Weird 3080 behaviour randomly on game launches

[durrburger]

My 3080 started going into this weird power saving mode some times when I start a game, where it will aggressively try to keep the clocks and power as low as possible all the time, causing stutter when it has to adjust them which is all the time. This started happening a few days ago and I don't remember changing anything that might've caused it, I also updated drivers today to the latest ones with "clean install" and it's still happening. To be clear, it used to do the same thing before to save power as it should when a game is not demanding, but now when it happens it's much more aggressive and actively harms performance.

 

I also tried the "best performance" power mode enabled in system settings if that even does anything for the GPU, and I have to specify the games to perefer maximum performance in the control panel to avoid this behavior. However, not even that is a guarantee as even for games with it enabled, it will sometimes start the game and still try to downclock although I think it's a little less aggressive if "max performance" setting is enabled for that game. It also happens if I set up an OC profile in Afterburner, I'll play one game for an hour with normal OC clocks and behavior (no aggressive downclocking unless the scene is really light), then I'll boot up another game later and it will start doing it again for no reason.

 

It's not a problem with any particular game as it can happen in any of them, and not a matter of temps as the airflow is good with a Lancool 2 Mesh, GPU never going above 60c at 100% while gaming when it's behaving normally. I've yet to try DDU but I wanted to see if anyone has any idea why it's doing this?

[Falkentyne]

3 hours ago, durrburger said:

My 3080 started going into this weird power saving mode some times when I start a game, where it will aggressively try to keep the clocks and power as low as possible all the time, causing stutter when it has to adjust them which is all the time. This started happening a few days ago and I don't remember changing anything that might've caused it, I also updated drivers today to the latest ones with "clean install" and it's still happening. To be clear, it used to do the same thing before to save power as it should when a game is not demanding, but now when it happens it's much more aggressive and actively harms performance.

 

I also tried the "best performance" power mode enabled in system settings if that even does anything for the GPU, and I have to specify the games to perefer maximum performance in the control panel to avoid this behavior. However, not even that is a guarantee as even for games with it enabled, it will sometimes start the game and still try to downclock although I think it's a little less aggressive if "max performance" setting is enabled for that game. It also happens if I set up an OC profile in Afterburner, I'll play one game for an hour with normal OC clocks and behavior (no aggressive downclocking unless the scene is really light), then I'll boot up another game later and it will start doing it again for no reason.

 

It's not a problem with any particular game as it can happen in any of them, and not a matter of temps as the airflow is good with a Lancool 2 Mesh, GPU never going above 60c at 100% while gaming when it's behaving normally. I've yet to try DDU but I wanted to see if anyone has any idea why it's doing this?

What game?

[Bobbysixjp]

What PSU do you have?

[durrburger]

On 9/5/2021 at 3:08 AM, Falkentyne said:

What game?

It's never the same, can happen in any game and then later run normally in that game. Far Cry New Dawn and Red Dead 2 for example often do this, RDR especially will stay near max usage but the clocks will be almost 100mhz lower than in other games for no reason, with the same temperature and power draw it just clocks lower and performance then suffers.

[durrburger]

On 9/5/2021 at 5:40 AM, Bobbysixjp said:

What PSU do you have?

It's the SEASONIC Focus GX 750W.

[Bobbysixjp]

On 9/6/2021 at 9:36 PM, durrburger said:

It's the SEASONIC Focus GX 750W.

Could be the PSU. Perhaps try a different / new one.