I have been running benchmarks and have noticed something and wanted to understand it a little more. I asked about this in a Reddit thread and it was suggested that I ask about this here.
When the system is at idle, nothing else running but the normal background processes, the GPU is usually at 0%, because it's not really being used. When I turn on the Aquasuite monitoring software desktop overlay, the GPU starts frequent spikes, jumping from 0% up to as much as 50% then back, every 1-5 seconds.
I assume it's doing this while gaming as well, which has got to affect my GPU output. I'll run a few tests with Aquasuite on the second monitor or not:
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Results:
The Aquasuite background process, without the graphical overlay does not run the GPU, only the desktop overlay
TimeSpy 64bit Benchmark
-----------------------Overlay On--------- Overlay Off
Overall Score--------8543 ----------------9700
GPU Score-----------8222-----------------9443
Graphics 1 (FPS)---52.52--------------- 61.07
Graphics 2 (FPS)-- 48.00----------------54.52
CPU Score--------- 10973----------------11471
CPU Test (FPS)----36.87-----------------38.54
I took a hit. An overall score loss of 1157 seems significant.
Any reason why Aquasuite hits the GPU so hard and frequently?
*** Some of my initial issues I commented on in Reddit had to do with a badly overclocked memory; however, after fixing and properly overclocking I get similar disparities.