Graphics Card Stuck at 405Mhz!

vkw619 · February 1, 2015

And your clock speed is still stuck, hrm. Install EVGA Precision X and then enable Kboost, just to see if that will raise the clock speed. Kboost forces the GPU in your case a MGPU to run at full clock speed, Worth a shot at this point. (assuming you haven't tried that before)

You can't enable KBoost on mobile chips from this generation.

I'm going to break this laptop. You have no idea

Grrizz · February 1, 2015

IDK what could be causing it but 405MHz is the "safety" clock which it will lock to (usually until a restart) when it detects something is unstable, all I could think of is looking for a firmware update (maybe one of the values is corrupt?) or it could be a hardware issue?

vkw619 · February 6, 2015

Thank you for all the suggestions. Sadly, I am still stuck with the same problem. Now maybe 1 in 10 restarts will I be able to get my normal clock speed. My gaming performance is in the toilet. I can't run anything at any decent settings at this point and hold even 45 FPS.
Any more ideas? I've done all testing I can but at this point, I have NO idea what it could be.
I just did a full driver wipe with safe mood sweeping and registery deleting. The whole nine yards.

Upon first boot I had 745!
Then nothing.

I have stopped every single start up item and only booted up steam and CS:GO. Still not working.

Anyone have any ideas, suggestions, tests, anything.
I'm about to throw this PC out the window. ><

gligoran · August 10, 2015

TL;DR; MSI Afterburner incorrectly shows the 405MHz core clock. Use NVIDIA Inspector to confirm that the GPU is stuck.

I know it's been months since the last post, but I came across this problem yesterday while trying to optimize my friends CS: GO settings. He was getting ridiculous FPS drops after a few minutes in game. We used MSi Afterburner to monitor GPU stats (temp, core clk, mem clk, FPS, ...) on another monitor and I noticed that GPU temps were getting up to 93C. So I dropped everything to low, I only kept the resolution at the native 1600x900, and it started working fine. Much lower variation in FPS. Playing with it, I noticed it was doing the dropping as soon as I demanded too much of the GPU. Put only shaders to High, or only Model details. As soon as GPU usage % started hitting 100% it started dropping to really low FPS. This all made me thing of GPU Boost underclocking the card to keep the temps in check. Mind you the temps dropped maybe a degree or 2 when played at low settings. It was then that I noticed the 405 MHz core clock thing. I didn't know the stats of that card, but that seemed way too low. Checked on the interwebs and it was supposed to be 967 MHz. Googling that we found this forum post and did this post said:

Ok, solved it

as seen on https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/759870/geforce-mobile-gpus/gt-750m-clock-stuck-405mhz-after-changing-wall-plug-/

I turned off the system,

Plugged the cable off

Took off the battery

Let it rest for a few minutes

Plugged the cable again (without the battery)

Turned the system on

You will have to play without the battery, but that's actually encouraged because the heat shorten the battery life anyway.

Unfortunately it didn't work. I kept searching on and came upon a tool called Nvidia Inspector, which also has graphs, similar to Afterburner. Interestingly that one revealed that the core clock wasn't stuck at 405MHz. Actually GPU Boost successfully push it past 1100MHz, but started throttling back once temps got to high. So we found our culprit. BTW, if you run MSI Afterburner just as you start up the computer and look at the CPU core clock speed you'll see it be at 967MHz for a few seconds, drop to zero and then jump to 405 MHz. It will then get stuck at that even when you're in a game and pushing your GPU. Being a programmer makes me think afterburner has a bug that stops it updating that value.

Luckily I just borrowed an air compressor from my cousin, as I have to de-dust (get it, CS: GO joke ) it really bad. Anywas, blew out the dust and what do you know. Thing works! And much better at that. GPU was successfully running at 1110MHz, but didn't exceed 80C. We also managed to set higher settings than NVIDIA Experience says is optimal for this game.

Hopefully someone finds this helpful in the future.

Just a warning, use air compressors to clean your computer at your own risk. I've done it quite a few times now and I'm still very careful how I approach it. A useful tip with those with a compressor with a reservoir is that you can let it build up the internal pressure to a certain point. Most of them have a gauge that shows how much it is. You can then turn the compressor itself off and just use the thing as a compressed air canister. I think we had it at about 1-1.5 bar. But you can blow the air at your hand and judge the pressure like that. (Again, at your own risk ).