Is Nvidia adaptive power setting broken?

[Mark Kaine]

In order to to play MHW (with high res textures) I had to set my GPU to high performance mode in Nvidia settings - but then I noticed my card would always run at around 1500MHz while idling and basically never go under 40C (it goes to 39 sometimes) so my PC was quite a bit louder than usual and also obviously would use more power)  while doing absolutely nothing lol.(GPU is MSI 1060 Gaming X 6GB)

 

So I set it to "adaptive" and well?  MHW ran like shit... Had to change back to high performance now it runs normally again. 

 

I thought adaptive would switch to high performance if needed but apparently it doesn't - what does it even do? 

 

It's also quite ridiculous a graphics card wouldn't always work in "high performance" under load and you have to set it to high performance manually and thus use up energy needlessly while you don't need it.

 

But yeah, I'm curious is this adaptive setting broken,  or does it work as intended - if so what's its intention?   It seems so useless... 

[Jurrunio]

There's also one that sounds most conservative, use that instead.

[Mark Kaine]

5 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

There's also one that sounds most conservative, use that instead.

Huh?  There's only normal,  adaptive,  and high performance. 

 

I cannot use normal, I get frequent drops to 50fps.... 

 

 

Did you play MHW?  In a tempered dragon hunt this means pretty much instant death  

 

 

[Mark Kaine]

dp 

[Jurrunio]

25 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

Huh?  There's only normal,  adaptive,  and high performance. 

There's "maximum battery", "adaptive" and "high performance" for me (exact wording may differ, my install is not in English). It could be a laptop thing, but I remember using the same thing with my 1070 desktop

[xAcid9]

I have no issue with adaptive in both windows and linux. 980 Ti.

[SkilledRebuilds]

11 minutes ago, xAcid9 said:

I have no issue with adaptive in both windows and linux. 980 Ti.

Same here... I've run adaptive the entire lifetime of my GTX1070 and it runs per spec and typical operation, boosts under load (stays there), declocks on idle.

[Mark Kaine]

33 minutes ago, SkilledRebuilds said:

Same here... I've run adaptive the entire lifetime of my GTX1070 and it runs per spec and typical operation, boosts under load (stays there), declocks on idle.

So it does work apparently. 

 

The thing is like I said,  with adaptive I get frequently stutters,  like every 1 - 2 minutes but with high performance I get none,  or very rarely, maybe 1 in an hour,  so there's a huge difference on my system,  hence I thought it's broken.  

 

But I'll take it,  at least in theory it does work as intended then.

 

1 hour ago, Jurrunio said:

There's "maximum battery", "adaptive" and "high performance" for me (exact wording may differ, my install is not in English). It could be a laptop thing, but I remember using the same thing with my 1070 desktop

Yeah, I get what you meant  

 

It's just not working for me - huge difference between adaptive and high performance - and I can completely forget running on standard setting as that tanks my framerate even more. 

 

Might have to do with the fact I'm running at the absolute maximum this card can do (game uses 6.21GB of 5.91GB available!)  but at least it still works pretty well,  I just have to set it to max performance apparently (which makes the PC like 10% or so louder while idling) 

 

Not a big deal, but I was curious! 

 

 

 

 

It's a wonder I got it running this good - but yeah *only* with high performance mode,  otherwise it chokes like hell lol 

 

(note the two green points are the start and end of the quest, aka loading,  it's normal it drops there obviously) 

 

[Jurrunio]

what drivers are you using?

[Mark Kaine]

13 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

what drivers are you using?

Pretty old driver () I already tried newest Nvidia drivers,  the game runs considerably worse on them, even on lower settings,  hence I'm using older ones. 

I don't really see how that would influence power modes though tbh.

 

 

I guess I'll just have to live with the noise until I get a new card. 

 

CPU isn't the issue luckily,  usually chugs along with 30-40% usage while playing and no weird spikes or anything either. 

[SkilledRebuilds]

4 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

I guess I'll just have to live with the noise until I get a new card. 

 

CPU isn't the issue luckily,  usually chugs along with 30-40% usage while playing and no weird spikes or anything either. 

I'd just outright do a reinstall (Windows+Everything else) and if it doesn't cure after that, then yeah i'd then follow that mindset.

 

Also, Game VRAM calculators are not always accurate.

[Mark Kaine]

1 minute ago, SkilledRebuilds said:

I'd just outright do a reinstall (Windows+Everything else) and if it doesn't cure after that, then yeah i'd then follow that mindset.

 

Also, Game VRAM calculators are not always accurate.

That's actually something I thought of,  I dread doing that though - it might still be necessary,  usually that's recommended after installing a new CPU anyways (went from R3 2200G to R5 3600) and I got the info from people that it "might work" not doing a fresh install but I could be running into strange issues... 

 

4 minutes ago, SkilledRebuilds said:

Game VRAM calculators are not always accurate.

I'm aware.  Capcom's are frighteningly correct though. 

 

I shouldn't even be running this texture pack - but it looks so good and it works,  mostly!    (minimum requirement is 8GB VRAM iirc,  it's more than 6 anyway) 

[Mark Kaine]

Update : so I set it to adaptive now and I'm not noticing any performance issues - I think those were actually from a defective Seagate drive as since I removed that I'm not having performance issues at all anymore (as long I don't over do settings) 

 

But, I've noticed these power settings actually only take effect after a system restart,  not sure if that's normal,  but if it is they could surely put a notice about that... GPU manufacturers UI and control settings are really not very great,  actually that goes for all PC component manufacturers that have some kind of proprietary software,  they're all kinda awful. 

 

Exception:  Intel XTU,  which is absolutely wonderful at least from an UI standpoint,  I wish all programs would look like it - including Windows... 

 

Err,  yeah, back to topic, actually I can't tell if this Nvidia adaptive setting works or not,  I just know my GPU does properly downclock now when idle,  so at least that part of the adaptive power setting works. 

[xAcid9]

3 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

GPU manufacturers UI and control settings are really not very great

Try open a thread in Nvidia subreddit and complain about that.

[Mark Kaine]

Yeah,  I heard of them,  seems to be a real sensible bunch open for critics!