Zwift using all GPU

I am running zwift on a lenovo p71 with 32gb of ram, an i9 and a quadro rtx 4000. The last couple times I have used it, it has been extremely choppy. I checked and it has been using 100% of GPU. I reduced the graphics to low and it is still blowing through my GPU. I have been running it on ultra with no problems before but now even low does not work. My computer should be able to run it on Ultra. Has anyone else had this issue?

If you put your log file through zwiftalizer.com and post results here, there’s a few people here that know a whole bunch about computers and GPU things that may be able to help.

Thanks will do. I had no idea that was available.

It will not let me embed the screenshots. Do you what information would be necessary?

You’e welcome to send it to me at zwiftposts at gmail dot com and I’ll put it up. By the way, I’m not one of the gurus I speak of so dont expect too much more usefullness from me :slight_smile:

Great, thanks. And no worries, any help is appreciated.

Here you go… perhaps dumb question Taylor but do you ride in events/races ALL the time or does the choppiness also apply when free riding?

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is that from one of the times that it was running poorly?

it looks like you could update your nvidia driver:

also, avg FPS here is 33, which is probably at the lower end of acceptable. do you play full screen? or do you keep it windowed? (there are some conditions where running in windowed mode will have lower frame rates than full screen)

@Taylor_Quinn: Were you riding in a big group and/or on dusty roads? Either can cause your frame rate to drop.

@_Dean I usually only free ride

@Dan_Dube Yes it was one of the times. I was more less maxing out the GPU the entire time. I was playing in windowed. I will try full screen to see if that was problem. I will also update my drivers and see if that helps. It seems suspect though because it happens off and on.

@1506 I was riding on pavement and riding solo. Their were a lot of people on the server. There was so much lag on my end that I would usually get passed pretty quickly. My avatar would yo-yo, if that makes sense, speed up and slow down all the time.

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I don’t understand why on a brand new out-of-the-box MacBook Pro it causes my fan to blow and the casing to heat up, while it runs fine on an several-year-old iPad. I guess the answer is in the log file.

@Daniel_Connelly I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just a mac thing. I have a 2019 macbook pro in addition to my windows machine and to be honest it sucks. It gets hot real fast and I even have problems running zoom where it eats through all the ram, I have never had that problem on my windows machine. Not to mention the butterfly keys are not my favorite as well. They are not the macbooks of yesteryear, those were great machines.

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Evidently the thing simply isn’t designed for CPU intensive tasks. To be fair, the screen resolution is a lot higher than the iPad, so it’s a harder computational task. I love the MacBook for work, and would never want to use a Windows machine for that purpose. But I was shocked it had so much problem here.

@Daniel_Connelly You would think a $3000 laptop with a good i7 in it could handle most things. I work in software and had been with everyone else in the industry that macbooks are the way to go and they were. I started using WSL on windows and I won’t be returning to apple anytime soon unless something drastic changes.

100% GPU utilisation means it’s working flat out, which is a good thing because it’s not being held back by the CPU as is common in Zwift. That said, a Windows or Lenovo update can make big changes on a laptop due to how they’re always trying to find the right balance between power and efficiency. You don’t get those compromises on a desktop.

It’s impossible to know what’s changed from before but make sure you’re running maximum power modes in Windows and Zwift settings to allow the CPU and GPU to run as free as possible without TDP throttling. The app is completely different on PC/Mac to all the other platforms btw, so it’s not a fair comparison to say it should be running like an iPad. As the user we don’t have any control over the graphical detail.

If the decreased performance has been noticed on France in particular, that’s been the same for everyone. Try London or Watopia and see what the difference is. The yoyo effect is when you’re occasionally hitting 60fps, see here: Strange camera behaviour at 60 FPS on PC

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Thanks for the response Dave. Outside of Drivers I keep everything up to date. When I run zwift, I also run it with my laptop plugged running on max. I double check my zwift settings but I do turn off power saver mode. I will try another area, its just annoying since France has some good climbs.

Consider monitoring your CPU and GPU with Intel Extreme Tuning Utility and GPU-Z during Zwift, you should be able to work out which limits you’re hitting. It’s quite common for ‘normal’ laptops to throttle quite badly when it comes to gaming, even those sold with top end mobile components.

Alright I will try those out thanks. I do run many games on ultra with no problem though.

Zwift isn’t like normal games, unfortunately. It doesn’t take advantage of the strengths of modern hardware or software and stresses a system in some very odd ways that are hard to replicate for comparison purposes.

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Hi,

Your system should be able to easily handle 60FPS, for its capable GPU and CPU (I constantly get 60FPS on a less capable machine, be it with 1080p/ultra setting at about 75% GPU load).

Updating drivers is always an option, although I feel driver’s for performance has become another one of Zwift’s favorite scapegoats. Basically, if Zwift runs, it shouldn’t really matter which version, unless the driver is really bad (highly unlikely).

But it is always easier to send the user on a wild goose chase…