GTA 5 and GPU Utilization

So I've been playing a lot of GTA lately and I know my fps varies with my current settings mostly between 30 and 60 with my average around 45-55 I'd say. I decided to overclock my GPU and I noticed my temps and fps would remain nearly the same but utilization would drop when doing so (95%+ stock and 70-80's when overclocking). Matter of fact, when running the benchmark, slight overclocks lead to more a better overall fps however larger overclocks lead to more periods above 30fps and less above 60fps.

Since I had my motherboard replaced in November, I decided to open it up and repaste since the GPU temps are peaking at 89 to 90 C. What a mess the paste job was for the GPU. Anyway temps seem to be down 10-20 C on average so that's good. However no fps boosts and the same utilization drops when overclocking.

I decided to upgrade my graphics driver. I was on the GTA game ready 350.12 but decided to try the latest 361.43 and wow that was a mistake. My utilization tanked. The game would only range from 30-35 fps stock and utilization in the 60%'s regardless of any of the vsync settings. Even running the benchmark it was clear the utilization wouldn't increase. Overclocking did nothing as far as fps goes either. I also tried running a game repair and that didn't help either.

I'm not sure what the issue was/is but I've since downloaded the 350.12 driver again and reinstalled it and everything is back to normal thankfully. Still have the utilization drops when overclocking but at least it's in the 90's up when stock.

Btw, when I did the driver installs I did full clean uninstalls of the prior driver and all its files and cleanly installed the new one in case anyone was wondering. The only thing I didn't do that I thought of when reinstalling 350.12 is open up the device manager and uninstall the driver windows would automatically revert to (32X.XX something) then restart (upon restart it said Microsoft default display adapter or something like that instead of GTX 680M). I wouldn't think this would be the cause of the problems on the 361.43 driver only because in the past, including when I first updated to 350.12 upon GTA's release, I never did this step before. But maybe. I honestly don't know and I don't feel like doing everything again just to test 361.43 to see if this was the issue only to find out it wasn't and have to go back again to 350.12.

Anyone know what my issue was/is or how to resolve it? Is there just problems with the lastest Nvidia driver right now? I'm concerned this could present a problem in the future if I buy a new release game and Nvidia has specific driver release for it but only to find out my GTA experience gets ruined by utilization issues.

 

Sounds like you're CPU limited there.

 

I think I found one solution to my issue by accident when running another game. I found that in fullscreen mode I would easily get 99% or near utilization but when switching to fullscreen windowed (which is what I prefer for easier alt tabbing and such) it was dropping utilization to around 65% which meant in that game I went from about 120-130 fps to 60-70fps.

So I went back to GTA and reran the benchmarks in fullscreen mode this time and sure enough my utilization while overclocking went from sub 80% back up to 95%+ just like when running stock. I also saw an average 5-8 fps increase with a 25% overclock for each of the 5 benchmark passes. Only downside is I need to have vsync on and alt tabbing is more of a pain while in fullscreen but at least I know part of the problem now.

However this still doesn't explain the issues I was having with the 361.43 driver compared to 350.12 unless that too was based on the screen mode I was in.