Inquiry regarding the relationship among CPU, GPU (VRAM), and RAM utilization
Inquiry regarding the relationship among CPU, GPU (VRAM), and RAM utilization
Hello everyone!
I recently purchased a new GPU and noticed some shifts in how my system uses the GPU and CPU. At first, I expected a fresh GPU to lower my overall GPU consumption, which it did. However, I also observed a significant drop in CPU usage, almost none at all. I had assumed that because my previous GPU had limited VRAM, it wouldn’t impact the CPU much. I imagined the extra workload would shift to the CPU or RAM, possibly causing an overload. But I haven’t been able to verify that technically.
The game I played was Dragon Quest 11.
On a GTX 770 2gb I saw 100% usage for both CPU and GPU at the lowest settings.
On a GTX 1070 8 gb I experienced 40-50% usage on both CPU and GPU at the highest settings, depending on location.
Can anyone clarify why my CPU usage decreased when I upgraded to a stronger GPU? The only change was the GPU itself; I confirmed nothing else was running in the background.
So it might be because the GPU is handling more tasks now, freeing up some work from the CPU. Also, when graphics settings increase, the CPU gets less load and focuses on the GPU. This happens for me too—when I play Overwatch at full render, I use 100% of my CPU, but at 200%, it drops to 60%. The GTX 2080 Ti handles 1080p well without going over, unlike some other models that go above 15%.
Actually, no. I reached 150. for some reason the GPU won't provide more based on its capacity. I can share screenshots when I get home today if you'd like to see. At 150% render, I usually hit 200-300, which depends on what the computer needs.
There could be several explanations.
The video game might have consumed more than 2 GB of video memory, causing the engine to frequently swap data between the video card and RAM.
Additionally, the GTX 770 is an older graphics card, which could mean the game was using a DirectX9 or 10 renderer instead of DirectX 11, since some DirectX 11 capabilities might have been too demanding for that hardware. It’s possible the engine was also working harder with higher quality textures and constantly resizing them to fit into lower quality presets, trying to maximize the available 2 GB of memory.
With a newer card, the game might be using different rendering methods, varying texture sizes, or utilizing more multithreaded features in the GTX 1xxx driver, potentially taking advantage of DirectX 11’s parallel processing capabilities.