I recently upgraded my monitor, switching from 2K 144Hz to 4K 60Hz, and I didn’t expect much of a performance difference — and for most applications, there isn’t. However, my Unity Editor has gone haywire with the new monitor. I understand that the Editor is demanding because it renders everything at the monitor's native resolution, but having an empty HDRP scene open on the 4K monitor causes my GPU usage to spike to 70-90%.
On my previous 2K monitor, I could open large scenes and still have a quiet PC, with minimal GPU load. I also have two Full HD monitors beside my 4K display, and when I move the Unity Editor window to one of those, it behaves normally and my PC remains silent, even with large scenes full of lights and objects — GPU usage hovers around 20-35%. It doesn’t seem right that an empty scene would cause up to 90% usage on an RTX 3060 Ti.
Any tips or insights would be greatly appreciated!
I’ve tried disabling HDR (which is new on the 4K monitor), turned off G-Sync in the NVIDIA settings, and even played around with V-Sync and the Editor’s settings. I'm also using HDRP’s "Performant" settings and Unity 6’s new instanced renderer, though I’m not sure if that affects the Editor’s rendering. I’ve disabled post-processing effects, anti-aliasing, and even tried DLSS, but nothing seems to change the GPU load.
Edit: Weeks Later, I've tested an empty project by importing the HDRP Fountain Bleu Demo. In the demo scene, which has a lot of detail, I'm only seeing around 5% GPU usage in the Editor (with Post Processing and Always Refresh turned off). However, in my own project—even with an empty scene and no objects—I can't reach the same level of GPU usage or temperature as the Fountain Bleu demo even close.
What could be causing this low GPU utilization in my project, even when there are no objects in the scene but having no troubles in another project with many objects?
The solution that fixed the problem for me was setting the Interaction Mode under
Edit → Preferences → General → Interaction Mode to Monitor Refresh Rate.
My new monitor has a relatively low refresh rate, and after changing this setting, Unity’s editor performance improved significantly — especially when dragging the Scene View with right-click, where performance spikes appeared.