I think my PC is underperforming in games

[Mushy1]

So I've been struggling with this for a while and in spite of all the research I've done I haven't been able to find any real, useful answers. I figured I'd suck it up and make a thread here.

 

I upgraded from a 980Ti to an RTX 2070 a few months ago. I go on YouTube and look at people with my exact parts testing games, they get way more fps than I do. A guy gets around 70 fps in AC: Odyssey, I get 40. A guy gets 100 ish fps in Monster Hunter World, I get 70 standing in the same spot. Same resolution, same settings. It's really bothering me, and I'm not an fps snob, I'm just annoyed I don't feel like I'm getting all the performance I should out of my parts. 

 

I ran Userbenchmark and the results said everything is performing as expected except my GPU, and considering I haven't overclocked it I don't think it's too terrible? Benchmark results here, doubles as a parts list.

 

So yeah, if anyone has any suggestions or advice for me, I'd be happy to hear it. Do I actually have a problem, or am I expecting too much? Are the guys on YT I'm comparing my PC to embellishing or something? If my parts behave as expected in a benchmark, what would cause them to under perform in games specifically? Please help. 

[KingTdiGGiTTy]

Check Drivers and try a DDU.

If you haven't check temperatures overheating could be and issue. I don't know if your still in warranty, but if its overheating it could be a factory defect. You could probably fix it yourself though.

[zeusthemoose]

Try removing old drivers and install the newest ones using ddu. If you have never used it before, this is a great guide:

 

11 minutes ago, Mushy1 said:

I ran Userbenchmark and the results said everything is performing as expected except my GPU, and considering I haven't overclocked it I don't think it's too terrible? Benchmark results here, doubles as a parts list.

Dont trust Userbenchmark, it is completely unreliable

[marmour]

18 minutes ago, Mushy1 said:

So I've been struggling with this for a while and in spite of all the research I've done I haven't been able to find any real, useful answers. I figured I'd suck it up and make a thread here.

 

I upgraded from a 980Ti to an RTX 2070 a few months ago. I go on YouTube and look at people with my exact parts testing games, they get way more fps than I do. A guy gets around 70 fps in AC: Odyssey, I get 40. A guy gets 100 ish fps in Monster Hunter World, I get 70 standing in the same spot. Same resolution, same settings. It's really bothering me, and I'm not an fps snob, I'm just annoyed I don't feel like I'm getting all the performance I should out of my parts. 

 

I ran Userbenchmark and the results said everything is performing as expected except my GPU, and considering I haven't overclocked it I don't think it's too terrible? Benchmark results here, doubles as a parts list.

 

So yeah, if anyone has any suggestions or advice for me, I'd be happy to hear it. Do I actually have a problem, or am I expecting too much? Are the guys on YT I'm comparing my PC to embellishing or something? If my parts behave as expected in a benchmark, what would cause them to under perform in games specifically? Please help. 

Temps? Up to date drivers?

From looking at a few of these youtube videos, they are reporting 1080p results, and your monitor is reported as 1440p in userbenchmark. Are you comparing the correct resolutions?

 

Edit: just noticed you say its the same resolution in your post. anyway, check the drivers and temps and see if that helps

[Mushy1]

9 minutes ago, KingTdiGGiTTy said:

Check Drivers and try a DDU.

If you haven't check temperatures overheating could be and issue. I don't know if your still in warranty, but if its overheating it could be a factory defect. You could probably fix it yourself though.

Nah nothing is throttling, I've never had heat issues with anything. Even the old 980Ti never overheated, it got pretty darn close though.

 

6 minutes ago, marmour said:

Temps? Up to date drivers?

From looking at a few of these youtube videos, they are reporting 1080p results, and your monitor is reported as 1440p in userbenchmark. Are you comparing the correct resolutions?

Temps are fine, stay in the 60s under load. As for drivers yes, first thing I did was update, although I never did the DDU. I guess a large part of my reason for posting here was to see if I REALLY needed to do that. And yes, the fps I get is from the games in 1080p. If I'm getting this kind of performance in 1080p, I wouldn't even dare to try 2k. 

[Mushy1]

I don't know what the rules are here regarding double posting, but I suppose I'm going to try the DDU and come back. I wanted to check first and see if I actually had a problem, but yeah I might as well. I've gone through 3 GPU changes in this PC and never done the DDU, it's probably a good idea anyway. 

