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GTX970 SLI with overclocked hex-core... GPU-benchmarks lower than expected

crinkleshoes

crinkleshoes

crinkleshoes

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Hey,

I am sure I am missing something obvious, however my benchmark results are a good 10% lower than I would expect them to be both when stock and overclocked and I am wondering where the bottleneck may be.

- All NVCP settings setup to performance - tried with altering the windows settings to performance too (although that last one was done just for the annoying win 7 performance warning message)
- G-Sync/v-sync disabled for benchmarks
- Tried with various combinations of settings/overclocks... same pattern repeats
- Memory benchmarks seem on-par with expectation (actually exceeding in latency)
- CPU benchmarks seem on-par with expectation
- Appears to only be GPU limitation
- SLI-bridge is connected (I also tried connecting it the other way around just to be sure - no "please connect bridge" message appearing from CP).
- Correct PCI-E ports used according to motherboard manual.

System config:
Asus X99-S
5820k @ 4.5 and 4.625, cache @ 3.5
16GB quad channel ddr4 @ 2666 at timings ranging from 15-15-15-38-2T to 12-13-13-26-1T
2x GTX970 running at 1450/8000 for most of these comparisons... although I have also run a few benchmarks at 1500/8000

Corsair H110 keeping temps well under thermal throttling speeds (sub-80C in all these benchies).

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. The system is running everything well at 2560x1440@144Hz - all CPU/memory bound things are exceptional.

But these benchmark scores are showing some kind of GPU bottleneck & I would like to solve it... not because I "neeeeeeeeed" desperately higher scores... it just seems as though something may be missing. You can see clearly it's the GPU score holding back the firestrike total score, physics score looks OK to me.

04-01-2015 18-07-19 by CosmicLogos, on Flickr

04-01-2015 18-07-24 by CosmicLogos, on Flickr

04-01-2015 20-01-35 by CosmicLogos, on Flickr

04-01-2015 20-01-50 by CosmicLogos, on Flickr

04-01-2015 20-18-05 by CosmicLogos, on Flickr

04-01-2015 01-06-36 by CosmicLogos, on Flickr

Thanks :)
 
Last edited:
Yes... the clock speeds I have quoted are from afterburner. I have been checking the graph following benchmark completion. Both are running at a steady 1450 & keeping quite cool... the fans aren't even spinning up to max speed in the process.

Faster boost clocks do improve the scores slightly... only I have settled on these clocks as a happy 24/7.
 
String said:
I had a similar query yesterday. Cut a long story short, even with G-Sync disabled the monitor was capping the max fps.

I run the benchmark on my second non G-Sync monitor and the score jumped from 2500 to 2800 in Heaven.
Click to expand...

Interesting to hear, thank you... I will give that a go.
 
String said:
I had a similar query yesterday. Cut a long story short, even with G-Sync disabled the monitor was capping the max fps.

I run the benchmark on my second non G-Sync monitor and the score jumped from 2500 to 2800 in Heaven.
Click to expand...

Worth a try, but no real change :(

Plus note... peak FPS in heaven screenshot above is over 144fps (over 200 in fact).

setter said:
Do indeed seem a bit low, particularly standard fs. Closest one i could find to yours was this one.

20703. GFX Score 26983. 970. Air cooled. Physics Score 18708. CPU 5820K @ 4.7 Water cooled - SS-89 - Link

No idea on gpu clocks there, but cpu is a little higher.
Click to expand...

:(
 
It's not reading boost clock properly as String mentioned... at least MSI Afterburner is reporting it as 1420-1450... it has been fluctuating a lot in these last runs.

Fan on 100% has somehow been scoring lower than fan on auto? I don't know how to explain that... but it's what I'm seeing.

And yeah... the score is too low for my liking... I'm unsure where the bottleneck is.

I guess it might be best to test each card individually.

Either it is one GPU or one PCI-E slot error/capacity as the CPU/mem benchmarks are performing as expected... so the rest of the motherboard/cpu/ram must be ok.

:(
 
I'm using afterburner too...

I assume you don't quite get the point here... similarly clocked cards are scoring 10-15% higher than mine... that is the problem...
 
It was already a relatively clean install of Win 7... decided to try a clean install of Win 8.1 to see if I would get much of a change.

Oddly... now I can't OC as high as I was before.

The highest I can bench stable now is +100 Core and +500 Mem. +105 on the core and I get grey screen + it resets to base boost clock... then continues.

GPU2 sits around 100-105% power usage (slider increased to 120%)
GPU1 sits around 75% power usage (slider increased to 112%)

both power sliders to max... I assume GPU1 has a higher default TDP than GPU2

GPU1 is a Gigabyte Gaming G1
GPU2 is an Asus Strix

It appears to be GPU2 holding back GPU1 as GPU1 on it's own was able to boost to 1550-1600 without trouble.

I would have gone for both of them Gaming G1s... only for the second slot the G1s are a touch too long for the Be Quiet Silent Base 800 case if wanting to leave the bottom hard drive cage in place (which I do).

For comparisons I was looking at the Firestrike benchmarks threads on this forum and trying to compare.

I see what you mean about your score.
 
OK... darn :(

Still have a couple of days left to return it and get a second G1.

But that would require moving my 3TB and 750GB spinning platter drives into server in basement... with limited space.

Or I give up on this relatively small %age gain (which I suppose I am not guaranteed with a second G1 and keep setup as originally intended...).
 
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