Additional info:
When I place a QThread::usleep(16667) inside the rendering loop, and create the window with QSurfaceFormat::setSwapInterval(0) (no vertical sync), the rendering runs smoothly at no noticeable GPU load. With vertical synchronisation switched on (setSwapInterval(1)), there are in fact not more than 60 fps rendered, but the GPU is heavily working on something.
The same occurs on another system (Qt Creator Community OpenGL, mingw, Win32, Intel Q6600, VGA AMD 3850). Can anyone confirm this?