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Playing Trek to Yomi and at max on a 3080 and 1440p UW I'm getting close to 200fps, but GPU utilization is at 100% and temps are super high. To optimize for better temps, I tried using the ingame 120fps cap, yet it still uses 100% GPU and temps don't change. Even at lowest settings and 24fps cap, still 100%.

I've never seen this before, where a game will completely soak GPU util no matter what. It doesn't seem to be a demanding game, maybe even 50% GPU util would suffice. I wonder why it locks to 100%, I would assume a GPU would only use as much horsepower as necessary.

Does it make sense for a game to use 100% GPU utilization irrespective of settings?

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  • I used to see this on my 2080 Ti and it used to bother me a lot. I started enabling VSync (60 FPS) and now my temps are super manageable.
    – Lore Friendly
    May 5 at 6:11

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Yes, it can make sense for a game to use 100% GPU utilization, regardless of settings. This is because the GPU will work to render frames as quickly as possible, up to its maximum capacity. Even if a game is not particularly demanding, if it is designed to push the GPU to its limit, it may use 100% GPU utilization.

But some games are poorly optimized and may not properly scale down their demands based on graphics settings. In this case, even lowering the graphics settings may not result in lower GPU utilization which you are noticing here.

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  • Interesting, so even if it's 100% util at 60fps, it's 100% utilized because it's now trying to keep frametiming consistently 16.7ms, for example?
    – gator
    May 5 at 6:17
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    @gator have you tried another game that exhibits high utilization with the settings high and then adjust them down to see what happens? You want your GPU to be utilized as much as possible really, but only if its needed (bottlenecks could prevent your GPU from being used to its best ability in some cases, which are bad). In this case, it could be what Respawn said and the game isn't optimized, but in theory limiting frame rates and lower settings should lower utilization (related post, though its about power: gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/402499).
    – Timmy Jim ♦
    May 5 at 15:10

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