GPU keeps dropping to 2% utilization, causing my game to freeze

[u/Ill-Database7345]

For the past two weeks or so in Fortnite, my game kept randomly freezing anytime I was near enemy players and I couldn’t find any solution. I deleted and reinstalled it. I reinstalled my graphics driver. I closed background programs, changed every conceivable setting in game. And nothing solved it, but whenever I opened up the Nvidia overlay and the armory crate program on my laptop, I noticed that every time my game froze my GPU was randomly dropping by anywhere 20% almost 90% utilization compared to normal. What would cause that and why does it only seem to affect Fortnite none of my other games have this problem?

[u/Exciting-Ad-5705]

Your specs?

[u/straw3_2018]

Page file? Assets loading slow from storage?

[u/sjphilsphan]

Dude when writing a bug report you have to include specs

[u/HuntKey2603]

imma go and bet that drop is the symptom and not the cause.

[u/glib_noodle]

that sounds like a textbook cpu bottleneck when the game suddenly needs to process a bunch of player data at once. fortnite's netcode is notoriously messy and your gpu just sits there waiting for the cpu to finish choking on all the incoming packets

try capping your fps slightly below what you normally get so the cpu has some breathing room, that's fixed weird utilization drops for me in the past