GTX 960m TERRIBLE performance! Pls Help!

[T-6732]

Hello guys,

 

I bought a used Acer Aspire V15 black edition laptop with the following specs:

 

i7-6700HQ

GTX 960m

16GB DDR4

256GB SSD

1TB HDD

 

I ran the firestrike benchmark on 3DMark and experienced terrible performance. The graphics test result was just a few hundret points but the CPU test got almost 10000 points. Normally the GTX 960m scores around 4000 points, according to several reviews. That bad behavior applies to any other game/ benchmark, regardless of the settings. I always get around 5-10 FPS. I fired up MSI Afterburner, which told me that the GPU was at 100% usage, clocked at the full 1200 MHz, there was enough vram left and both CPU and GPU never exceeded 75°C. 

I tried installing the nvidia drivers for this laptop from acer's website, which were somewhere around 39X.XX. But with those I got even worse performance, because the GPU only clocked at 300Mhz, so i installed the 431.60 drivers again with the same issue as in the beginning. Also I tried putting all the energy saving settings on max performance and I told the nvidia control panel to always use the 960m primarilyinstead of intel's iGPU. But nothing works and I really don't know what to try next, so I hope anyone of you guys can help me or has experienced something similar.

 

Thank you for helping me.

[Tristerin]

2 minutes ago, T-6732 said:

Hello guys,

 

I bought a used Acer Aspire V15 black edition laptop with the following specs:

 

i7-6700HQ

GTX 960m

16GB DDR4

256GB SSD

1TB HDD

 

I ran the firestrike benchmark on 3DMark and experienced terrible performance. The graphics test result was just a few hundret points but the CPU test got almost 10000 points. Normally the GTX 960m scores around 4000 points, according to several reviews. That bad behavior applies to any other game/ benchmark, regardless of the settings. I always get around 5-10 FPS. I fired up MSI Afterburner, which told me that the GPU was at 100% usage, clocked at the full 1200 MHz, there was enough vram left and both CPU and GPU never exceeded 75°C. 

I tried installing the nvidia drivers for this laptop from acer's website, which were somewhere around 39X.XX. But with those I got even worse performance, because the GPU only clocked at 300Mhz, so i installed the 431.60 drivers again with the same issue as in the beginning. Also I tried putting all the energy saving settings on max performance and I told the nvidia control panel to always use the 960m primarilyinstead of intel's iGPU. But nothing works and I really don't know what to try next, so I hope anyone of you guys can help me or has experienced something similar.

 

Thank you for helping me.

What display resolution?  The 960m is not a powerful card at all

[Streetguru]

4 minutes ago, T-6732 said:

 

What happens if you run Linux off a USB and take windows out of the equation?

[KarathKasun]

GTX 960m is not a desktop GTX 960.  Its the exact same chip as the GTX 750 Ti, except it can come with memory that is half as fast.

 

If you have the 4gb/DDR3 version 800 points sounds about right.

[schwellmo92]

That laptop could come with up to 4k screen, if yours is one of those models 10 FPS sounds about right.

[T-6732]

3 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

What display resolution?  The 960m is not a powerful card at all

Well, the laptop has got a 4k display but I always set the games to 1080p. But I also tried 720p and 800x600, because of the bad performance, though everything got me the same results.

[T-6732]

4 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

What happens if you run Linux off a USB and take windows out of the equation?

That's a good idea. I'll try that in the next couple of days. 

[KarathKasun]

Just now, T-6732 said:

Well, the laptop has got a 4k display but I always set the games to 1080p. But I also tried 720p and 800x600, because of the bad performance, though everything got me the same results.

That GPU is a 720p class device.  Performance is normal.

[T-6732]

2 minutes ago, schwellmo92 said:

That laptop could come with up to 4k screen, if yours is one of those models 10 FPS sounds about right.

I always play at 1080p and the firestrike benchmark doesn't care about resolution, so that's not the problem.

