New Gaming PC Under-performing - please help me pin-point the issue!

[Radament]

Hi everyone!

To start off I just want to say by all means I'm not an expert, more of a hobbyist when it comes down to PC's. Everything I know I just google. After three years of savings I went big (for my budget) and bought parts for a gaming rig I always wished for. I also have a small youtube gaming channel with a solid audience, so I hoped to boost the quality up for the viewers too.

Anyways, this is the specs I got:

Intel i7-6800K 3.40GHz
Asus Strix X99 Gaming Intel Motherboard
Asus GeForce GTX 1080Ti ROG Strix OC 11264MB GDDR5X
Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4 2666MHz
Samsung 960 EVO Polaris 500GB M.2
Samsung 1.0TB 850 EVO SSD 2.5"
Corsair RM Series RM650X '80+ Gold' 650W
NZXT Kraken X62, 280mm
ASUS ROG Swift PG279Q 27 inch WQHD Gaming Monitor (2560 x 1440, IPS, up to 165 Hz, DP, HDMI, USB 3.0, G-Sync)
Second monitor Samsung S22D300 (just a standard 1080p monitor)

Running Windows 10

The issue is the PC is really under-performing for what it is. In various games I am getting sometimes below half of what I should with a rig like that. I use OBS (18.0.1 version) to record gameplays - yeah, I'm that strange guy that enjoys talking to a camera as he games - and the performance FPS wise during recording is not much better to my 740M I had in my old laptop I've been using for 4 years nearly.

I will use GTAV and The Forest as two examples in this thread. I used MSI Afterburner to measure in game performance and also will include some HWMonitor Screenshots and some SystemMark and Unigine Valley tests for any top-man that can help me pin-point as otherwise I'm sending it all back including with the case in few days, which breaks my heart.

Here's some things I HAVE ALREADY TRIED AND IT DIDN'T WORK:
- DDU Nvidia drivers and re-install to newest and one version back. Both didn't work.
- Reinstall Windows.
- Update BIOS.
- Switch off DVR in some ****ty Win10 xbox app.
- Turn power management in windows and nvidia to max performance
- Uninstall GeForce Experience and just game without it.
- Switch off Nvidia gameplay recording software (which is crap anyway, btw.)
- Switch off v-sync in games
- Disconnect my 1080p monitor and try to game only on my 2k monitor.
- Gaming without recording gives more FPS but still heavily underperforms (i.e GTA 75-80 FPS, the Forest 50-60 FPS which is still bad and useless as I only game as I record)

That's all I can remember from last 3 days of trying to pin point what's going on here.

Some screenshots:
Unigine Valley Score on Ultra
SystemMark Results

The Forest Afterburner Data while recording gameplay
GTA 5 Afterburner Data while recording gameplay

GTA 5 HWMonitor Data 001
GTA 5 HWMonitor Data 002

The Forest HWMonitor Data 001
The Forest HWMonitor Data 002

That's it. If someone knowledgeable enough could help me pin-point why a £3500 rig is performing utter-crap I would be very grateful and it would save me sending the whole lot back as oppose one part that is faulty here. I assume it's a hardware issue but I just don't know is it the GPU, CPU or not enough power. It's been really frustrating couple of days.

Thank you to everyone who will spend their time on trying to help me!

 

[Radament]

How about some screenshots of GPU-Z - the "Graphics Card" tab and the "Sensors" tab, both screenshots while you have the little render test running (click the question mark to the right of the Bus Interface box, to run the test).

Thank you for your reply. As requested GPU-z screenshots during Bus-Interface render test:
http://imgur.com/sb5AeYC
http://imgur.com/PUe5Ydb

 

[Radament]

Can't see anything wrong with that.

Something's off with your GPU usage in-game, as the Afterburner on-screen display shows (69% use only). Now, I've found as others have, that GTA is an MSAA x4 game. Every time I try lowering to x2 or x0, the GPU usage goes down a lot more often in a lot more areas, sometimes lowering fps (minimum fps) to what I get with x4 anyway. Not sure if that's been your experience too. I do play at 1080p not 1440p, and with a 970, so might be different.

Something you've probably already tried - going into Nvidia Control Panel and Manage 3D Settings/Program Settings/gta5.exe/Power management mode: Maximum performance?

Also, can you head over to the Graphics section and take a look at the Superposition benchmark thread and run some benches at 1080, 1440 and 4K, with the settings Kaapstad mentioned, to compare?

Thanks for the reply. Yes, both Windows and Nvidia are set for Maximum Performance, even I tweaked my bios to Asus Gaming Performance mode, or whatever it is called. No change.

As for MSAA, I had a little play with it and you are right on x4 I get slightly more FPS (80-90 just gaming, 60-65 recording) but this is still a massive underperformance for a rig like I have. To what I found online the rig of my calibre (wheeeeey) should fly 120-150 fps on 1440p. :/

Here are some shots from Superpositions Benchmark:
1080p
1440p
4k

Although you're comparing to your laptop - your laptop isn't doing 1440P at 165Mhz (Presumably) - As a test, try dropping your resolution down to say, 60Mhz and see what FPS you're getting then.

Sure thing. Thanks for the reply. Adjusting Refresh Rate in game made no difference whatsoever. I did go through all of them. Still it is a bit sad that I can't even average on 1080p that 100 FPS in GTA5 on 1080ti and 6800k while there are tons of tests online where people get min 120 FPS on rigs similar or same as mine.

 

[Radament]

long shot but do you have the nvidia experience installed?
when I done a fresh install I thought my machine wasn't performing as well as it should.
I opened the Nvidia experience and went to settings and turned off sharing.
I then tried a game I had just tried and I was getting an extra 10 to 15 frames per second.
worth a shot..

Yep, already tried that from many tips and tricks I managed to google. FPS didn't get affected one way or another at all. Really disappointing with the performance of the rig for what it is and how much I paid for it. Just want to pin point why others are getting much better results than me as I can't put my finger on it.

 

[Radament]

You say others are geting better results than you can you link us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEzrQ5jGraY

Nvenc in OBS works well, it's worth a try.
Depending on settings you could easily get less than 80fps with a 1080ti if you cranked GTAV right up at 1440p. A GTA fps figure is arbitrary without knowing the settings.

I have the highest air cooled Ryzen result on the Superposition boards (1080 extreme), and it's not much above your score and I think you may have some room on your clocks.

I played around a little bit but couldn't get above 70 fps while recording. 60 being the average.