How to get the most out of my gpu?

[Baldbloke]

Hi,
My graphics card useage is around 80 to 85%. Cpu useage is around 30%.
I suspect I could improve on that. I'd like to get closer to 100% gpu useage.

Only ever play racing sims. Automobilista 2, Iracing. Always in VR. (In my case an HP Reverb G2.)

I'm a bit confused about what settings to use in Steam VR. Web searches give conflicting opinions on what resolution per eye is the best setting. Advice, please?

Even within Automobilista 2 settings, all on high or, where available, ultra, then i've also set supersampling to 1.5. (Seems unreallistically high to me. but that's what I tried it at) Still only getting 85%(ish) GPU useage.

Getting around 85 fps with a reprojection ratio around 10%

I have an RTX 3080ti and a ryzen 5 5600x.

Many thanks

 

[CuriousTomCat]

The HP Reverb G2 has a refresh rate of 90hz or 90FPS. You'll never get 100% usage out of a computer that can manage 120FPS is you're only going 90FPS.

It would be like doing 90mph in a Formula 1 car and complaining the engine isn't at 100% revs.

 

[Baldbloke]

Thanks CuriousTomCat,
I'm not hoping for more fps. The fps is fine. I realise the G2 won't do more than 90fps. Just wondering if the gpu is underused. In fact, now you've made me think about it, I'm not sure what I want. Better quality images, I suppose.

I'm a little surprised that I can set everything on full graphics quality as well as setting supersampling to 1.5 and still the graphics card has got some headroom to spare. Makes me wonder if some of my settings are wrong. The 10% reprojection rate is perhaps a clue? Dunno.

 

[arc@css]

I don't know if I'm right here but I was wondering if the 5600X, despite being a great CPU, might be holding the 3080Ti back a little?

 

[throwaway4372]

A graphics card shouldn't be at 100% because it means it's fully busy, which means it's not available to respond quickly = latency and stutter. If you were at 100% I'd be advising you to use a frame rate limiter to bring it down a bit. 85% is a decent place to be.

 

[Baldbloke]

I don't know if I'm right here but I was wondering if the 5600X, despite being a great CPU, might be holding the 3080Ti back a little?

Good point. The cpu is hovering around 30%. So I don't think it's the bottleneck here. Could be though. I suppose it might be using fewer cores at a high percentage.
Thank you.

A graphics card shouldn't be at 100% because it means it's fully busy, which means it's not available to respond quickly = latency and stutter. If you were at 100% I'd be advising you to use a frame rate limiter to bring it down a bit. 85% is a decent place to be.

Very good point. I'm quite happy with that answer. That seems like good strategy. Makes sense to me.

Thank you.

 

[Poneros]

It's a low reprojection rate, but GPU isn't fully maxed, which imo means that that little bit of reproj is down to the software not being able to fit into the hardware specs completely, which is sadly very common for games these days, but it's not so egregious in this case - for example if you were to try No Man's Sky in VR, you'd be shocked about just how much the software itself can be bottlenecked.

More hardware power can help but it's more of a band-aid and not a fix. Probably the biggest improvements you will see here is with next gen of CPUs + very fast and tightly tuned DDR5 memory. For this kind of a bottleneck it's all about reducing latency, and that's all down to memory & CPU. That's for reducing the reproj rate, but you can always just increase supersampling in order to saturate the GPU, but like others have said, it's best to leave it some space to breath so 85% is quite good - not quite maxed but also not leaving too much on the table.

 

[Dg834man]

A graphics card shouldn't be at 100% because it means it's fully busy, which means it's not available to respond quickly = latency and stutter. If you were at 100% I'd be advising you to use a frame rate limiter to bring it down a bit. 85% is a decent place to be.

If you said this about being CPU bound i would agree but its really not much of an issue with gpu

 

[CuriousTomCat]

Surely a GPU near 100% needs upgrading? I'd rather a GPU have plenty of headroom so it can handle next year's games.