[T-6732]

8 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

GTX 960m is not a desktop GTX 960.  Its the exact same chip as the GTX 750 Ti, except it can come with memory that is half as fast.

 

If you have the 4gb/DDR3 version 800 points sounds about right.

No, it's the GDDR5 version.

[KarathKasun]

https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/acer-aspire-v15-nitro-black-edition

The GPU is 4gb on the model they tested, and that means it should be DDR3.

Check what memory type the GPU has with GPU-Z.  If it is DDR3 you will score 50% lower with firestrike compared to the GDDR5 GTX 960m.

 

Another thing to look at is CPU clocks under load.

 

What Firestrike test are you running?  Different presets do change resolution.

[5x5]

The v15 is known for overheating. I'd imagine your probably severely thermal throttling.

[T-6732]

3 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/acer-aspire-v15-nitro-black-edition

The GPU is 4gb on the model they tested, and that means it should be DDR3.

Check what memory type the GPU has with GPU-Z.  If it is DDR3 you will score 50% lower with firestrike compared to the GDDR5 GTX 960m.

 

Another thing to look at is CPU clocks under load.

 

What Firestrike test are you running?  Different presets do change resolution.

Sorry, the screenshots are in german. But the resolution of the test is 1080p, I can't adjust it and the memory of the GPU is 4GB GDDR5.

[T-6732]

4 minutes ago, 5x5 said:

The v15 is known for overheating. I'd imagine your probably severely thermal throttling.

MSI afterburner and any other monitoring software say that the temps are up to 75°C max under full load.

[KarathKasun]

1 minute ago, T-6732 said:

Sorry, the screenshots are in german. But the resolution of the test is 1080p, I can't adjust it and the memory of the GPU is 4GB GDDR5.

 

Are you forcing any settings other than what GPU is used in the NV control panel?

[T-6732]

I didn't change anything in the NV control panel, except that it's forced to use the GTX 960m instead of the HD 530.

[KarathKasun]

Have you tried removing the NV driver and installing the latest version?

[Emanbaird]

Hey op could you post the temps you get during testing? both CPU and GPU?

[5x5]

5 minutes ago, T-6732 said:

MSI afterburner and any other monitoring software say that the temps are up to 75°C max under full load.

Check with GPU-Z for power throttling.

[T-6732]

1 minute ago, KarathKasun said:

Have you tried removing the NV driver and installing the latest version?

Yeah, I am on the latest version. And I tried installing the drivers from acer's website, nut nothing helped.

[T-6732]

2 minutes ago, Emanbaird said:

Hey op could you post the temps you get during testing? both CPU and GPU?

GPU: Around 70°C at 1200Mhz under full load

CPU: Around  75°C at 3.1 Ghz under full load

[T-6732]

7 minutes ago, 5x5 said:

Check with GPU-Z for power throttling.

 

[adm0n]

Just so you know, what you should expect, I have your GPU just the 2GB variant and I'm getting 30 FPS. WIth the integrated GPU I'm getting ~8 FPS avg...

Your GPU isn't doing anything. Since it doesn't say, that it is limited by anything, there is probably something else at work here.
But you should first DDU your drivers and then reinstall them.
 

[T-6732]

8 minutes ago, adm0n said:

Just so you know, what you should expect, I have your GPU just the 2GB variant and I'm getting 30 FPS. WIth the integrated GPU I'm getting ~8 FPS avg...

Your GPU isn't doing anything. Since it doesn't say, that it is limited by anything, there is probably something else at work here.
But you should first DDU your drivers and then reinstall them.
 

I already used the DDU utility. That didn't help. Nur it could ve that it uses the iGPU, but the GTX 960m is at 100% utilisation, so it must be doing anything and I put every setting I could Find to use the 960m instead of the iGPU.

 

[adm0n]

Well at least it doesn't produce as much heat, as it could, so it is probably not doing all that much.

What doesn your GPU-Z say about the 960, when you are running furmark?