I have a question on GPU performance

John Zapf

Member
This is pretty straightforward. I have a dedicated OBS computer that had a Nvidia GTX 1600 super 4gb in it and it was running at 60% all the time streaming my 3 live streams so I wanted to give that a little headroom and I upgraded it to an Nvidia RTX 3060 XC 12gb and now the GPU is running at 70% all the time. I don't understand. Absolutely nothing changed on the computer streams everything is exactly the same why would the card twice the size of the other card be running at 70% instead of say 40% now?
 

AaronD

Active Member
NVENC is a dedicated part of the chip. It doesn't use the actual GPU part that has its specs advertised. All you know about it is whether it's present or not.

A constant 60% load is easily okay. It's when it gets "spiky" that you want some headroom. Even 90% constant is okay, provided that your cooling can keep up.
 

John Zapf

Member
NVENC is a dedicated part of the chip. It doesn't use the actual GPU part that has its specs advertised. All you know about it is whether it's present or not.

A constant 60% load is easily okay. It's when it gets "spiky" that you want some headroom. Even 90% constant is okay, provided that your cooling can keep up.
OK it's just weird that it would have went from 60% GPU usage on a card with half the power and then upgrade to better card and running all the exact same things now utilizes 70% of the new bigger card just still trying to wrap my head around that.
 

AaronD

Active Member
Did the settings increase? Either manually or automatically?

Maybe the new card technically has more resources, but uses them less efficiently?

Maybe the new card has more memory, which is the number you quoted, but less processing, which is the number the system reports?

Could be any number of things.
 

R1CH

Forum Admin
Developer
GPU% is meaningless without also showing the GPU clocks. 70% of 100 MHz is less then 60% of 1000 MHz.
 

John Zapf

Member
GPU% is meaningless without also showing the GPU clocks. 70% of 100 MHz is less then 60% of 1000 MHz.
So here we go around and around my question is why would the GPU percentage go up 10% when I put in better GPU card? Maybe I have been a technician way too long because it seems like I always speak a different language than everybody else.
 

R1CH

Forum Admin
Developer
So here we go around and around my question is why would the GPU percentage go up 10% when I put in better GPU card? Maybe I have been a technician way too long because it seems like I always speak a different language than everybody else.
Because your new GPU can run at a lower clock speed to save power.
 

John Zapf

Member
Uhh... The previous post?


It's not really a question of "best". It's a question of "enough". From your description, your old one was probably more than plenty.

Like I said, a constant load can easily be in the 90's of % and be perfectly okay.
OK but you have to remember I just put a $6000 server in, plus the video card and now we're sitting at 70% that doesn't leave me much headroom. I would like to stream five more streams. So I'm just simply asking what the best video card would be to give me a lot of headroom. You have to understand I'm putting a lot into this, I do this all day long every day. This is my YouTube channel, I have over 64 million views in 120 countries so far this year. Right now, it's the off season so I'm just trying to get everything prepared before January when nesting season starts. So I'm just trying to get input from the developers of the software on what NVIDIA video card they think will have the best performance and utilizes everything they've developed.
 

John Zapf

Member
Screenshot 2023-09-20 163614.jpg
 

John Zapf

Member
And again the reason I keep trying to get to the people that develop the software is I just bought a video card that's supposedly twice as good as the video card that I was using and the new video card is at 70% usage when the old video card was only at 60%. So i'm really looking for some expert advice from the developers of the software on what kind of GPU works best with their system?
 

R1CH

Forum Admin
Developer
You seem to be ignoring everything I've written. Let's try an analogy (ignore the actual numbers as I know nothing about cars). Your GPU has multiple power levels, much like a car has multiple gears. A car engine runs at a certain RPM, like your GPU runs at a certain percentage usage.

If you are in 1st gear (power level) and 3000 RPM (usage), you may be moving at 20 MPH. If you are in 6th gear and 2000 RPM you're probably moving much faster, let's say at 70 MPH. Even though 3000 RPM is higher than 2000 RPM, you wouldn't say that 1st gear is faster, would you?

The same concept applies to your GPU, except it's smart: it knows how complex the work you're asking it to do is, so it decides it can easily be done in 1st gear at 7000 RPM, so it doesn't bother going up to 6th gear at 1000 RPM and wasting energy. If you make your scenes more complex, then at some point before 100% GPU usage, the GPU will decide it needs to increase the clock speeds and then you'll see the percentage use drop accordingly.
 

rockbottom

Active Member
Already running (3) & you want (5) more encodes? 8 concurrent encodes?

The RTX4070TI & up have (2) encoders but Nvidia currently limits all consumer GPU's to (5) concurrent encodes.

Professional Nvidia GPU's don't have this limitation. The RTX3500 Ada & up have (2) encoders & the RTX6000 Ada has (3) encoders.
 

John Zapf

Member
Already running (3) & you want (5) more encodes? 8 concurrent encodes?

The RTX4070TI & up have (2) encoders but Nvidia currently limits all consumer GPU's to (5) concurrent encodes.

Professional Nvidia GPU's don't have this limitation. The RTX3500 Ada & up have (2) encoders & the RTX6000 Ada has (3) encoders.
Perfect thank you I do IT work for a liquid cooling company that has a bunch of those.

Thank you
 

John Zapf

Member
Already running (3) & you want (5) more encodes? 8 concurrent encodes?

The RTX4070TI & up have (2) encoders but Nvidia currently limits all consumer GPU's to (5) concurrent encodes.

Professional Nvidia GPU's don't have this limitation. The RTX3500 Ada & up have (2) encoders & the RTX6000 Ada has (3) encoders.
But I'm still really curious on why the GTX1650 super would be running at 60% and the RTX 3060 XC would be running at 75%?
 
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