Ever since I bought my iMac, the GPU has always been at 0% usage. Till now, I thought it was a software bug since Macs aren't great with GPUs, but when I found out about Intel Power Gadget – which also said 0% – I became worried. I'm using an iMac 2019 21.5 inch with a Core i5, 8gb ram, and a Radeon Pro 560x, running on the latest. I've never had any real issues with graphics performance but fixing this might speed things up.
Activity monitor says 0% usage across all programs, filtered by GPU top usage. Not sure what GPU time means, however.
IPG says the same, with a requested graphics at 1.1ghz but with an actual GPU clock at 0.
What should I do? Thanks in advance!
Best Answer
It's not an issue.
You're not seeing any GPU usage because you're not using any GPU. Rendering static pages doesn't require any significant resources. Once it does render it, since it's technically not doing anything, there's no more reason for the GPU to be utilized.
Using a GPU Benchmark tool, Unigene's Heaven, I ran a process that specifically calls the GPU. This is continually rendering a high resolution animation. As you can see from Activity monitor, the GPU is being utilized.
You can also do this with a simple video; localally via QuickTime, VLC, or Elmedia and even through a web browser like a YouTube video. Below is Activity Monitor with a YouTube video playing in a Firefox tab and again we can see GPU utilization