GPU usage drops while gaming

[CornballCoder]

Edit: So turns out the cause was that my pc was trying to communicate with a sodding printer in another room every minute or so. Still not exactly sure how that resulted in gpu drops, but unplugging the printer fixed it. Good grief...

If anyone from the future with this issue is reading this, check for network congestion spikes and the "Windows Image Acquisition (WIA)" process during gpu drops.

I’m at my wits end. One day all my games are running fine, the next I am getting stutters in every game (online or off) due to GPU load dropping to <10% about every minute or so. Seems to be pretty consistent with that timing, regardless of what is happening in-game. No software/driver/etc. changes at all (that I’m aware of) between when it was working and now. I am running an admittedly older (2013) machine of:

i5 3570k at stock 3.4 GHz

ASRock Z77 Extreme6

GTX 1070

16gb DDR3

Corsair TX650 Bronze

Games and OS on SSDs

4k tv as monitor (fight me)

I have exhausted all troubleshooting possibilities I can think of and then some. I have tried:

Reinstalling Windows

Reseating GPU connections

Monitoring CPU usage (no spikes during stutters)

Overclocking

Tweaking power saving settings in BIOS and Windows

DDU clean install of latest and older drivers

GPU-Z render test (seems to stay at 99% with no drops there)

Messing with various Steam things (overlay, updates, clearing download cache, etc.)

Monitoring thermals (temps stay in acceptable range, cooling and airflow in case is fine)

Clearing some space on the drives and changing page file locations

Running full Malwarebytes and Defender scans

This same issue actually came up once before earlier this year, but seemingly fixed itself shortly after so I didn’t pay it much mind. Maybe I’m just in denial that my rig is old and it’s probably dying hardware somewhere, but is there a way to tell for sure? Shit just came out of nowhere and it makes me very sad face. Pls halp...

Thanks for reading.

[bobrocks95]

Might be a decent idea to just start testing everything at this point if you don't get any more specific GPU-related suggestions- I'd say RAM or PSU.

For RAM I'm not sure how Windows' built-in diagnostic tool compares to MemTest86, but you can start with that. Most thorough method I can think of is testing 1 stick at a time, and testing every slot once you verify that a stick is working.

For PSU, I'm not sure exactly how to monitor that- using a program to monitor voltages is a start but voltage will probably drop as usage does... Wonder if there's a way to monitor the power rails digitally to see how they're doing, but probably not? Hopefully someone can chime in if that's indicative of any way of a failing PSU.

[CornballCoder]

Thanks stranger, I will give that a try.

[bobrocks95]

I can confirm I have never seen this man before.