100% GPU usage in games - help!

Vidar

Vidar

Vidar

Soldato
Joined
18 Dec 2008
Posts
6,512
Location
Liverpool
So I'm having performance issues over the past few weeks and I really shouldn't be...

Okay so when playing games such as Fallout 4 or AC: Odyssey I'm averaging around 70 - 80fps on my current settings at first. Then at some point, may be 10 minutes in or 2hrs my 1080ti will suddenly hit 100% usage and the game will turn into a slide show at around 20fps or lower.

I've got minimal tasks running in the background, have made no recent changes to the system. I have DDU'd my drivers and it makes no difference if I run the card at stock settings or with my custom profile which is/was stable (110+ Core & 500+ Memory). Temperature on the card never goes above 80c even at full load.

I've a 9900k at 5Ghz which isn't breaking a sweat, highest cpu temp so far has been 74c. I don't know what's going on and could really use some suggestions.
 
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Is my current profile with seemingly more scope to push it a bit further... Will check out the m.2 issue but why would it be happening a different times? If the gpu is putting out a consistent temp while in use.
 
I have 3 high speed 140mm Silent wings 3 fans up front, 3 high speed silent wings 3's on my silent loop 360mm AIO exhausting out the top and a further silent wing 3 in the rear for exhaust as well. Case is a P600s with just the mesh and fans are set to a pretty aggressive curve. Temps really shouldn't be a problem.

@MrPotato So looking at the sensor page on hwifno the maximum temp it got to on drive temp 2 (I'm assuming this is the controller) was 60c. As far as I understand it they tend to have problems around the 85c mark.

I have the z390 Aorus Master motherboard, the nvme is under the included heat spreader.
 
So I may be on to something after picking the brains of a friend earlier... GPU Memory clock maximum 6000Mhz minimum 375Mhz according to HWinfo. Now I'm not sure if this is happening when the frames drop or not yet but it's something to keep an eye on through afterburner in real time. Hoping it's something simple.
 
snips86x said:
I've had it before where the core clock drops which then causes the stuttering, but not on this card. It was an AMD R290 issue and had to force the clock speeds while gaming
Click to expand...

Is it something duff on the card then? Not sure how to force it to keep the memory clock up...
 
So my problem continues...

I suspected it may be anti virus software causing issues as I'd seen a massive dip on gpu memory clock, so I uninstalled bit defender and thought this had solved it. However it's doing it again.

The only thing I can find in hwinfo this time is that CPU core 1 & 3 have hit a minimum of 800Mhz at some point, the rest remaining around the 5Ghz mark with little fluctuation. No temperature spikes or anything. I wouldn't mind but I've even lowered my setting again and have gone from around 90fps to 22fps in games with no changes made, game has been running for about 4 hrs though this time before it happened again.

@orbitalwalsh sorry to drag you into this one but have you got any ideas mate?
 
orbitalwalsh said:
dip in memory clock... only thing i can think of is fault memory controller/ ram chip on the GPU card .. they can fail, rare - but if you have i recording or VRAM speed decreasing then increasing should help fight for card RMA testing
Click to expand...

It's frustrating as hell, I've only seen HWinfo record the drop in Memory Clock Speed once, that doesn't show up every time the FPS plummets. There is a problem somewhere because the same scenes in a game will run fine again once the system has been rebooted. I've gotten some videos of the FPS drops, first to around the 85fps mark, then to around the 55fps mark with nothing standing out.
 
Okay so having downloaded the outer worlds in that game I'm seeing continuous wild fluctuations in FPS no matter what settings I play at coupled with some epic screen tearing, it actually makes feel a little nauseous after a while. With Fall Out 4 it's still the same problem. What's more I've ramped up the GPU and system fans to 100% and have not gone about 70c on the GPU and same problem persists. I've also managed to make use of my mates 2070 today to retest and replicated the results albeit with lower overall FPS. So I don't think it's hardware related, at least not the GPU. I've run malware bytes and am clean, even saw it suggested to run latencymon on a another thread with a similar issue and that's come back all clear. I've tried lowering the OC on my monitor down from 100fps to 90fps and that's made no difference, disabling anti virus and what few non essential programs I have running in the back ground to no discernable effect.

Still need to try with gsync disabled which I'll do tomorrow before I go away for a few days. Failing that I'm going to reinstall Windows from a thumb drive and update the bios, and try running things as bare bones as possible. Hopefully that will clear things up, if not... I'm stumped.
 
Okay so I've cracked it! On another forum it was suggested in a similar thread that a dodgy cable could be the issue so I ordered a replacement.

Problem seems to be solved, my old cable doesn't appear to be damaged in anyway but everything seems to be behaving as it should.

Not sure how a cable could cause these issues but I'm not complaining.
 
It's definitely not what I would have expected, I'd even wondered if it might be my monitor failing at one point. So I'm glad it's been such a simple fix.

2hrs of rdr2 and hovered around the 60fps mark without much variation, as expected given what reviews are saying about performance of my card on this game. Put the old cable back in and it's all over the place.
 
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