GPU Issues RTX 3070

[xAchillies]

I have a Gigabyte Auros RTX 3070, overclocked +170 Core, +1000 Mem, perfectly stable. Will boost upto 2130 and stay there most of the time. Recently, the card during gaming will frequently drop to 1815 Mhz and 881 mV instead of the usual 2130@1.1V. During idle it stays at the 1815 which it never did before. Any help appreciated!

[.Apex.]

28 minutes ago, xAchillies said:

I have a Gigabyte Auros RTX 3070, overclocked +170 Core, +1000 Mem, perfectly stable. Will boost upto 2130 and stay there most of the time. Recently, the card during gaming will frequently drop to 1815 Mhz and 881 mV instead of the usual 2130@1.1V. During idle it stays at the 1815 which it never did before. Any help appreciated!

Which software are you using to monitor this? and are you sure that nothing is making use of your GPU at idle? and It might be that during gameplay your GPU is not at 100% load due to a CPU bottleneck or Vsync so it doesn't have to clock up as high, if you can confirm with a synthetic benchmark that your GPU is performing as expected then I don't think that there is anything wrong with it in particular

[xAchillies]

25 minutes ago, .Apex. said:

Which software are you using to monitor this? and are you sure that nothing is making use of your GPU at idle? and It might be that during gameplay your GPU is not at 100% load due to a CPU bottleneck or Vsync so it doesn't have to clock up as high, if you can confirm with a synthetic benchmark that your GPU is performing as expected then I don't think that there is anything wrong with it in particular

Using Afterburner/RivaStats along with the GeForce performance monitor, all reading the same. In heaven benchmark the gpu hits its normal clocks and full voltage. Seems to be de-tuning while playing both Valorant and Minecraft (Neither of which use 100%) but still causes a -30+ fps difference. I do not have Vsync enabled, and my rig has a i9-9900k all 8 cores stable at 4.8 GHZ oc.

[RAS_3885]

42 minutes ago, xAchillies said:

Using Afterburner/RivaStats along with the GeForce performance monitor, all reading the same. In heaven benchmark the gpu hits its normal clocks and full voltage. Seems to be de-tuning while playing both Valorant and Minecraft (Neither of which use 100%) but still causes a -30+ fps difference. I do not have Vsync enabled, and my rig has a i9-9900k all 8 cores stable at 4.8 GHZ oc.

If you remove the overclock does the utilization in-game go back to to 100 percent on the GPU (or at least 95+ percent)?

 

IIRC, GPU memory is error-correcting, so while it may not crash/artifact it could be throwing a lot of errors it has to then correct, which will slow things down.

[xAchillies]

7 hours ago, RAS_3885 said:

If you remove the overclock does the utilization in-game go back to to 100 percent on the GPU (or at least 95+ percent)?

 

IIRC, GPU memory is error-correcting, so while it may not crash/artifact it could be throwing a lot of errors it has to then correct, which will slow things down.

Had already tried that, just did it again to double check, Still no improvement. Stays stuck at 1815 MHZ regardless. I have also tried back dating the NVIDIA drivers and performing a clean install of them with no change.

[.Apex.]

23 hours ago, xAchillies said:

Using Afterburner/RivaStats along with the GeForce performance monitor, all reading the same. In heaven benchmark the gpu hits its normal clocks and full voltage. Seems to be de-tuning while playing both Valorant and Minecraft (Neither of which use 100%) but still causes a -30+ fps difference. I do not have Vsync enabled, and my rig has a i9-9900k all 8 cores stable at 4.8 GHZ oc.

A 30 FPS difference compared to what? in both of those games you should be getting 300+ FPS at 1080p/1440p so a 30 FPS difference is insignificant and is somewhat within margin of error in that scenario and since there is no way to properly benchmark those games then it's more difficult to assess such a small difference, the GPU is not being used to its full extent due to a CPU bottleneck therefor it doesn't have to clock up as high

 

You could try going into your NVIDIA Control Panel and change the Power Management Mode to Prefer Maximum Performance but I doubt it'd change much

[Mark Kaine]

On 1/4/2021 at 7:33 PM, xAchillies said:

Recently, the card during gaming will frequently drop to 1815 Mhz

my 3070 is power limited at 90% and under clocked (-25) and stays well above 1900mhz under heavy load for hours... 

 

 

On 1/4/2021 at 7:33 PM, xAchillies said:

perfectly stable

that's a no therefore, chief. either your oc isn't stable at all (likely) or you're thermal throttling (even more likely) 

 

 

Edit:

On 1/4/2021 at 7:33 PM, xAchillies said:

During idle it stays at the 1815

this is highly sus though ... did you update drivers recently... changed anything in settings...? 

 

what's your nvidia power settings at? 

 

On 1/4/2021 at 7:33 PM, xAchillies said:

881 mV

that's just slightly above idle for me... 

 

I kinda think, unless a DDU / reinstall fixes it, your card might be broken, or PSU or something maybe... 

