[HELP] I Bought my Brother a Gaming PC but it's not performing right?

RipGroove · 15 Mar 2020 at 15:31

The core of my personal PC is 7700k/1080ti and it plays BFV at 100fps all Ultra at 3440x1440 Ultrawide no problem.

I bought my brother a PC so he could play with me and again it's 7700k/1080ti but even at 2560x1440 he's only seeing 53fps.

I must be missing something here?!

Latest GPU driver
HWMon shows the CPU is running at the right frequency
Nvidia control panel is set to prefer max performance
GPU is reaching about 70°C while gaming but only seems to be hitting 60% usage?!
Tried both DX11 & DX12 in game
I can't see any frame limiters or v-sync on or anything and windows display settings is set to 75Hz to match his monitor.

I'll get him to download 3dMark to see if that gives any insight.

Any ideas?

chrcoluk · 15 Mar 2020 at 15:35

There is something baked in on 1080ti's that has had very little public reporting on it.

The gpu is capable of turning off some of its cuda cores so it runs in some kind of limited power mode. The exact trigger is unknown, but when it has happened on my 1080ti, its after a driver crash. Sometimes it has happened without a driver crash, it has never happened if the gpu is at stock, so no undervolt, no overclock. So it appears to be a failsafe mode when some type of instability is detected.

When it happens it will show up as a gpu that cannot hit max utilisation and thats because part of the cores are disabled, they stay disabled until a reboot. Not even a driver reset brings them back.

So if this is what is happening, reboot, and if the card is at stock try underclocking, also make sure it has proper power draw from the psu, taking into account some psu's are multi rail.

Given its a 7700k and 1080ti, is it a used pc?

RipGroove · 15 Mar 2020 at 15:40

Hmm never heard of that! I'm just getting him to reboot it now (chatting on Discord). The GPU currently has no overclock. How would I check that it's getting the power it needs from the PSU?

RipGroove · 15 Mar 2020 at 15:41

Yeah its a used PC.

chrcoluk · 15 Mar 2020 at 15:45

There was some limited discussion about it on oc.net, also was very briefly mentioned in the 3dguru review of the product.

You can maybe check the throttle reason in gluz to see what it reports, but I would check the spec of the psu from the vendor and if its multi rail you may need to make sure the cables are connected to the right ports on the psu.

Potentially the gpu is damaged, but hopefully it isnt that. 60% sounds like the issue though as when it happened for me that was the max utilisation.

RipGroove · 15 Mar 2020 at 15:51

I'll get him to find out what the PSU is then and report back. Meanwhile he's just rebooted so we're just seeing how it plays.

RipGroove · 15 Mar 2020 at 15:56

Ok well he's only getting 60fps after a reboot.

RipGroove · 15 Mar 2020 at 15:57

It's a Corsair RX750. I'll have to pop round his house and see exactly where the power plugs are plugged in.

Joxeon · 15 Mar 2020 at 16:53

Your best bet would be to swap over yours and your brothers 1080ti and see if any issues persist as this should confirm whether it's the card or hardware/software on one of the machines that's causing the issue.

chrcoluk · 15 Mar 2020 at 16:56

RipGroove said:
Ok well he's only getting 60fps after a reboot.

60fps is vsync level.

or did you mean 60%

I agree with the advice to do a gpu swap.

RipGroove · 15 Mar 2020 at 17:07

Yes 50-60fps. I'll try his GPU in my PC but that will have to wait until next weekend now.

RipGroove · 15 Mar 2020 at 17:19

Definitely something not right as I see the usual 99% GPU utilization in BFV while he's seeing 50-60% utilization and 50-60fps.

LuckyBenski · 15 Mar 2020 at 17:36

What is his CPU utilisation? What clock speeds are your chips both set to?

RipGroove · 15 Mar 2020 at 17:37

Both CPU's are stock clocks. I don't recall exactly what the CPU utilisation was at earlier while I was round his place so I'll have to get him to play something and let me know.