[KaitouX]

How's the GPU usage looking while you're checking? How does it compare to the videos? Are you sure it's the same settings and same weather/time of the day(as these can change performance a lot in some games)?

Try testing your GPU on Time Spy or Superposition to check against results using the same GPU to see if it's performing below average.

[KingTdiGGiTTy]

36 minutes ago, Mushy1 said:

I'm going to try the DDU and come back

It's probably a good idea to try just to see if anything changes. Worst case scenario; you'll have to boot into safe mood and fix the drivers from there. It's relatively safe.

[Mushy1]

19 minutes ago, KaitouX said:

How's the GPU usage looking while you're checking? How does it compare to the videos? Are you sure it's the same settings and same weather/time of the day(as these can change performance a lot in some games)?

Try testing your GPU on Time Spy or Superposition to check against results using the same GPU to see if it's performing below average.

So, after doing a DDU and completely reinstalling drivers, as far as I can tell nothing has changed. As for CPU and GPU usage, CPU is around 40%, GPU is around 17-20% GPU memory usage is at 3 GB out of 8. Nothing ever maxes out, so to me that would say I've got power to spare, right? Or is this an incorrect way of looking at it? 

 

Either way, checking my Superposition score against the leaderboards was one of the first things I did when trying to solve this problem, to see if maybe I had received a faulty GPU. Seemed right where it should be to me. As for weather and time of day yeah, I've tried to match it. Even the camera angle, because I know that even looking in a particular direction an cause massive fps differences. 

 

7 minutes ago, KingTdiGGiTTy said:

It's probably a good idea to try just to see if anything changes. Worst case scenario; you'll have to boot into safe mood and fix the drivers from there. It's relatively safe.

Yeah, I tried it, no real change as far as I can see. I'm genuinely starting to wonder if maybe I'm just imagining a problem. 

[KingTdiGGiTTy]

4 minutes ago, Mushy1 said:

Nothing ever maxes out, so to me that would say I've got power to spare, right?

Do you have V-sync turned on? or a power setting in windows or bios?

[KaitouX]

11 minutes ago, Mushy1 said:

So, after doing a DDU and completely reinstalling drivers, as far as I can tell nothing has changed. As for CPU and GPU usage, CPU is around 40%, GPU is around 17-20% GPU memory usage is at 3 GB out of 8. Nothing ever maxes out, so to me that would say I've got power to spare, right? Or is this an incorrect way of looking at it?

What CPU you're using? Is that 20% usage and 3GB in-game in AC:Odyssey or MHW? It should be a lot more than that, both should be at around 100% GPU usage and close to 8GB of VRAM, try setting the game to 4K and look how it performs, and how the GPU usage changes, if possible post some screenshots showing the OSD numbers while in-game in multiple resolutions and settings, also might be worth trying older drivers to make sure it isn't an issue with that specific driver.

[Mushy1]

1 hour ago, KingTdiGGiTTy said:

Do you have V-sync turned on? or a power setting in windows or bios?

No V-sync, and if I did have it turned on, my monitor is 144Hz anyway. Power setting is on the Windows standard balanced plan. As for BIOS, I haven't messed with anything in there besides RAM speed and drives. Speaking of BIOS though, I did come across a Reddit thread that mentioned updating BIOS solved his performance issue. But then I did some research on that and everything I could find basically said not to bother. My BIOS isn't too old either, I flashed it just last year. 

 

1 hour ago, KaitouX said:

What CPU you're using? Is that 20% usage and 3GB in-game in AC:Odyssey or MHW? It should be a lot more than that, both should be at around 100% GPU usage and close to 8GB of VRAM, try setting the game to 4K and look how it performs, and how the GPU usage changes, if possible post some screenshots showing the OSD numbers while in-game in multiple resolutions and settings, also might be worth trying older drivers to make sure it isn't an issue with that specific driver.

My CPU is Ryzen 2700x and I'm using MHW for testing mainly because AC Odyssey puts me in a loading screen or wants to restart basically every time I change any setting. I just spent some time setting up an actual OSD (before I was just using task manager on another screen and Steam's fps counter). Turns out I'm getting 99% GPU usage, 40% CPU usage, but still only 3.1Gb VRAM usage. So yeah, I guess my GPU is actually maxing out. I can try posting some screenshots if necessary, it's almost definitely not a driver issue though. I've been trying to figure this out on and off for about 5 months, through various driver updates. 

