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Sapphire Tri-X R9 290 100% GPU Usage

SteWoo

SteWoo

SteWoo

Associate
Joined
21 Nov 2011
Posts
73
Location
Liverpool
I'm having a weird issue with my R9 290 where on SOME games the GPU usage is instantly maxing out at 100% and sticking on 100%. It first happened when I played a game for the first time a few days after I upgraded to Windows 10 and I updated to to Catalyst 15.7.1. I'm really struggling to work out why it's suddenly started doing this on some games!

Symptoms
On some games the GPU usage maxes out at 100% and sticks at 100% as soon as the game reaches the start menu; I'm not even actually playing the game! Games that I have ran and the 100% symptoms occur on are The Witcher 3, Battlefield 4, Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor, and Sniper Elite V3. Before I upgraded to Windows 10 and Catalyst 15.7.1 the symptoms definitely didn't occur on The Witcher, Shadow of Mordor, or Battlefield. Even if I turn the graphical settings down to the lowest possible setting the GPU still maxes out at 100% and sticks at 100%, and even when I Alt + Tab out of some games the GPU continues to stay at 100% usage.

What's strange is it doesn't occur when playing some games such as Far Cry 3, Red Faction Guerilla, and Dragon Age Inquisition.

Attempts at fixing
I've re-downloaded Catalyst 15.7.1 and reinstalled it; on Device Manager Windows is reporting I have Driver Version 15.200.1062.1003 and MSI Afterburner reports I have Catalyst 15.7 but the symptoms still occur.

I also attempted to Roll Back Driver from Device Manager which put me back to Driver Version 15.200.1046.2 but MSI Afterburner wasn't reporting the Catalyst version I had so I'm not sure if the Roll Back worked :confused: ? Anyway the problems still occurred after that attempt.

I've also had the card out and checked the connections which are all fine.

I've tried searching around AMD's site to find the last Driver to manually install it but I couldn't find it anywhere!

I'm pretty stumped as to what is causing this, can anyone offer any suggestions?
 
Grab the latest drivers from here:
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download

There are direct links on the right side of the page for each OS.

Then use this (no need to uninstall them via AMD's tool first, just run it and follow the instructions):
http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html

Then reinstall the drivers from the file you downloaded. Not saying it'll definetly solve your problem, but it'll allow you to rule out any driver conflict by removing any traces of old stuff.
 
Yep I was never having this problem on Windows 7. The only things that have changed since the problem started happening is upgrading to Windows 10 and upgrading to Catalyst 15.7.1, I'm not sure which is the culprit though (or if either are).

It's not normal for the GPU to max out at 100% on the title screen of a game is it?
 
Last edited:
Usually not. The easy way to check is if you have a toold like MSi Afterburner installed. Go into a game and play a bit (should hit 100% GPU usage) then ALT+Tab to desktop and it should drop to normal levels. Looks like you've already done that though so it could either be Windows 10, the GPu drivers you installed or a mixture of both.

Try installing a different GPU driver maybe?
 
I've monitored the GPU usage with MSI Afterburner on multiple games and I get varying results.

Sniper Elite V3 - 100% GPU usage as soon as I hit the start screen. After Alt + Tabbing out of the game the GPU usage sticks at 100% until I exit the game.

Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor - 100% GPU usage as soon as I hit the start screen. After Alt + Tabbing out of the game the GPU usage drops back down to 0%.

I attempted to use the Roll Back Driver functionality on Device Manager which apparently rolled me back to Driver Version 15.200.1046.2 but I don't know if the Roll Back worked correctly. I've had a look on the AMD site for the previous driver version but I'm not sure which version I need!
 
Totally stumped still. I've uninstalled 15.7.1 using the Display Driver Uninstall tool, cleaned up any AMD folder on my drives, and just installed the old Catalyst 14.12 and still have the same issues.

Could it be a Windows 10 issue?
 
Performed scans with Comodo and Malware bytes, everything came back OK.

I might have to get an old HDD and install Win 7 or 8.1 on it to see if its a Windows 10 issue
 
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