 

 

[xAchillies]

6 hours ago, .Apex. said:

A 30 FPS difference compared to what? in both of those games you should be getting 300+ FPS at 1080p/1440p so a 30 FPS difference is insignificant and is somewhat within margin of error in that scenario and since there is no way to properly benchmark those games then it's more difficult to assess such a small difference, the GPU is not being used to its full extent due to a CPU bottleneck therefor it doesn't have to clock up as high

 

You could try going into your NVIDIA Control Panel and change the Power Management Mode to Prefer Maximum Performance but I doubt it'd change much

The frame range we are talking here is 60-140 in Minecraft with use of shaders. In Valorant we're talking 200+ which is insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but creates jittery performance in game. Control panel settings have been at max performance always. A CPU bottleneck could be possible, but it would have to be on the coding side of the game, as a 9900k at 4.8Ghz all cores wouldn't appear to be much of a bottleneck.

[xAchillies]

5 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

my 3070 is power limited at 90% and under clocked (-25) and stays well above 1900mhz under heavy load for hours... 

 

 

that's a no therefore, chief. either your oc isn't stable at all (likely) or you're thermal throttling (even more likely) 

 

 

Edit:

this is highly sus though ... did you update drivers recently... changed anything in settings...? 

 

what's your nvidia power settings at? 

 

that's just slightly above idle for me... 

 

I kinda think, unless a DDU / reinstall fixes it, your card might be broken, or PSU or something maybe... 

Thermal throttling is a big no, this card never even breaks 70C during benchmarks at 1.1V 2130 MHZ. I've deleted and re-updated all drivers twice thus far. Power settings are at 100% in Afterburner, Prefer maximum performance in control panel. PSU is brand new, doesn't seem to be causing any issues elsewhere.

[Mark Kaine]

I think maybe it's a bit of a communication issue here, when you said drops to 881mv, I thought it stays there... for longer periods of time...? Which would definitely not be normal, but if it just drops during loading screens etc that *is* normal. 

 

But then you said the clocks drop too - and don't go up anymore...? 

 

Thats basically just the normal gpu boost, not even that in fact, so something must be wrong obviously.

If it's not hardware, or temps, then we must figure out what else has changed... 

 

So in which games does this happen and are there games where it doesn't happen?  maybe we can figure it out that way... 

 

 

And btw

1 hour ago, xAchillies said:

Prefer maximum performance in control panel

 

On 1/4/2021 at 7:33 PM, xAchillies said:

During idle it stays at the 1815 which it never did before

this is normal behavior for "prefer maximum performance", so it's mysterious why you'd think it wasn't like that before... maybe you just didn't notice, however it *is* normal behavior... people were speculating its a bug, which I can't completely exclude either, but for all intends and purposes it's like that since at least 2 years on every Nvidia gpu I tried (which were quite a few) they may as well rename it to "use up as much energy as possible and fuck the environment " setting, because that's what it is - and I'm pretty sure illegal as well in the EU... 

 

 

 

 

 

[Mark Kaine]

Funny thing... I noticed my gpu did the same thing yesterday... during gameplay it was all over the place between 1700 and 1850mhz... however I didn't get any performance issues... I do believe that is either a gpu software issue (aka BIOS) or a driver issue... 

 

Also I'm pretty sure it's temp or indeed voltage limit.... my gpu regularly runs into temp limit, which makes no sense because the temps don't even exceed 60C and the "temp limit" is set to *81C* 

But it never showed this down clocking behavior until yesterday regardless, even while running into "temp limit" alledgely lol... 

 

And I also just tried again... 1920-1935mhz throughout... (which makes me believe it's a temp limit thing / bug or something like that) 

 

 

 

[xAchillies]

On 1/5/2021 at 9:55 PM, Mark Kaine said:

I think maybe it's a bit of a communication issue here, when you said drops to 881mv, I thought it stays there... for longer periods of time...? Which would definitely not be normal, but if it just drops during loading screens etc that *is* normal. 

 

But then you said the clocks drop too - and don't go up anymore...? 

 

Thats basically just the normal gpu boost, not even that in fact, so something must be wrong obviously.

If it's not hardware, or temps, then we must figure out what else has changed... 

 

So in which games does this happen and are there games where it doesn't happen?  maybe we can figure it out that way... 

 

 

And btw

 

this is normal behavior for "prefer maximum performance", so it's mysterious why you'd think it wasn't like that before... maybe you just didn't notice, however it *is* normal behavior... people were speculating its a bug, which I can't completely exclude either, but for all intends and purposes it's like that since at least 2 years on every Nvidia gpu I tried (which were quite a few) they may as well rename it to "use up as much energy as possible and fuck the environment " setting, because that's what it is - and I'm pretty sure illegal as well in the EU... 

 

 

 

 

 

The only thing I have figured out is in Minecraft when I'm nearby many mobs that causes it, when I look away the clock goes back up. As for Valorant I can't find a common denominator.

[xAchillies]

15 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

Funny thing... I noticed my gpu did the same thing yesterday... during gameplay it was all over the place between 1700 and 1850mhz... however I didn't get any performance issues... I do believe that is either a gpu software issue (aka BIOS) or a driver issue... 

 

Also I'm pretty sure it's temp or indeed voltage limit.... my gpu regularly runs into temp limit, which makes no sense because the temps don't even exceed 60C and the "temp limit" is set to *81C* 

But it never showed this down clocking behavior until yesterday regardless, even while running into "temp limit" alledgely lol... 

 

And I also just tried again... 1920-1935mhz throughout... (which makes me believe it's a temp limit thing / bug or something like that)

Yeah, I don't get it. On my 1070Ti I never had this issue.