Noddy question on 980ti core clock speed changes

[Bubo]

Trying to diagnose if I have a problem or not here. Have a 980ti with the latest drivers and I notice that some games do not seem to make the core clock ramp up to full performance, as indicated by the core clock graph on MSI Afterburner or GPUz.

On desktop it will idle at about 950MHz, this is with 3 monitors attached, the primary being an Asus PG278Q@144Hz, and others being HDMI 60hz monitors. I kind of know it shouldn't idle at this high speed on just the desktop, but I am not that bothered about that, I just want to confirm if the card is behaving properly in games when the clock should ramp up to the full speed of the card. If I run BF4 or Skyrim, or 3DMark the core clock will ramp up to my full overclock of about 1485MHz. But in some games, which defo use 3D, it will either stay at 950, or will at most go up to 1100 or thereabouts.

This seems fair enough if the card decides certain games don't need full power for what it deems acceptable frame rates, and here I am talking about Minecraft and PS2 emulators. But I have one game which definitely should be using full power but isn't, Silent Hunter 5. With this game it will not increase core clocks and my fps shown in game is about 55fps. Bizarrely with this game, if I press escape to go to the quit menu, the core clock will jump up to the full clock, but go back down when I return to the game.

My main question is, is the card working as designed in the less power hungry games, i.e. is it meant to not jump straight to full clocks in ALL games which use 3D graphics, only those which the card thinks it should? And if so what could be causing it to think Silent Hunter 5 is not deserving of full power when it clearly needs it? Or, do I have a more widespread problem if the clocks are meant to ramp up for all 3D games? It would help for starters if anyone could tell me what core clocks they get in Minecraft compared to their desktop core speed.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

Core clock won't max out unless the card needs to. I would only be concerned if the card wasn't putting out the desired frames. If you're testing with Minecraft and PS2 emulators, then stop wasting your time. Test with some modern games that you know for an absolute fact should max out the core clock, and also run some benchmarks and compare results to those in the relevant threads here.

 

[Aretak]

I (still) play Mass Effect 3's multiplayer mode at 4K using DSR and my 980 Ti sits at 950MHz in that. It's perfectly normal for it not to ramp up all the way if it doesn't need to. Can't explain the issue with Silent Hunter 5, but as long as it's ramping up properly in everything else, I'd assume it's a game-specific bug of some sort, rather than a problem with the card.

 

[MoodyB]

If I run BF4 or Skyrim, or 3DMark the core clock will ramp up to my full overclock of about 1485MHz. But in some games, which defo use 3D, it will either stay at 950, or will at most go up to 1100 or thereabouts.

If you haven't done so already, you could try changing the 'Power management mode' to 'Prefer maximum performace' in the game profile in the NVidia Control Panel.

It's under - Manage 3d Settings -> Program Settings tab -> then select the required game from the popup list.

 

[humbug]

Trying to diagnose if I have a problem or not here. Have a 980ti with the latest drivers and I notice that some games do not seem to make the core clock ramp up to full performance, as indicated by the core clock graph on MSI Afterburner or GPUz.

On desktop it will idle at about 950MHz, this is with 3 monitors attached, the primary being an Asus PG278Q@144Hz, and others being HDMI 60hz monitors. I kind of know it shouldn't idle at this high speed on just the desktop, but I am not that bothered about that, I just want to confirm if the card is behaving properly in games when the clock should ramp up to the full speed of the card. If I run BF4 or Skyrim, or 3DMark the core clock will ramp up to my full overclock of about 1485MHz. But in some games, which defo use 3D, it will either stay at 950, or will at most go up to 1100 or thereabouts.

This seems fair enough if the card decides certain games don't need full power for what it deems acceptable frame rates, and here I am talking about Minecraft and PS2 emulators. But I have one game which definitely should be using full power but isn't, Silent Hunter 5. With this game it will not increase core clocks and my fps shown in game is about 55fps. Bizarrely with this game, if I press escape to go to the quit menu, the core clock will jump up to the full clock, but go back down when I return to the game.

My main question is, is the card working as designed in the less power hungry games, i.e. is it meant to not jump straight to full clocks in ALL games which use 3D graphics, only those which the card thinks it should? And if so what could be causing it to think Silent Hunter 5 is not deserving of full power when it clearly needs it? Or, do I have a more widespread problem if the clocks are meant to ramp up for all 3D games? It would help for starters if anyone could tell me what core clocks they get in Minecraft compared to their desktop core speed.

Silent Hunter 5, very old game now and completely CPU bound, you're not going to get the FPS the GPU is capable of because no CPU on earth is anything like fast enough.

I have it, even my 970 runs practically idle at around 60 FPS.

If for whatever reason (FPS cap, CPU bottleneck....) the GPU cannot run at high loads it will run in low power states, lower Mhz.

 

[Bubo]

Glad to see it confirmed this is normal behavior in less power hungry games. You are probably right with Silent Hunter being an awkward game. Did a bit more testing and out to sea away from cpu intensive ports it does actually ramp up to max core clocks and gives 120+ fps, but next to ports it does drop down to 50-60 and core drops back down to the 900's. Problem solved cheers.