full GPU usage. terrible framerate all of a sudden

[IconianCat]

ok i dont even know how to begin with this to try and explain the problem. i just upgraded my GPU to a 2080TI so i could dual monitor and slot the Vivepro on a DP port. right when i got the upgrade EVERYTHING worked SPLENDIDLY. beautiful framerates. amazing experience.

 

now i cant launch games without massive stutering and framerate problems. when i try to monitor my system through task manager i see my GPU sitting around 100% utilization when truthfully its not even doing anything. i just tested it with the game Raw Data, and on the menuy for terms of service which is a black environment with some text it had 4 frames. 4 FRAMES. i dont know if this is a problem with my headset, or my link box, or my GPU but my computer is so far above VR ready that this is just disheartening and terrifying. i spent almost 5000$ on this computer cause of GPU mixups trying to get it VR ready and now i cant launch menu screens.

 

AMD ryzen threadripper 1950X

32GBs ram

asus ROG xenith extreme motherboard

 Geforce 2080TI

 

i legitimately dont understand whats happening. it worked like a **bleep**ing charm 3 weeks ago and now i launch it up and i cant run basic menus. steamvr has had some updates. my GPU has had updates. windows has had updates.

 

the only question i really have is does the "vive" software package. (viveport, vive drivers etc not involved with the headset) have a direct impact on the headsets performance somehow. the headset still runs without them and i had to uninstall them cauyse viveport was getting hung up trying to update itself in the background

[HackPerception]

, 

 

The ViveSW package doesn't really affect the compositor pipeline. It does install a SteamVR overlay but that's trivial. It does install a DRM driver but that won't affect the rendering pipeline. 

 

The HMD/linkbox are pretty binary as they're glorified displays - they either work or they don't work - you're not going to see a situation where something wrong with the HMD slows the framerate. If an HMD is broken you'll see tracking errors or rendering issues on the HMD. 

 

You'll probably want to benchmark some traditional flatscreen games to see if the issue is limited to SteamVR or if it affects and GPU driven task. There are some known issues with GTX20xx cards - in those cases they typically just stop working altogether though so it's likely not applicable here. That said, I'd probably recommend opening a ticket with Nvidia. 

 

You'd basically want to figure out what's changed in the last 3 weeks. These type of random issues typically come down to either SteamVR update or your Nvidia drivers. In more exotic cases, there can be something wrong with windows or some dependency that SteamVR requires to run. Reverting to a previous Nvidia driver is always a helpful step in these scenarios. You could try uninstalling SteamVR, preforming clean installs of previous Nvidia drivers, or in a nuclear option reformat your PC and start from scratch which in some cases is alot faster than trying to troubleshoot a deeply nested issue. 

 

It can be helpful to understand what SteamVR's frame timing graph means so you can understand what step the GPU is struggling with.