Issues with Palit RTX 2070 performance

[drent]

Hi,

I'm wondering if I can get some advice. I bought a Palit RTX 2070 Dual for my new build, upgrading from a Palit 1070 Super Jetstream about a month ago and I've not had a solid day out of it yet. I started off with blue screens and game crashes and immediately asked Palit and Nvidia for some advice, they both eventually recommended an RMA.
I asked Overclockers on the 15th to RMA it and they said they'd need to bring it in for testing. My issue with this is last time I had a faulty item (a Dell monitor) they tested it, couldn't replicate the fault, charged me £10-20 for postage back and then took 3 months to give me the correct order details to get the item fixed by Dell which should have been a next day service so I'm not too keen on the idea of sending it back for testing. When I eventually got the order Dell swapped the monitor out next day and the problem vanished.

Since the 15th Nvidia have released several drivers and the blue screens seem to have stopped, at least in Odyssey and Overwatch but I am still experiencing frequent game crashes in Overwatch (once every 3-10 matches) compared to maybe 5 crashes in 2 years of playing on the 1070. Games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey do run at a higher frame rate, averaging maybe 60 at max settings compared to about 50 at max settings on the 1070, however even at these lower frame rates the 1070 is more consistent with the 2070 sometimes showing lag spikes of up to about 90ms, dropping to 3 FPS compared to a maximum of 33ms on the 1070, dropping to about 15FPS.

The rest of the build is an AMD 2950x on an MSI x399 Gaming Pro Carbon AC with 64GB Corsair Vengeance LPX and a brand new EVGA Supernova G3 750W which I tested before installing and before that went in I was still experiencing issues with an older 700W OCZ PSU. The games are running on a Crucial MX SSD and the OS is installed on a Samsung Evo 970 NVME.

I'm very seriously considering returning this card as the 2 year old 1070 seems to blow it out of the water in terms of consistency of performance. The reason I upgraded to the 2070 is it was cheaper than buying a second 1070, the 1070s are still about £50 more than I paid for my 1070 in 2016 which is about the same as a 2070.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[drent]

Thanks for the suggestion Kelt, I ran Unigene Valley on max settings for 12 hours straight about a week ago and it had some fairly regular stutters but was OK otherwise. I also ran Unigene Superposition interactive mode for a couple of hours and apart from being very slow it didn't crash. I should also mention I'm only targetting 1920 x 1080 or 1920 x 1200, not 2/4K. I also never overclock CPU or GPUs.

 

[drent]

lol OK i lied, I overclocked my Intel i7 920 once it ran out of warranty but not before or since.
I have run DDU a couple of times, at Palit's suggestions even after I informed them it was a brand new Windows install. I guess it couldn't hurt to try again now that a few more drivers have been released.
@Gibbo I am actually running the PC on 32GB of RAM at the moment (still 2666MHz) as one stick failed (10000+ memtest errors), I'm waiting for Corsair to get on with the RMA. I should have mentioned that but as the problems have been occurring since day 1 and I started with 64GB and that's my intended amount that's the spec I put. I can try 2133MHz again but I'm pretty sure the crashes were still present at those speeds as that was the first thing I tried when I started having issues.

 

[drent]

I also found a weird thing, at least with Overwatch, the game seems to set render scale to 200% by default, the 1070 runs this fine at about 90-110FPS but the 2070 can't get much past 60FPS at 200% render scale, at 150% it gets to about the same FPS as the 1070 and at 100% render scale the 2070 shoots up to about 212FPS which I find very odd but it did crash almost instantly (could have been a coincidence).
I should also mention that when gaming the GPU averages 60-67C, not seen it go past 70 and the CPU is about 50-58C with occasional spikes into the 60s (at which point the fans turn on a bit and drop it back).

 

[drent]

OK so last night I did a DDU with the latest drivers and the frame rates do seem to have stabilised, still a little underwhelming compared to the 1070 but OK. I can only assume that previous drivers were faulty and that I didn't benefit from the improvements from the latest ones because the faulty RAM messed them up in between.

Overwatch is still crashing but I did find an article stating that they'd fixed Ryzen related crashes late 2017 and to update to the latest Ryzen chipset/mobo BIOS. I'm currently waiting on a USB stick so I can flash my MSI x399 to the latest BIOS released a few days ago. I doubt this will fix it because Blizzard are clearly referring to 1st gen Ryzen but I feel it's worth a shot.

Its a hard one, I'd not be using Corsair memory, as they rarely use Samsung B die which is the best IC and also recommended for AMD setups.
Blue screens are nearly always a memory fault issue from experience or corrupted software which is normally caused by bad memory.

I went Corsair because they were most readily available when I looked, really wanted GSkill but couldn't find any for a decent price and in stock. I doubt I'll be using Corsair again after 2 failures in less than a month and their poor handling of my RMA request, still waiting on them to sort out a replacement and they've requested I go back to the retailer which isn't an option as far as replacements go.

What thermals are you getting? Personally, I'd expect to see more stability and consistency with the FPS fluctuations, as for BSOD's, memory issues, cards rarely cause BSOD if ever. It still sounds like the card should be replaced.

Regarding thermals, the card hasn't ever gone past about 71C and usually sits around 67C at 100% with the fans sitting around the 45-60% mark. I'm slightly less convinced the card is at fault but am reserving judgement to see if the driver issues return because at the moment the RAM that's still in the PC is running 100% OK (at least according to memtest86).

Hello Drent,

What are the news with your card ? Because I would to buy the same but now I'm afraid ...

I'd be hesitant to recommend this card at the moment. I really just wanted another 1070 (or a Ti) for room scale VR in a second PC downstairs but as the 2070 was the same price it seemed like the better, future-proof option. If it had been much more expensive I would have just kept my 1070 and forgone VR in the second computer. Still wish I could have got another 1070, it's quieter under load, slightly smaller and really seems about as capable as the 2070. When I bought my card and was having issues I felt like I was the only person who bought a 2070 because I could barely find anyone talking about having one, issues or positives. As time passed I've found more threads but mostly complaints and still not many compared to the 2080 and 2080Ti. If you can wait I'd leave it a while and see if things improve. If you really can't wait you'll probably be fine with a 2070 but I'd maybe get it from somewhere with a no quibble returns policy just in case.

Thanks again for all the advice.

 

[drent]

Good luck mate, and yea, it's a bit **** at the moment, either you have the cash to throw at a 2080 ti or you just don't bother upgrading if you're coming from a 10 series.

I put money aside to get a 2080 ti but held onto it for a while after release. Ended up getting a 1080 ti (I was on a 980 ti) second hand and I'll wait for the 30** series I think. This round should kick Nvidia up the chuff and hopefully wisen them up a bit.

Let's hope it does. Seems a lot of big name companies are needing it at the moment.

 

[drent]

Could you run Unigine Valley and/or Superposition at 1080P extreme and give us a score please just so we can verify that your card is performing correctly?

I usually run 3 monitors but I ran both tests single monitor too to see if it made much difference.

Valley
Triple Monitor
Score: 4352
FPS: 104
Min: 35.8
Max 176.1

Single Monitor
Score: 4316
FPS: 103.1
Min: 36.4
Max 178.4

Superposition
Triple Monitor
Score: 5195
FPS: 38.86
Min 30.23
Max 49.66

Single Monitor
Score: 5183
FPS: 38.77
Min 30.38
Max 49.09