EDIT: Hmmm, just restarted my computer for the first time today, immediately opened up the cudaminer upon getting back to my desktop and noticed the same problem where the GPU utilization is only at 50% or so (getting 114Khash/s). By the time I opened this browser and typed the first sentence of this edit, the GPU load was already at 97% and my hashrate climbed to 209Khash/s. Anyone else having similar issues?
I am having the same sort of issue. I am using -i 0 flag which typically results in 99% utilization for my GTX 760. On the prior cudaminer release I was not getting more than 75%, usually at 50%. The odd thing with the 12-07 release is I get 99% utilization when I am using my PC. If I leave the PC I see the utilization jump up and down quite often. After I leave the system running untouched I return to see that my hash rate goes between 155-201.
Also, I really do not understand the varying use of kernals. Is there a list of the kernals we can try? Does this equate to optimizations available in the CUDA architecture for each generation of silicon?