Low GPU usage in Windows 8 with GTX 680 SLI

Are you powering that SLI on an i7 920? If so, there's your answer as to why your GPU usage isn't that high, you have a huge bottleneck with that i7 920.

 

Hardly. I scored 7.9 for both graphics tests in Windows 7 and as someone pointed out disabling SLI gives a higher score. It's a bug.

 

Nah, even in a cpu heavy game like skyrim a 920@3.8 does a great job -unless of course you're playing at 1024x768..

 

Exactly, kakarot. An overclocked first-gen i7 is plenty for today's games, hence why Guru3D still use a Core i7-965 @ 3.75 GHz for their benchmark testing. I play games at 1920x1200 but if I upgraded to a 2560x1600 display I would actually get better SLI scaling as proven by Guru3D's reviews. There's plenty of life left in this old dog yet!

 

Yup, I've never had a cpu as long as this one (4 years now i think) and even with recently frying my board i decided to just grab another cheap x58 instead of upgrading the cpu. Definitely a warrior

 

Ha ha wut?

 

Yea Darren OC that CPU to 5.0ghz or you're going to bottleneck... :banana:

 

GPU utilization in games and through it game performance was abysmal on my system in Windows 8 Pro 64 bit as well, compared to Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. SLI was working in 8, but scaling was a lot worse than in 7.

By the way, I had the black screen/monitor turning on/off bug with 310.33 in Windows 8 as well with a clean install of the driver. However, when installing them over 306.97 (without uninstalling anything first and with the Clean Install option unchecked in the installer), the black screen bug didn't occur. It's as if something is missing from 310.33 that causes the issue and it isn't present if you do a dirty install over a previous working driver.

Still, I'm back to Windows 7 now as I didn't see any real-world benefits of using Windows 8 (to the contrary, 7 seems to be beneficial for my use) and I just couldn't stomach Windows 8 anymore (even though I had Start8 installed, I just couldn't get used to TIFKM - the interface formerly known as Metro). What a waste of money this OS was.

 

Wrong and the WEI report even tells you this:

The gaming graphics score is based on the primary graphics adapter. If this system has linked or multiple graphics adapters, some software applications may see additional performance benefits.

 

sorry but everyone else is quoting this, so I gotta too.:stewpid:

 

Doesn't matter what it says, if you load AB you will see both gpu's (or more) are being used...

 

His CPU isn't bottlenecking the 680s, at least not for the WEI tests. My 670s score 6.5, processor overclocked to 4.5ghz, so that doesn't make a difference.

 

I have windows 8 installed, the only way i could stomach it was to hack it to death to make it look and respond like windows 7.

Anyways I am running a pair of 680's in SLI, I was getting poor performance at first however after I installed the intel INF drivers my performance is actually better now than it ever was with 7.
In order to get those drivers to install properly you have to use the hack method, create a shortcut to the INF, right click on it go to properties, in the "target" field add "-overall" at the end of the command without the quotes, then go to compatibility and select vista SP2 then run the shortcut.

Mine ran like poop until I did this.

 

Yes, it does matter what MS says about their own product. Yes, you will see that the Primary GPU is being used at twice the utilization. Yes, you will notice if you DISABLE SLI your WEI will increase. Lastly, WEI is rather pointless as serious hardware analysis tool. Why argue?

 

You're the one that seems to argue about, if you read my previous posts carefully you'd see that I'm not saying that sli will raise the pointless score. But windows 7 is different on the load placed on each gpu that is certain

 

Interesting... I noticed that all my Intel XXXXXXXXXX drivers under Device Manager were from Microsoft and dated 2006 yesterday so I tried to install the latest v9.30.1025 WHQL Intel chipset drivers late last night. Unfortunately, the installer doesn't seem to work but I was able to install them manually by pointing the Device Manager's Driver update link to the extracted folder and go through each Intel XXXXXXXXXX entry one by one. After a reboot, I rechecked them and they all now show as Intel dated September 2012. I played Need for Speed: Most Wanted and, although I didn't notice any framerate improvement (the game can still dip as low as 35 fps at times), I noticed that my core clock was showing as 1,006-1280 MHz rather than the 706 MHz I'd seen earlier. That low core clock might just have been an Afterburner 'hiccup' though as the game didn't noticeably run any worst.

 

There is no real bottleneck at 1920x1200 for most games that I play, granted the scaling would be better (though the framerates obviously lower) at 2560x1600 based on Guru3D.com's reviews. Go ask Hilbert as he still uses a Core i7-965 @ 3.75 GHz for his graphics card reviews!

But regardless, it doesn't change the fact that I scored the maximum 7.9 for both W.E.I. graphics tests in Windows 7 (yeah, there's a real bottleneck, right there! ) but a lower score of 6.7 for both in Windows 8. Yes, the scale has changed from 1.0-7.9 to 1.0-9.9 but considering other people were getting the same scores as me in Windows 8 (6.5 for a GTX 660 or 670 I believe) and now get 8.1 is what is bugging me.

 

I got a GTX 690 and I'm scoring 6.8 in the WEI test..... managed to run the test one time! Now it just crashes on dx10 assessment test thingy.

Also, in 3DMark11 I am ~70 fps lower than in win7.. halp!

 

Get the latest Intel INF driver and install that. That'll fix the WEI but don't know about the rest.

 

I have the Intel chipset drivers installed and I still score 6.7 in W.E.I. However, all the games that I've tested run absolutely fine so I presume it's an issue with W.E.I. and not the drivers.