Can anyone explain this high CPU/low GPU usage?

LukieBoy007

LukieBoy007

LukieBoy007

Soldato
Joined
4 Apr 2012
Posts
2,561
Location
England
Hi,

Trying to play GTA 5 after a long time of not playing, and there's something very weird going on. I have upgraded to a GTX1080 from a 970 since I last played, so I bumped up a few settings in the graphics screen. I am definitely reaching 60fps, but it is quite stuttery, and I looked at task manager to find my CPU was at 100% and GPU was at 0.1% (on average).

My system is as follows:
  • i5 3570k at 4.5 GHz
  • GTX1080
  • 16GB DDR3
I do not remember the game being this stuttery last time I played (around 2 years ago), the only thing that's changed in the system since is the RAM (went from 8GB to 16GB) and the GPU (970 to 1080). I play at 1440p as well. Here's a screenshot of task manager whilst playing.

KNt1YyU.png

Am I missing something stupid here? I'm also on the latest Windows 10 if that helps.
 
It would be far more useful to use MSI afterburner to show CPU/GPU usage in game rather than task manager.

Considering you say you haven't played it in a while, my wild guess would be that it's updating. This would be backed up by the disk writing going on - I've just fired up GTA and there's 0 disk writing and 13% CPU usage. GPU usage is 0% according to task manager, so I wouldn't read in to that value - obviously to do with being alt-tabbed out when looking at the task manager.
 
With GTA and Windows 10 you need to keep tabs on "Sleep Study", a folder in System32 folder. It has a file that somehow is triggered by GTA at times and can write up to 20GB in an hour. It can be set to Read Only but Windows keeps changing it after a day or two.

Also, I would do as Vexr said. Nothing beats having Afterburner/Rivatuner Overlay on while you are gaming, it's not the same when you alt tab out to check task manager. At that moment, the GPU might well decrease to very low usage.

But to check Disk Writes, you want Task Manager > Resource Monitor > Disk > Disk Activity. You might catch a write offender there.

And finally, the GTX 1080 is going to stress four core 3570K more than the GTX 970. So that could be the simple reason. Just yesterday I tested 4.5GHz 4770K with hyperthreading disabled in Fortnite, with a GTX 1070, and it was stuttery with all four cores maxing 100% quite often. GTX 1080 + GTA will probably be even worse. Using an fps limiter (Afterburner/Rivatuner has one) should help prevent that. Try going easy on Shadows and Grass as well.
 
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Cheers for the help both of you, I'll look into your advice, that Sleep Study stuff seems useful to know.
Task manager was open on my other monitor, which was PrtScn'd whilst I was playing.
Ryzen 3000 can't come soon enough it seems then :(
 
LukieBoy007 said:
Wow fixed it, changing to fullscreen from borderless completely removed stuttering.
Seems Windows really doesn't like borderless mode recently.
Click to expand...

Nice. It's quite random that. I get tearing in fullscreen, so does a friend, so we play borderless lol. No stutter. In the game properties (in Windows game location), there's an option to disable "Fullscreen Optimisations". Could mess with that if you ever need.
 
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