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3090FE low GPU usage?

HangTime said:
When I ran a 3090 I had the same issue, what I found was that it was hitting a CPU limitation but it's hard to spot. Basically in your monitoring software you need to set the polling interval very low so you can actually see the individual CPU cores creeping up towards 100%. With a standard refresh interval of say 1000ms you find that the CPU appears to be not maxed out because it is constantly sharing the load around, it never runs one core at 100% for a whole second (meaning when it is monitored it might report say 60% utilisation), but it might be up near there for a couple of hundred ms.

That said, a 11900K is better than I have so you shouldn't have as much of a CPU limitation.

Goes without saying but make sure you crank up the settings that are heavy on GPU like maxing out RTX/AA etc.
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That's an interesting point actually, well spotted. I'll have a look.
 
ljt said:
Might be nothing, but I noticed you said you have BFV in DX12, which is notoriously buggy, and only really needed if you want RT. Have you tried in DX11 to see if it makes any difference?
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Yeah I did try DX11, it's certainly smoother so will be switching back to it but I get nowhere near as much FPS with it for some reason. I only have DX12 on now for the direct comparison with my old setup.
 
Dave2150 said:
Cool. You'll gain quite a bit of performance with XMP on, as 2133Mhz with bad timings will severely limit the 11900k. Tested BFV since setting XMP?

Your motherboard BIOS is very old, from January. The latest BIOS has fixes, performance improvements and new microcode for Rocket Lake, which will further improve things.

https://rog.asus.com/uk/motherboards/rog-strix/rog-strix-z590-e-gaming-wifi-model/helpdesk_bios

Link above is to the WIFI edition of the motherboard - not sure if you have this or the non wifi one. Either way, update to Version 0707 ASAP, and turn back on XMP!

Be noted, these BIOS updates that contain CPU microcode updates seem quite scary when updating - they'll reboot you PC several times, you'll get quite a few black screens while it loads the microcode updater. Let it run until you're back at POST (my Maximus XIII board took around 4 minutes!)
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I got a blue BSOD after enabling XMP so I'm just this minute updating the BIOS to 707!!
 
BIOS updated, that was an uncomfortably long black screen before booting for the first time. Will just bang through some settings and see if it's made any difference.
 
Well that's weird:

Updated BIOS
Enabled XMP
BFV crashed to desktop

So I tried it again and the whole PC froze then crashed into a reboot and BSOD, it then tried to boot back into Windows but had another BSOD then just powered itself off?!

It will only boot into Windows with XMP disabled now.

Still have the same weirdness with BFV, GPU usage fluctuates between 70-98%, CPU usage is fairly stable at 60-75%. 150 ish FPS so not near BVFs 200fps cap.
 
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Switched back to DX11 in BFV and it's pretty much the same story except my GPU usage is just 50-60% now and CPU usage is 40-50% with an FPS of just 110??!!!!. I'm not overly bothered about the actual performance with BFV, because it's certainly playable, just wanted to get to the bottom of this new weirdness because I'm pretty sure something isn't right.

Increasing Res scale to 150% just lowers FPS to 70 and ups GPU usage to 70%
 
Tried leaving all RAM settings to Auto and just settling frequency to 3200MHz and it played BFV for 5 minutes then froze and crashed again. Weird because these same sticks of RAM ran fine with XMP at 3200Mhz on my last Asus board.

Seems to be fine as long as XMP is disabled.
 
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So how can I get my RAM running faster? Can I enable XMP then up the voltage a bit or should I diable XMP and set the frequency a bit lower until it's stable?
 
Dave2150 said:
If it's not stable XMP that's worrying, what RAM do you have? Dominator Platinum as per your sig?

Are you running the memory in gear1 or gear2? Gear1 means IMC (cpu's memory controller) is running the same speed as the RAM. You can confirm this in CPUZ by checking "mem controller freq" and "DRAM frequency". 3200Mhz is quite slow memory so you should be running it in gear 1.
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Yes it is a bit worryingly tbh, I'll check that out and get back to you shortly. And yeah its the ram Listed in my sig.
 
