GPU not reaching 100% in Cyberpunk 2077 on Linux (RX 7090 XT, Fedora 43)

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1

Hey everyone,

I noticed that my GPU usage stays around 85 % in Cyberpunk 2077 with Ultra settings, Raytracing off, and FSR 4 + Frame Generation enabled on the Quality preset. My CPU usage is around 70 %, and FPS are roughly 100.

Even when I enable Raytracing, GPU usage only goes up to around 94 %, while CPU usage increases slightly to 74 %. the fps drop to around 80 fps but the game feels laggy then.

My system specs:

  • GPU: AMD RX 7090 XT
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700X
  • RAM: 32 GB DDR4
  • OS: Fedora 43, Kernel 6.17.10
  • Mesa: 25.2.7
  • Proton: 10.26 (latest)
  • Game Settings: Ultra details, Raytracing on/off, FSR 4 + Frame Generation (Quality)
  • Driver/Software: Fully updated

Why is my GPU not reaching 100 % and what can I do to improve performance?

Thanks in advance!

2

Is it thermally throttling?

3

no I can see no entry in the thermal throttling log.

My temps while playing are as follows:

k10temp-pci-00c3
Adapter: PCI adapter
Tctl: +56.0°C
Tccd1: +57.0°C

acpitz-acpi-0
Adapter: ACPI interface
temp1: +16.8°C
temp2: +16.8°C

gigabyte_wmi-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1: +30.0°C
temp2: +30.0°C
temp3: +55.0°C
temp4: +39.0°C
temp5: +48.0°C
temp6: +39.0°C

amdgpu-pci-0600
Adapter: PCI adapter
vddgfx: 847.00 mV
fan1: 0 RPM (min = 0 RPM, max = 5000 RPM)
edge: +48.0°C (crit = +110.0°C, hyst = -273.1°C)
(emerg = +115.0°C)
junction: +59.0°C (crit = +110.0°C, hyst = -273.1°C)
(emerg = +115.0°C)
mem: +63.0°C (crit = +108.0°C, hyst = -273.1°C)
(emerg = +113.0°C)
PPT: 172.00 W (cap = 304.00 W)

When I started Cyberpunk to make the test realized something strange:

When I reloaded the game FPS went to 75 and stayed there while CPU was at 53 % and GPU at 69%. When I alt tabbed to read the sensors temps and went back into the game fps went up to 130 fps. And stayed there. CPU at 71% and GPU at 86%.

4

Note that being at 100% is often a sign of a resource being overloaded.
Having some head room often means spikes in load can be handled gracefully.

When I configure games I use vsync to avoid generating unnecessary frames.

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5

My guess that your CPU is bottlenecked, so the only way to increase GPU usage is to disable upscaling and/or use RT. I think also using regular proton (stable version) instead of GE might reduce CPU usage a little bit.

6

Yes I also think it could be the cpu even though it stays at around 60 - 70% load.
When I disable all fsr and activate raytracing GPU load doesn`increase :confused:

7

I would look at your per-thread usage then, one thread bouncing off it’s maximum capacity will make other things wait for it but not push the device load to 100% as that’s an average across the whole thing.

8

I realized I had suboptimal settings in BIOS. RAM was working at around 2100 mhz instead of 2666. I activated XMP and PBO and will try again tonight.

9

I think this solved my issue. CPU load went slightly down while GPU load went slightly up and the game feels much smoother now. I can even now set fsr to native AA and still have some raytracing.

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