troubleshooting 1080 severely under-performing/underutilized

[TallyP]

I've had my EVGA 1080 for a few years, and as long as I've had it (Store bought from Micro Center) it's under-performed. While playing Risk of Rain 2 earlier today, I was getting 1 frame per 4 seconds with some high-intensity shenanigans, Which wouldn't phase me if my GPU was using more than 18%, and my partner wasn't getting a few frames per second.
In Escape from Tarkov, I'm lucky to push 35 FPS on low settings, which is worse than the flat 55-65 everyone else I play with gets on similar GPUs.

Mobo: RoG Strix
CPU: Ryzen 7 1700X 3.40GHz
GPU: EVGA GTX 1080
RAM: 48GB DDR4
64-bit Windows 10

Always persisted despite any drivers installed, any tips on how to troubleshoot this? If I can't fix it I'll likely just look to upgrade to a functional 2060

All help greatly appreciated, and I can share benchmarks if needed <3

[Jurrunio]

Check temperatures

[schwellmo92]

What core and memory clocks is the card running at under gaming load? And the temps?

[LithPanchii]

Just now, Jurrunio said:

Check temperatures

could be a possibility but i genuinely doubt that a 1080 with decent cooler could throttle that much even with poor airflow, especially since he said that its  been underperforming since he bought it. id say, op, take it back to micro center and say you mightve gotten a defective gpu and ask them to test it in front of you or a replacement or something like that. i know shops here test stuff in front of us to make sure everything works properly before selling

[TallyP]

I'll try and find all that out now, any suggestion on what software to use? I'm downloading GPU-Z, the only other software I have is Heaven at the moment. First time troubleshooting, sorry for the noob questions.

@Lith It's well out of warranty, it was a good 2-3 years ago by now I think, negligence on my part for not doing troubleshooting or returning it earlier.

Edit: Screenshot of the GPU clock, not certain what you're looking for specifically


(If it's relevant, I just wiped my PC to factory, downloading experience for drivers and the like now.)

[Jurrunio]

5 minutes ago, LithPanchii said:

could be a possibility but i genuinely doubt that a 1080 with decent cooler could throttle that much even with poor airflow, especially since he said that its  been underperforming since he bought it. id say, op, take it back to micro center and say you mightve gotten a defective gpu and ask them to test it in front of you or a replacement or something like that. i know shops here test stuff in front of us to make sure everything works properly before selling

Sometimes they leave the factory with no thermal paste

 

3 minutes ago, TallyP said:

I'll try and find all that out now, any suggestion on what software to use? I'm downloading GPU-Z, the only other software I have is Heaven at the moment. First time troubleshooting, sorry for the noob questions.

GPU-Z is good enough for this, though the best monitoring software is HWinfo

[LithPanchii]

msi afterburner is good and allows for overclocking, undervolting etc too if u ever decide to try it.

[TallyP]

I'd love to overclock eventually, but I never gave it a fair try out of fear of breaking something, thanks for the tip though!

Here's a full ss of HWinfo, if it helps

[TrigrH]

its your 2133 ddr4 lmfao.

[glenalz81]

Open the HWinfo sensors tab, go play a game for a bit then post a pic of the sensors.

 

Memory at 2133mhz won't be helping.

[Sir0Tek]

What's the other memory inside? The Kingston does allow 1333mhz/DDR4 2666.

PCIe 3.0 x16 @ x8 ... not that it matters much, but why?

 

[TallyP]

I just left Heaven and Dead by Daylight on ultra for a few minutes and took this.



Also, I have two sticks of 16BG kingston and two 8GB of GSkill, are you saying I should be looking to replace those? I hadn't realized they were a bottleneck

Memory:


@Sir0Tek sorry but I'm not sure what you're asking about in terms of "PCIe 3.0 x16 @ x8", I'm fairly illiterate with these things

[LithPanchii]

yep, youre overheating, but it doesnt seem that youre throttling yet, but you will if you let it run longer. take out the card and dust it out, try replacing thermal paste and mby see if ur case airflow is bad

[TallyP]

Will do, so my takeaways here so far are:
-Thermal throttling
-Replace RAM?

