Build not performing like it should

[VadiKahn]

Hello,

 

I recently upgraded my computer from a GTX 1060 6GB to GTX 1070ti thinking that I would get better framerates in games.  I am mainly basing my benchmarks of GTA 5.  I looked at what this card is supposed to get at 1080p with max settings and I am not getting anywhere close to that.  I believe this card can run the game at 60fps easily at max settings with 1080p.  I am barely getting 30fps at max settings at 1080p.  

 

My thermals on both the processor and the graphics card are fine (not even close to the throttling limit, can verify exact numbers if needed) and the processor does not reach full load either.  I am running windows server 2016 but based of Linus' video, the performance drop should not be 30-40 fps in GTA 5.  Here are my specs:

 

ASRock X299 TAICHI XE

32GB GSkill DDR4 2400 (running at 2666)

Intel i7 7820x (overclocked to 4.0Ghz with turbo boost at 4.7Ghz)

Corsair h100i v2

Zotac 1070ti mini

Corsair Force MP500 M.2 2280 480GB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 (OS install location)

Seagate BarraCuda ST3000DM008 3TB 7200 RPM (File Storage)

Corsair RM850x

Corsair Full tower ATX case

 

Windows Server 2016

I do have a 4k monitor running at 60hz but I am running GTA at 1080p resolution on it.  

 

This should get us started.  Can provide any other info, diagnostics.  Any help would be appreciated.  

[LogicWeasel]

Did you clean install the drivers, or do a reinstall when you switched?  Have you tried other games?  Something is wrong settings wise.

[ELSknutson]

30 fps at 1080 to me feels like you do not have the proper driver installed 

[VadiKahn]

Thank you guys for your responses.  I did do a clean driver install when I upgraded.  I will do a DDU uninstall and install the newest drivers.  I know the GTA 5 Nvidia gameready drivers is like v350.12 which is very old and my drivers are way past that so I didnt think that a outdated driver would make GTA run bad, considering how old the game is.  I will do the "re-install" of the latest drivers and will let you know what happened.  Thank you once again.    

 

PS: I was able to run Shadow of Tomb Raider on Highest settings with 1080p with about 60fps.  

[VadiKahn]

Deleted the drivers using DDU and re-installed the latest 418.91 Nvidia drivers.  I previously had 417.71 so it wasn't that far off.  The FPS increased by about 4-5 fps but that could of been just the environment that I was in.  Still not sure what to do. 

[LogicWeasel]

48 minutes ago, VadiKahn said:

Deleted the drivers using DDU and re-installed the latest 418.91 Nvidia drivers.  I previously had 471.71 so it wasn't that far off.  The FPS increased by about 4-5 fps but that could of been just the environment that I was in.  Still not sure what to do. 

Is it possible there's a missed setting and GTA V is still rendering @ 4K?  If you have another monitor, I would try hooking up a true 1080p monitor and run it from that or make sure the virtual resolution is set to 1080p or lower scaling (if GTA V has that option, I'm not sure).  Maybe try just dropping some of the settings from highest to medium and see what that does to FPS?  There may be something getting overlooked.

[VadiKahn]

So I tried a few things.  Tried setting the resolution to 4k and turned FXAA, MSAA and VSync off with settings still set to Highest/ultra.  Still got the same framerate of about 30fps.  Tried restoring all the settings (graphics and advanced graphics) to default with FXAA, MSAA and VSync still off and still got the same framerate.  The temps for both the GPU and CPU do not rise above 65C.  CPU load does not go above 20%.  Noticed that changing the advanced settings to default (everything off) but still having the graphics settings set to High/ultra made the FPS go up to right under 40. 

 

Also tried setting the priority level for GTA5.exe to realtime but that did not do anything.

 

Starting to think that it could be that Windows Server 2016 could be the issue.  Kind of running out of ideas here

[VadiKahn]

So I found what the issue was.  I have the G.SKILL Aegis 16GB 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2400 (PC4 19200) Model F4-2400C17S-16GIS ( https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820232625 ).  My motherboard doesnt support a XMP profile for it.  So what I did is set the frequency to 2666, and set the memory timings to what is advertised for the RAM.  

• DDR4 2400 (PC4 19200)
• Timing 17-17-17-39
• CAS Latency 17
• Voltage 1.2V

So apparently changing the 4 basic timings was not enough.  The RAM was running stable at a slightly increased frequency but still running at the same timing with the same voltage.  So I randomly stumbled upon my motherboards memory overclocking utility which also showed a 5th memory timing (Secondary timing) that it wanted to set when "overclocking my memory to 2400MHz (since no XMP profile exists for this memory, it runs at 2133MHz by default and you need to change it to 2400MHz manually and enter the timings since AUTO will set it to higher timings then what it should be at stock 2400MHz).  The name of the timing was tWR (write recovery time).  After setting this setting to what the memory overclocking utility wanted to set it to, my performance improved drastically and now getting ~50FPS in GTA 5 at Max settings and 4k resolution.  Lesson learned, if you get cheap RAM, expect to tinker with it a little bit more than you would with a expensive, high performance RAM. 

 

Hope this helps.  

[LogicWeasel]

5 hours ago, VadiKahn said:

So I found what the issue was.

Glad you found your proverbial needle in the haystack and updated the post to share the new findings.  Must have been some very finicky timings since typically for gaming performance Intel is considered far less memory sensitive compared to the gains Ryzen (and Threadripper I assume) get out of faster memory.

I wonder if you do the game testing using the base timings the mobo defaults to (the 2133Mhz one w/o manual inputs or non-existant XMP) if the performance is better than what you had manually set before when you didn't know about the needed 2ndary timing tweak.