very minimal gpu consumption in fortnite
very minimal gpu consumption in fortnite
so i have an i7 4790k with a gtx 1080, 16gb corsair vengeance 1600mhz ram and i usually get great performance in most games at 1080p. however, in fortnite i experienced significant lag, which made me realize my gpu usage was around 25-40% even with all settings set high, while my cpu usage stayed near 40-50%. i typically maintain stable 144+ fps in open areas, but when there are too many buildings or intense activity, my performance drops to about 40%. i’m not sure what to do next.
Do you possess a comprehensive list of your specifications, such as your monitor details?
This is just what happens in Fortnite. Best way to fix it from going under 70-80 fps or so and to get a dramatic improvement in fps in general is to just lower some high demanding settings. I recommend trying these to maximize fps while keeping visual fidelity...
These first seven settings are basically locks. There's not much reason to set them to anything else. Pure no-brainers.
Window Mode:
FULLSCREEN
(dramatically improves fps over anything Windowed)
Frame Rate Limit:
Unlimited
3D Resolution: 1920 x 1080 (
100%
)
View Distance:
Epic
(dropping to low only improves fps by 4-5%)
Shadows:
OFF
(dropping from Epic to Off improves fps by around 80%, yes 80%) Trust me on this.
Anti-Aliasing:
Epic
(dropping from Epic to Off only improves fps by around 3%)
Textures:
Epic
(dropping from Epic to low only increases fps by 1-2%)
Now to the more complex settings...
Effects: Personal Preference (dropping from Epic to low improves fps by around 15%). I recommend Low or Medium for situations where lots of things are going on. Effects in Fortnite control a lot of things, ambient occlusion(detail shadowing), a few of the water effects(you gotta look at water on all settings to see for yourself), shader calculations used to make the "cloud shadows" on the ground(I sure don't care about this). It also controls things like explosions and other visual extras. This is the one setting in Fortnite that you have to play around with on each setting to find your personal sweet spot. The lower you go, the more fps you will get, especially when so much is going on. The higher you go, the more fps you will lose but the better detail you will have in the things I mentioned in this setting.
Post-Processing:
Low or Medium
(dropping from Epic to low improves fps by around 15%). PP in Fortnite includes contrast/brightness scaling and dynamic range calculation.
Motion Blur: Personal Preference (the difference in fps between OFF and ON is around 4-5%). I prefer OFF because in Fortnite, motion blur can make spotting enemies harder than when it's off. And LCDs create a bit of motion blur on their own.
but the issue is that my GPU load is actually minimal, so reducing settings probably won't help. also, I'm running at 1920x1080 at full resolution with epic view distance, shadows on and rest on high, and VSync off. if I try scaling up to 1440, the game doesn't support DSR, which is usually how I resolve problems when my GPU usage is low.
It's perfectly typical for Fortnite with your PC configuration at 1080p. With only 8 threads available on your CPU, Fortnite won't be demanding much from it. Consequently, your GPU won't need to work harder when the CPU is handling most of the tasks. I don't understand why you'd expect your monitor to display more than 144 fps even at that rate. The drop in frames during intense moments or in crowded areas is just how Fortnite behaves for everyone. This is the game, not your computer. If you truly wish to boost GPU utilization (though I can't say why), consider using a 1440p display at 144Hz. That would definitely increase GPU load. You could also enable XMP profiles in your BIOS if your motherboard supports it, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you need better performance. Adjusting graphics settings isn't the solution here—optimization is what matters. The same applies to GTA 5 on certain city maps. On any PC, your frame rate can plummet to the 50s or 60s with an i7-8700K and 1080 resolution. This is caused by the game's own optimization. Watch the clip from 5:27 to 5:35; you'll see his FPS spike dramatically when he exits the city toward the beach. The same pattern occurs in Fortnite.