I'll head to Micro Center tomorrow and pick some paste up, and hopefully not break anything. Any personal suggestions for what RAM I should be slotting?

[Sir0Tek]

Your Kingston memory will do DDR4 2666, the G.Skill 3000. Did you try 2666 at 16/18/18/39? 

Your PCI-Bus reports that you're using PCIe 3.0 x8, the card and mainboard should be able to do x16.

[TallyP]

I haven't modified the memory in any way past plugging them in to be honest, most of that post is jargon to me.

What would you recommend I research/software I should use to set that up properly?

[TrigrH]

7 minutes ago, TallyP said:

I haven't modified the memory in any way past plugging them in to be honest, most of that post is jargon to me.

What would you recommend I research/software I should use to set that up properly?

remove the kingston memory, update the bios to the latest before ryzen 3000 support. then attempt to load the DOCP profile for the gksill memory and see if you get a performance boost.

[Sir0Tek]

He'll be down to 16gb then, but yes, it is an XMP/DOCP profile, even for(with) the Kingston-memory available in the Bios. XMP 2666 CL16 should do with 48gb installed, G.Skill only should do 3000 CL 15.

 

[TrigrH]

3 minutes ago, Sir0Tek said:

He'll be down to 16gb then, but yes, it is an XMP/DOCP profile, even for(with) the Kingston-memory available in the Bios. XMP 2666 CL16 should do with 48gb installed, G.Skill only should do 3000 CL 15.

Yeah but there is no point for the OP to spend money before he can see that slow memory is the problem

[jones177]

Your card is throttling.

It throttles at 83c.

 

If it is a SC version that uses ACX 3.0 it will get hot really fast if the card has not been updated.

https://www.evga.com/thermalmod/

 

Here are what the temps should be stock under load.

 

[TallyP]

I just took it out and dusted everything the best I can, couldn't check the paste since I don't have a small screwdriver on hand, and I don't want to strip the screws.

I'll remove the kingston memory and repaste the GPU tomorrow when the store opens, and I'll look for something to replace the memory; Does anybody have any recommendations that they've had success with? 

Thanks to all again for the help, would never have figured this all out on my own.

[TallyP]

22 minutes ago, jones177 said:

Your card is throttling.

It throttles at 83c.

 

If it is a SC version that uses ACX 3.0 it will get hot really fast if the card has not been updated.

https://www.evga.com/thermalmod/

 

Thank you very much for the link, I didn't know about that. Would you be able to point me towards a guide or walkthrough of how you're meant to do this? Thanks again

And it is indeed SC ACX 3.0

[jones177]

3 minutes ago, TallyP said:

I just took it out and dusted everything the best I can, couldn't check the paste since I don't have a small screwdriver on hand, and I don't want to strip the screws.

I'll remove the kingston memory and repaste the GPU tomorrow when the store opens, and I'll look for something to replace the memory; Does anybody have any recommendations that they've had success with? 

Thanks to all again for the help, would never have figured this all out on my own.

There are plenty of Youtube videos of taking apart EVGA 1080s.

Here is my favorite.

 

[TallyP]

Thanks a bunch!
And the file for the GPU update folder had an application in it, I assume I'm just meant to run it and that's that, or do I need to go into bios to update it?
Edit: Just ran it, didn't blow up, assuming that's all there was to it

Edit 2: Will try and get as much information as I can on the screen with and without the kingston ram, and will update again tomorrow after repasting.
With Kingston ram, not repasted:

Without Kingston ram, base DOCP enabled in BIOS, not repasted:


Repasted:
 

[jones177]

1 minute ago, TallyP said:

Thanks a bunch!
And the file for the GPU update folder had an application in it, I assume I'm just meant to run it and that's that, or do I need to go into bios to update it?

The bios update changes the fan curve. 

I didn't do it to mine since my temps are ok.

 

At stock under load my card runs at 1961mhz at 73c so that is a good goal to start with.

 

As for updating:

The only good updates are the GTX 1080 ti, RTX 2080/S.

Anything less will be a disappointment once your card is healthy.