RipGroove · 15 Mar 2020 at 21:20

I just had him run 3dmarks Timespy and it scored around 8300 which is pretty close to the 8900 that my PC scored last time I ran it. So surely this means his hardware is working ok?

I believe his monitor is Freesync compatible and therefore possibly Gysnc compatible but we still get the same low GPU utilisation and low FPS with Gysnc on and off so I'm not sure if it's a syncing issue.

I also tried both DX11 and DX12 and still had the exact same performance.

keenan · 15 Mar 2020 at 22:02

Are you both 100% sure that vsync is not enabled in game?

RipGroove · 15 Mar 2020 at 22:06

I'm pretty sure yes

RipGroove · 15 Mar 2020 at 22:09

I'm going to DDU then reinstall GPU drivers and go through all the game settings again.

JollysH1 · 16 Mar 2020 at 11:27

What hard drive differences are there? sometimes poor read/write can bottleneck performance! I see you have an M.2 Samsung 960 EVO, does your brothers machine have similar?

RipGroove · 16 Mar 2020 at 11:32

JollysH1 said:
What hard drive differences are there? sometimes poor read/write can bottleneck performance! I see you have an M.2 Samsung 960 EVO, does your brothers machine have similar?

It has a WD Green M.2 2280 240GB with OS on it and a Samsung EVO 250GB SSD with the games on.

Bit more of a detailed spec for both machines here;

My PC (PC #1)
CPU: 7700k (Stock Clocks)(Delidded)
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X62 AIO
GPU: 1080ti (EVGA Hybrid AIO)(Stock Clocks)(Latest Driver)
MOBO: ASUS Z270 TUF MARK 1
RAM: 32GB Corsair Dominator Platinum 3200MHz (same gaming performance when it had 16GB)
OS: Drive: M.2 Samsung 960 EVO 500GB
Gaming Drive: Samsung EVO 860 1TB
PSU: Corsair RM850i
OS: Windows 10 Home

My Brothers PC (PC #2)
CPU: 7700k (Stock Clocks)
CPU Cooler: Deep Cool AIO
GPU: 1080ti (Zotac Founders Edition)(Stock Clocks)(Latest Driver)
MOBO: ASUS Strix B250F Gaming
RAM: 16GB Corsair Vengeance 3200MHz
OS Drive: M.2 WD Green 2280 240GB
Gaming Drive: Samsung EVO 250GB
PSU: Corsair RX750
OS: Windows 10 Pro

Performance:

PC #1 - 3dMark Timespy = 8900 ish
PC #2 - 3dMark Timespy = 8300 ish

PC #1 - 80-120fps in BFV (General Infantry Environment)(All Ultra Settings)(3440x1440 Ultrawide) - GPU Usage 100%
PC #2 - 50-70fps in BFV (General Infantry Environment)(All Ultra Settings)(2560x1440) - GPU Usage 50-60%

As you can see PC #1 is out performing PC #2 by quite a lot in BFV even at a higher resolution and I don't know why. As far as I can see both PC's have the exact same BFV and Nvidia Control Panel settings.

PC#2 has much lower GPU Usage and runs the same poor performance on DX11 & DX12 and the GPU temp under load is around 70°C so shouldn't be throttling. I need to go check the CPU temp as I can't recall what it was but the fact it has an AIO cooler and it performed ok in 3dMark means it shouldn't be too hot and throttling. It also performs the same with Gysnc on and off (it has an Acer KG271U 75Hz monitor which is FreeSync compatible).

I'm leaning towards more of a BFV/software/settings issue rather than a hardware problem as both PC's score similar in 3dMark?

I won't get to see PC #2 now until Saturday but when I do I plan on reinstalling the GPU driver after a DDU clean and uninstalling/reinstalling Afterburner and double checking both BFV and Nvidia Control Panel settings but other than that I'm at a bit of a loss because of the similar 3dMark scores