Dave2150 said:
If it's not stable XMP that's worrying, what RAM do you have? Dominator Platinum as per your sig?

Are you running the memory in gear1 or gear2? Gear1 means IMC (cpu's memory controller) is running the same speed as the RAM. You can confirm this in CPUZ by checking "mem controller freq" and "DRAM frequency". 3200Mhz is quite slow memory so you should be running it in gear 1.
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Looking at this at idle it owuld appear that both frequencies are the same (XMP off obviously).
51263911469_d44f15a422_o.png
 
Danny75 said:
You should start testing one stick of RAM at a time as well. XMP 3200 should be no problem. Might have a bad stick/other memory related issue that BFV is triggering (and the issue when XMP is enabled could point to that as well).

What SA voltage and CPU IO 2 voltage is the BIOS setting by default when you enable XMP? They might be called something else like VCCSA and VCCIO2 in your board's BIOS.

Also, if running CPU at stock, try disabling SpeedStep and enabling SpeedShift (in BIOS). For starters you should see a slight improvement in Cinebench R20, and I think it should help with gaming even though the issue must be something else. If you're running Windows High Performance then it won't make a difference, or shouldn't, as that will/should ignore the BIOS SpeedShift setting.
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Stand by, I'll go get that info, if I can find it.
 
With XMP enabled:

Speed Shift is Enabled
Speedstep is Auto
DRAM voltage is 1.361

Not sure if I'm looking in the right place for these but:
VCCSA Load Line Cal is set to Auto
VCCIO Mem OC Boot Voltage is Auto
CPU VCCIO Boot Voltage is Auto

Will test each stick of RAM individually a bit later this morning and see if that sheds any light on it as well.
 
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Danny75 said:
Okay, disable SpeedStep completely and leave SpeedShift enabled for buttery smooth gameplay on Rocket Lake and better Cinebench results at stock.

As for those three VCCs, I wish I was familiar with Asus Z590 BIOS as they sound like they could be something else (I'm using an MSI Z590 currently). VCCSA Load Line Cal(ibration) sounds like an additional setting for the actual VCCSA. And the the other two settings sound like they are for booting voltages, not for later voltages.

So I would explore more, see if you find the actual VCCSA etc tucked away elsewhere, and don't just make note of whether it's on Auto, make a note of the actual voltages which should be displayed alongside.

One thing I don't know if you've mentioned already, and it's important, is whether you have removed the power limits on your board or not? They need removing with Rocket Lake. If unsure you can easily check by seeing how much CPU Package Power is used after a Cinebench R20 run, with HWiNFO64. If it's (quite a lot) more than 125W (as you have an 11900K), then they are removed. Some boards do it by default, I'm not sure if absolutely every Z590 does it. With MSI Z590 it asks you whether you have the boxed cooler or tower style cooler or liquid cooler and removes the power limits accordingly. Your board may have done something similar when you set it up or have them removed by default.
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I did have a good poke around for the actual values but have to be able to find them so I will look again.

During my mobo setup I didn't specify a cooler anywhere and after a Cinebench R20 run my CPU package power max was 205.10W so I assume my board has already removed power limits.

I'll go disable Speedstep now then.

Just to add, I just managed about 20mins BFV gameplay with XMP on (left everything at Auto) but I dropped the RAM frequency to the next one down which was 3,066MHz I beleive, it didnt crash or BSOD but I may have just been lucky.
 
OK XMP on, back to max frequency of 3200MHz

DRAM Voltage = 1.361V
CPU VCCIO = 1.072V
VCCIO Mem OC Voltage = 1.176V

Temporarily I've gone back to the lower frequency of 3,066Mhz with XMP on just to see if it is actually stable. I definitely want to get to the bottom of it not running at 3200MHz though.
 
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