[Mushy1]

Is it possible that my expectations are just too high? I mean, I skipped an entire generation (the 10 series) so I guess I expected leaps in performance, but then again the 980Ti was basically the best of its generation. Aside from these videos, I have no idea what I should actually be expecting performance wise. Anyone else have a similar build, or even just the same GPU?

[Minicoop]

Have you made any other significant changes recently apart from changing out your GPU? Also what kind of power supply do you have?

[KingTdiGGiTTy]

Could your GPU be limited by the single threaded performance of your CPU

[Mushy1]

15 minutes ago, Minicoop said:

Have you made any other significant changes recently apart from changing out your GPU? Also what kind of power supply do you have?

The only other change I made was getting a better monitor for the better performance I was expecting. My power supply is an EVGA Supernova G3 650W. I have a spare PSU to test if it comes down to it but MAN is swapping out a PSU genuinely the last thing I want to do. Could it really be something like bad power delivery? The +2 pin connectors from my PSU seemed kind of oddly shaped for the GPU holes but it did fit.

[KaitouX]

1 hour ago, Mushy1 said:

Is it possible that my expectations are just too high? I mean, I skipped an entire generation (the 10 series) so I guess I expected leaps in performance, but then again the 980Ti was basically the best of its generation. Aside from these videos, I have no idea what I should actually be expecting performance wise. Anyone else have a similar build, or even just the same GPU?

https://static.techspot.com/articles-info/1865/bench/ACO-p.webp

The 980Ti should be around 10% slower than the 1070 shown here.

[Mushy1]

31 minutes ago, KaitouX said:

The 980Ti should be around 10% slower than the 1070 shown here.

I don't get it man, I really don't get it. I've run all kinds of benchmarks. Heaven, Superposition, individual games..

 

I get 3100 in Heaven, 5150 in Superposition. As far as I'm able to find (which is really difficult because most people who do this sort of benchmarking professionally use better CPUs) these scores are pretty much normal, I think. It's only when it comes to gaming that my performance becomes awful, which is a real shame because it's the only performance I actually care about. 

[KaitouX]

Did you already try using the GPU in another PC, or a different OS/Windows installation? It's a option to make a clean Windows install, or test some Linux distro to see if the performance changes. You can also try checking GPU-Z and HWinfo sensors information to see if there's something wrong with the GPU while gaming. Also if you still have it, try comparing the 980Ti to the 2070 to see if the performance difference matches what it should be, if you do it, use 1440p to make sure the CPU doesn't change much the results.

 

Also just to correct myself, MHW doesn't use that much VRAM, it uses only about 4GB when at 4K, less in lower resolutions, so that's normal VRAM usage for MHW.

[Mushy1]

12 hours ago, KaitouX said:

Did you already try using the GPU in another PC, or a different OS/Windows installation? It's a option to make a clean Windows install, or test some Linux distro to see if the performance changes. You can also try checking GPU-Z and HWinfo sensors information to see if there's something wrong with the GPU while gaming. Also if you still have it, try comparing the 980Ti to the 2070 to see if the performance difference matches what it should be, if you do it, use 1440p to make sure the CPU doesn't change much the results.

 

Also just to correct myself, MHW doesn't use that much VRAM, it uses only about 4GB when at 4K, less in lower resolutions, so that's normal VRAM usage for MHW.

Alright so I have an update, I've solved my problem and it's honestly so dumb.

 

When I installed the new GPU I moved it down a PCI-E slot. I had some empty space in my case and I thought I'd make it look less empty by moving the GPU down a bit. I guess it wasn't a good slot. The one above it was outlined in silver on the mobo and I guess that was an indicator "hey dumbo, use this one" but I honestly didn't think it mattered. Why would one slot perform worse by design? 

 

Anyway yeah, I prepared to start switching between it and the 980Ti and I thought "Well, before that I might as well try the other slot". Guess that fixed it, I'm getting 100 fps in MHW and 65 in AC: Odyssey which isn't quite 70 but hey, I can live with it after dealing with <40. Anyway massive thanks to you and everyone else who tried to help me out, I really appreciate it. If anyone could tell me why one PCIE slot would perform worse by design, I'd be interested to hear it. 

[soxsure]

How many lanes has the second pcie slot? Or how many lanes is it allowed to use (bios setting)? It Should be 16, 8 should be enough too tho.

[Warin]

Not all PCI-E slots are equal. The second slot, as configured out of the box, only runs at 4x, so that would be your problem right there