Slow render / Low CPU & GPU use - 9700K/2080

I'm a newb with video editing and I have access to Premiere but I have multiple audio tracks in my source (60 fps 1080 game footage) and Resolve 16 seems to handle the multiple audio tracks much more easily... but this render time is terrible.... 35m for an 8m video which is basically just clips string together with a crossfade - doesn't go over 25% utilization on any one core (seems to spread the load pretty evenly across them, though), and my GPU doesn't seem to be strained either unless it's straining parts that aren't showing up in the simple GPU utilization # windows presents.

I like Resolve so far, but I'm having a hard time justifying it with this performance. The only positive is this is putting SO low a load on my system that I can quite easily use it and even game on it if I want to, while it is running. Still, I'd rather it just get the job done quicker so I can really move on.

Intel 9700K (8 cores/8 threads), RTX 2080, 32GB RAM, Intel 660p SSD... seems it should be handling this much better. I'm using game recordings from OBS, tried FLV originally and now MKV files, both remuxed using OBS so my source to Resolve is MP4. For output I'm using the Youtube preset 1080p. I've tried a few things but there are so many options I'm hoping for some guidance on where to look as I've not seen any limiter settings or something obviously allowing performance vs. system usability during render or anything. Is there something else limiting this kind of render that I should be looking at?

Any help is appreciated. I have found other people here and there with this problem but seen no clear solution and it doesn't seem to be widespread enough that I just assume Resolve doesn't work - I'm probably doing something wrong, here.

Aha! I had tried google-fu and even some searches on the forum, and all I'd found was a few other people with this problem NOT solved, but then I found this one:

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=124900&hilit=low+cpu+utilization+render

in that post Charles Bennett suggested checking that their video drivers were up to date. As it happens, I've been meaning to do that for the last several weeks because I am aware I don't use Geforce Experience and I don't bother to update my drivers often because I tend to play only the same few games and I usually figure most of those updates after things stabilize are for flashy new game tweaks. However, it's literally been more than a year since I manually updated the driver, so when I saw that, I figured, "hey, I've been meaning to do that anyway - why not try?"

BOOM. Fixed. I have no idea why the old video driver rate-limited my CPU so badly, but now my CPU spikes up to 98-100% during render. I tested a very old project, and my most recent project, which went from a 35:53 reported render time and it re-rendered in 3:26. THAT is more like it!

Funny thing, I see other posts even one with Charles trying to help where that's not suggested as a possible solution, so I'm going to post in that one as well as here and hope other people find this one, because this totally changes the user experience for me.

To be clear, I didn't have to install GeForce Experience, either - I just updated to the latest Game-Ready driver manually again.

dont help for me. my render speed is 66 fps. in h264 to h264 simple clip convert. GPU and cpu usage = less than 25%. i had latest studio driver 460.89. and i try to install game ready 457.51. result the same. My studio version dont want to use my GPU at full power

dont help for me. my render speed is 66 fps. in h264 to h264 simple clip convert. GPU and cpu usage = less than 25%. i had latest studio driver 460.89. and i try to install game ready 457.51. result the same. My studio version dont want to use my GPU at full power

Screen shot of the task manager performance tab CPU graphs during conversion, please.

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dont help for me. my render speed is 66 fps. in h264 to h264 simple clip convert. GPU and cpu usage = less than 25%. i had latest studio driver 460.89. and i try to install game ready 457.51. result the same. My studio version dont want to use my GPU at full power

Screen shot of the task manager performance tab CPU graphs during conversion, please.

Sent from my Mi 9T using Tapatalk

check this out all posibble graphs. i tried all possible drivers. nothing helpd

There is my answer on the other thread.

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