Peculiar problem - very minor, but annoying! :-(

bikerchris · 1 Jun 2017 at 17:41

Hey all,

Hope we're well and PC's are working perfectly...yeah, good luck with that :-)

Anyway, weird and minor issue, I upgraded my machine recently. Everything is better, sometimes not by much, but generally better.

Occasionally I play a game on miniclip called tankie. On the older machine it played well enough with fps of around 60 and a pretty good ping. On the new machine it hovers around 20 fps and has a really bad ping at times. An odd issue is that when I swing the tank gun around, the mouse movement doesn't relate at all to what's going on. I.e. If I move the mouse to the left, the gun moves to the left, but if I then move the mouse to the right, it continues going left! This never happened on the older machine, and the mouse issue doesn't happen in anything but the game on the new machine. This happens on the same network connection, using the same network cable (no wifi connection as the router is so close), so I can only guess that rules out the router to outside world connection. The new machine also has 2 Ethernet ports and I tested both, same problem.

Here's a comparison of both machines old / new:
CPU: Quad Core 3.3GHz (Intel i5 2500k) / Hex Core 3.6GHz (Intel E5-1650V4)
RAM: non-ECC 16GB of 1333MHz / ECC 16GB 2133MHz
Graphics: GTX 560 Ti / GTX 1070
Primary HD: SSD / NVMe

It's a real puzzle, not that important, but I'm just really curious why this is happening. I've fiddled with UEFI settings, graphics settings and all that. I'm really hoping that someone has had a similar issue and just says, "ahhh, change X settings and it'll fix it"....that would be really nice!

Thanks in advance,

Cheers,
Chris

bikerchris · 1 Jun 2017 at 17:57

Just a little update, but shouldn't the System info from the Nvidia software and CPU-Z be the same? NVidia say 1506Mhz Graphics clock and CPU-Z says 569 Mhz???

Borealis · 1 Jun 2017 at 18:09

1506MHz will be the stock clock speed under load. Like CPUs, graphics cards also slow down to save energy and run cooler when they're not being used. If you were to record the speed whilst gaming, it would be 1506MHz or higher depending on the GPU temperature. If the card goes over a certain temperature, it will throttle down as well. The threshold for this is usually about 80C

As far as your inverted controls are concerned, I have no idea why thats happening. That is odd.

bikerchris · 1 Jun 2017 at 18:18

Thanks for such a prompt response Borealis, very good point, although I thought I'd run cinebench (open GL) and the cpu-z speed didn't budge, although perhaps it's not realtime. Oddly if I change a tiny setting the memory frequency does change straight away.

Annoying I just checked the internet and someone has a similar cinebench fps to me...so this continues to be odd :-(

bikerchris · 1 Jun 2017 at 18:33

Well the plot thickens, it just ramped up a little, here's a screen shot of cinebench running to, as well as an odd unrelated boost to a whole 607 MHz , still shy of the standard speed though?!?

pastymuncher · 1 Jun 2017 at 19:02

Download MSI Afterburner and enable the onscreen display so that you can see what is going on while gaming.

bikerchris · 1 Jun 2017 at 20:21

Thanks pastymuncher, that was my next move and it appeared to be around 150-200MHz while in the game. I just re-updated the drivers and there was no change. Next I'm thinking of upgrading the firmware as there were comments online about issues with the 1070.

The fun continues! Thanks for your comment though, very much appreciated.

bikerchris · 3 Jun 2017 at 10:04

Just an update (still an issue), but I tried the following:

Tested the RAM using Windows 10 Memory test, although of course it's not guaranteed to work
Tested the RAM using Asus Diagnostic Software
Un-installed Nvidia software and only re-installed the main driver (none of the other stuff)
Checked the Nvidia settings and ensure max performance was used.
Checked in Chrome and "Edge", same issue.
Checked Firmware for graphics card and it said it was up-to-date.

Next up:

I'm going to install a clean version of Windows 10 on a different HDD and then install firefox only and see if the same issue occurs. I'll be gutted if it's relating to the current OS, as it's configured just how I like it :-(

Screenshots:

Here's one showing some sort of rendering issue when it loads:

Here's one showing how the graphics card is at idle, when perhaps it shouldn't be. It does ramp up when the game is in full screen mode.

Just as a side note, but when I open a large sketchup model, the graphics card ramps up just like it should to around 1500Mhz.

Heisenberg · 3 Jun 2017 at 10:10

Is this a browser based game? Could it not be to do with browser hardware acceleration?

bikerchris · 3 Jun 2017 at 10:13

It is indeed. I'll put disabling hardware acceleration on the to-do list. If I'm allowed, I'm going to the office today. Thanks Heisenberg.

bikerchris · 3 Jun 2017 at 18:11

Hello again, just a little update

Problem exists on a clean Windows 10 install with only the chipset drivers, nvidia basic drivers and firefox installed.
I note the game loading screen isn't glitchy with this install.

Next I'm going to install a clean version of Windows 7, which is the last remaining variable, I think!

bikerchris · 4 Jun 2017 at 13:57

Just another update then, installed Windows 7 on a separate hard drive...and the same problem exists :-(

I'm going to test the graphics card, because I can't think of anything else that would cause this issue.

Although it started with a gaming issue, I really want to sort this as I don't want to find out I've got a hardware issue well after the new build - it's still on the motherboard box right now, and I'm glad!

Next I'm downloading 3DMark to see how the graphics card performs. Cinebench seems to run pretty well, so I'm kinda stumped.

Any comments welcome, very welcome!

bikerchris · 5 Jun 2017 at 13:24

Little update, tried disabling hardware acceleration, no joy. The problem persists!

Next up, swap out the old graphics card to the new machine.

agnes · 24 Jun 2017 at 16:33

Ummmm, disable the GPU underclocking when 'idle'?

You stated it's a small problem but you've done a lot to try and remove the issue?

Have you tried a different browser? Or always the same browser? What about trying on a much lesser specced machine like a standard HP laptop.

bikerchris · 26 Jun 2017 at 16:21

I did look into that, it just seems that the in-browser game is out dated and appears not to say, 'can I have graphics performance please'?

You are right, I did go into a lot of detail, but mainly in part that when I have one issue with a new system, it concerns me. I believe it could lead to more important and impactful issues...in the end, this one didn't.

I think I mentioned it above, but I used every main stream browser (FF, G, even Edge).

So I'm just going to get on with my life, also I've installed the program version of this game and it works perfectly on both old and new machines.

An aside, but I'm really gutted I didn't wait longer for the new X299 machines....loads of a cores AND great single thread performance (smacks forehead).