GPU Utilization issues

Community General Discussion
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Hi, I was wondering if anyone else has been having an issue with regards to FPS due to the GPU not being fully used.

My PC specs quickly are:

GPU: RTX 3080 MSI Gaming x Trio

CPU: Ryzen 9 3900x 12 core

Ram: 64 GBs DDR4 3200 Mhz Corsair Vengeance RGB

Motherboard: X570 Aorus Master

PSU: 850 Watt BeQuite Platinum

SSD: 1 TB Samsung 970 EVO NvMe

The render resolution is 1440p. Even though this is a relatively high-end system the Framerates are very poor, especially compared to other games, even more modern games. On the 1 graphics presett, with no changes made, the maximum FPS the game will run at is around 120 FPS, in dungeons during encounters this will drop down to around 30-40 FPS. On the highest preset, 10, the game will run at around 80-90 FPS in the open world and drop down to around the same 30-40 FPS in dungeons. What is really confusing to me during this is that the neither the GPU nor the CPU are fully utilized at these points. The CPU will sit at around 10-20% utilization and the GPU seems to cap out at around 50%. The GPU utilization on the 1 preset in dungeons will drop down to around 30% and stay there, resulting in only getting the aforementioned 30-40 FPS during combat. The answer from the Blizzard support team was to increase the render resolution to force a higher usage of the GPU, and increasing the render resolution to 2880p does infact increase the GPU utilization to around 90-95% however does not result in any higher or more stable framerates. All drivers are up to date, windows power settings are set to max performance, in the nvidia control panel the card is also set to Performance mode, the fps is not limited, and vsync is disabled. What I have also noticed is that even though the card will, in other games pull around 400 watts when being fully utilized, in wow this never really increases past 250ish watts.

EDIT: just did some more testing in a few other games.
COD Black Ops in multiplayer will run at around 95% utilization and around 200 FPS with my graphic settings,
League of Legends: will run around 500 FPS with everything maxed and 95% Utilization
I need to wait on the install process of a few more games, COD Warzone, and the Witcher 3, to get results from these, but it seems that every other game, when the framerate is uncapped will fully utilize the GPU and increase the CPU utilization by around 10-20%. EDIT end
So I was wondering if anyone else has experience this and found out what the issue is.

Thanks

3 Likes
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Bottleneck is game engine, I’ve similar system - 3080 with 5900x and 32gb ram and low fps drops isn’t a rare sight.
Addons and especially weak auras can make it even worse so make sure to keep those up to date

2 Likes
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I’ve look into this when i upgraded also , old engines old architectures , nothing u can do about it .

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What are your temps?

Are you on balanced or power saving?

In nvidia settings are you on ‘prefer maximum performance’

Do you have any sort of FPS limit?

What is the output of the monitor 60hz 120hz ?

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Yeah kinda what i thought that the game was the issue. For me at least the addons seem to have no affect. Ive done a complete fresh install with no addons and have the same issue of it just not pushing more frames. Its pretty frustrating as especially in mythic+ when the framerate decides its going to take a nosedive down to 30 fps. Like constant 30 fps will not ideal would still be better than this up and down bull…
Temps while playing wow dont exceed 60 degrees celcius.
In windows as well as the Nvidia control pannel all power settings have peen turned to maximum performance and power draw.
FPS limits are removed and vsync has been disabled.
the monitor is a 1440p 144 Hz monitor

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which directX are you using?

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direct x12

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I got the same PC more or less (just better CPU) and if it’s anything like mine you should have some programs to fine tune the settings or your GPU / CPU, like AI Suite 3 or Armoury crate, my guess is that your PC is just set to eco mode.

1 Like
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Everyone has those issues. The game is CPU heavy and my GPU barely ever goes above 20% load.

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Thanks for the tip with the programs I’ll give them a look. I have some programs but non of that worked. I’ll look into the ones you mentioned thanks :slight_smile:
I have double and tripple checked. It is set to maximum performance not eco
What framrates are you getting and at what settings?

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Everything on high except a few things I get 80 to 200 fps depending on what’s going on with the occasional dip in raid settings.

Have you tried if there are specific settings per game? Both the program I named make it possible to change performance per app.

Is your bios up to date? drivers?

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One issue with both those apps, AI SUite 3 requiers an ASUS motherboard that i dont have, and Armoury crate doesnt apear to have any custimization options for the games

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I have a worse rig than you (RTX 3070 TI, Ryzen 5600x, 16GB ram). But i am getting significantly higher FPS. ~140 in Korthia with everything maxed out, at 4K res.

I’ve been told WoW’s engine is really bad at utilizing multiple CPU cores. So this might be a CPU bottleneck. Can you check the utilization on each core induvidially?

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Just checked and there’s a program called Aorus App Center for your MOBO.

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i think you might be right, its using most (11/12) cores at around 1-5% and one core is pegged at around 90%
so its really just that is it? cause wow sucks at using more than one core, im cpu bottlenecked…

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I hope you’re using MSI Afterburner to check CPU utilization. On DX12 games, Windows will report wrong CPU utilization. It will say ~20% but in reality it is 99%. I had this with Cyberpunk - Windows telling me it’s using 20% of the CPU, but MSI reporting 90%+ usage. MSI was of course the correct one.

Too many addons, especially weakauras that load only in combat are bound to reduce your FPS. Threatplates also drops your FPS, especially in big pulls, although that depends on your preset.

If you try the game without addons you’ll see how much better it performs. The fact that you can push the GPU to higher utilization should tell you the problem really isn’t GPU bottlenecks/lack of utilization. It is used as much as it needs to be used.

But there are many things that go into framerate. CPU is a big one, especially in MMOs.

With MSI afterburner you can check which cores exactly WoW is using, and if the load is split evenly between all your cores.

1 Like
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acording to msi afterburner i have one core sitting at 70-90% usage and the rest at around 8-15%
i have turned off all the addons and it made no differnce

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There’s something causing the game to not utilize your cores properly. I just tested it out. I think this is where your performance issues stem from. On my pretty old i7 processor, load is split pretty evenly across 4 cores and 8 threads. See if you can enable hyper-threading or if there’s something else blocking WoW from using your cores properly.

I assume the core that’s sitting at 70-90% is the only core WoW is using, with the others having some load from the OS and background stuff.

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I also used to have massive fish drops to even 20fps from 100. I solved by just playing with the normal wow frames. And only the really need addons and WA. For me elvui had a massive fps drop same with some WA. Removed the heavy WA and elvui and works a lot beter. Also I don’t play with WA option on because that can give me some extra drops. I just enable it when I want to change something and then disable it again.

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I have a Nintendo DS mounted on a Chicken McNuggets box and I’ve been having the same problem. Anyone got a fix? x