supply, and CPU cooler do you have? What are your RAM speed and timings?

I found 4.4-4.6 GHz pretty easy on a 212 EVO using a 4690k. As long as you stay below 1.3v temps remain pretty decent.