Low GPU usage in games

[skaskaster]

Hi all. I have a problem with my Powercolor 6970.
One day, when i was playing Battlefield 3, the screen went black, and nothing helped, so i rebooted my PC. After that i noticed, that i have a very strange low GPU usage in GPU intensive games like BF3, Natural Selection 2, GRID 2 and others.
My rig:
AMD 8320 @ 4.6Ghz
Asus Sabertooth 990FX
8gb Samsung DDR3 1600
HIPRO ADRENALIN 750w
And 64 bit Windows 7


So what i've already tried:
Changing power value to +20
Deleting 13.9 drivers, cleaning with Driver Sweeper, and installing 13.4 and 13.11 beta. I have to say that DS couldn't delete some registry values, because he didn't have the rights to do that, so i deleted them by myself.
Than I disabled windows driver update/search that comes after rebooting when you delete the drivers (i really thought that was the problem), so nothing could stop me from CLEAN driver install. And that didn't solve my problem.
"Ok, maybe it is because of my overclock" - i thought. Loaded default settings in bios and MSI Afterburner... No, the overclocking is nothing to do with this.
Next thing i did - Auslogics Boostspeed with all its regestry cleaners, HDD deframentation and other cleaning stuff. The cure was not found.
So i went further and flashed my videocard with another powercolor BIOS. When i bought this card, i flashed it with 940/1450 one, but now i downgraded back to 880/1350 one. Didn't help at all!
I even disabled that thing that decrease perfomance for Crossfire users, don't remember the name, but you need to change one value in registry for that. Yeah, i'm a single card user, but who knows...

And now some strange things that i noticed:
In BF3 - when i move my camera at my feet, the GPU usage is good (not 98-99% like i had before, but still good). But when i look at the battlefield with all its players/vehicles/explosions and other stuff, my GPU usage is going down.


It looks like my CPU is too weak for the GPU, or not all cores are working. I checked this - no core parking, all 8 cores running good and LinX result was as usual 96 Gflops (the LinX version with fma).
I tried ti re-install this game, but no result... Windowed mode, fullscreen - no difference.
The other strange thing - i can get 98-99% GPU load only in stress tests and benchmarks like Furmark, Unigine and others.

In 3dMark Fire Strike i have Graphics Score 3977 Physics Score 8287 with overall result 3728.
So can anyone help me? I really don't want to re-install windows

 

[Darknecron]

Those symptoms definitely point towards a processor bottleneck, but I don't see how that could happen with your 8-core at 4.6 GHz. Try setting all settings in BF3 to min, restart the game, and play like that for a bit. Then set everything back to the what you were using, restart game, and see if your framerate improved at all.

Which PCIE slot do you have the 6970 in?

When your screen went black, did you notice a buzzing / humming sound coming from you speakers?

Also, your PSU is...questionable, at best. Never heard of that brand anywhere.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Definitely sounds like a power issue. That processor won't be a bottleneck unless something is set up wrong in the BIOS.

 

[skaskaster]

Thx for your answer. But I gave up and reinstalled windows today, and the problem is gone - GPU usage is always 95-99% now in BF3, so the problem was not in drivers, but somewhere in C:\Windows folder.
AFAIK Hipro are good PSUs, they are not so popular like Corsair, Thermaltake and others, and there are not so many reviews over the internet. But still you can find some reviews like this
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=148

 

[ATMINSIDE]

I wouldn't call a 7.5 on JG "Good".

Glad the issue was resolved though.