Any way to increase GPU utilization?

Hello!

I'm playing Gothic 2 and it won't stay a steady 60 FPS. It dips to 20 when I look in directions where a lot of "stuff" is. However, my 7970m GPU is not being fully utilized, either.

I'm wondering if there's some sort of tool or setting I can change to make the game recognized as a true 3d application. I think the problem is that the GPU doesn't consider G2 a 3d app, so it doesn't utilize it's full graphics potential.

Any thoughts on this? I'd love to get this sorted for my YouTube playthrough. Thanks!

No modern GPU with power saving features enabled will run G2 at full utilization because G2 does not require that much GPU juice. What you are seeing might simply be engine issues and maybe even a CPU bottleneck since no version of Gothic supports multithreading of any kind. I remember playing G2 on a high end card a while back and I also had FPS drops, especially in the harbor town near the sea. Definitely seems like engine limitations to me. Just like no PC in the world will probably ever run Ultima IX or Gothic 3 100% smooth simply because the engines are FUBAR.

With that said, try checking your Catalyst Control Center for power management options. I have attached a screenshot of the corresponding nVidia option. With nVidia you can switch between 'Adaptive' as shown in the screenshot and 'Prefer Maximum Performance' which will cause the GPU to run at full clock speeds all the time, whether required or not. I'd be surprised if the CCC does not have a similar option…(?)

It's engine problem and CPU is the culprit, not GPU.
The trick I did back then was setting process priority to gothic's exe or disabling cores in msconfig or something similar that is effectively dumbing down your hardware. Don't quote me on this.

Originally Posted by joxer
The trick I did back then was setting process priority to gothic's exe or disabling cores in msconfig or something similar that is effectively dumbing down your hardware. Don't quote me on this.

News at 10 everyone Joxer supports dumbing down. Is it the end of world so stay tuned for the follow-up program with more commentary from the man himself.

Sorry couldn't help myself but yes its usually the CPUs problem because of the engine.

Yea… There is a huge difference between dumbing down hardware and dumbing down software games.

I got a little relief by lowering the view distance a bit. I think I'm running about 400% view distance right now. It still looks nice enough and the FPS doesn't dip as bad as when I was running 3000% distance (anything past 1000% didn't seem to make any difference to the FPS).

So, I'll live with this. Thanks for the responses all!