New build. 4070ti not hitting TDP because of VREL

[ajellison83]

Hello all.  Built a PC for a friend of mine that consists of an Asus Prime B660M-A motherboard, 12600K, Corsair 850w PSU, Asus 4070ti, and Windows 11.  Got it up and running and went to start tuning it, only to find that it doesn't get near it's rated TDP and the performance is lacking in Furmark and Heaven benchmarks.  The max TDP is around 69%, which is around 200w, instead of 320w.

 

So far I've tried updating the bios and all drivers, switching the power cables around on the PSU and ensuring all is plugged in appropriately to the 16 pin adapter, and double checking all the settings I can think of in the Nvidia control panel.  Both HwInfo and GPU-Z show a VREL cause of the low performance, and I've yet to find any definitive answer as to a solution on the internet, and figured I'd reach out to the experts.  I've attached the GPU-Z screenshot while running Furmark and was wondering if anyone had any ideas.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Alex Atkin UK]

5 minutes ago, ajellison83 said:

Hello all.  Built a PC for a friend of mine that consists of an Asus Prime B660M-A motherboard, 12600K, Corsair 850w PSU, Asus 4070ti, and Windows 11.  Got it up and running and went to start tuning it, only to find that it doesn't get near it's rated TDP and the performance is lacking in Furmark and Heaven benchmarks.  The max TDP is around 69%, which is around 200w, instead of 320w.

 

So far I've tried updating the bios and all drivers, switching the power cables around on the PSU and ensuring all is plugged in appropriately to the 16 pin adapter, and double checking all the settings I can think of in the Nvidia control panel.  Both HwInfo and GPU-Z show a VREL cause of the low performance, and I've yet to find any definitive answer as to a solution on the internet, and figured I'd reach out to the experts.  I've attached the GPU-Z screenshot while running Furmark and was wondering if anyone had any ideas.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

How does it behave under other workloads?  Furmark is a very specific workload and could hit a limit that say a game will never do.

[ajellison83]

10 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

How does it behave under other workloads?  Furmark is a very specific workload and could hit a limit that say a game will never do.

So far I've tried Furmark, Heaven and Valley benchmarks, and the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark.  All of them have the power limited to around 200 watts with reduced performance.

[Zando_]

From a quick google, VRel is Voltage Reliability, means the card cannot boost further with current voltage. Basically, in that specific workload the card hits the voltage limit before power target or thermal limits. IIRC some cards will see a power virus workload like Furmark and throttle the card in order to protect it, could also be that. Try something like Unigine Superposition 1080p Extreme preset, any other benchmark that actually simulates a heavy game load, or run an actual in-game benchmark in any title with one to see if it pulls more wattage.

[Alex Atkin UK]

2 minutes ago, ajellison83 said:

So far I've tried Furmark, Heaven and Valley benchmarks, and the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark.  All of them have the power limited to around 200 watts with reduced performance.

I'd try more games, Cyberpunk is probably a bad choice as it may be CPU or memory bandwidth limited.

[ajellison83]

19 minutes ago, Zando_ said:

From a quick google, VRel is Voltage Reliability, means the card cannot boost further with current voltage. Basically, in that specific workload the card hits the voltage limit before power target or thermal limits. IIRC some cards will see a power virus workload like Furmark and throttle the card in order to protect it, could also be that. Try something like Unigine Superposition 1080p Extreme preset, any other benchmark that actually simulates a heavy game load, or run an actual in-game benchmark in any title with one to see if it pulls more wattage.

For some reason, the Superposition benchmark is downloading extremely slow and said it would take a couple hours to complete.  But the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark was limited to 200 watts as well, with very reduced performance compared to the 3080ti I have in my setup.  Same story with Elden Ring.  Instead of the 120fps my 3080ti can run it at, this 4070ti is running around 80fps and hovering around 210 watts peak.

[ajellison83]

19 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I'd try more games, Cyberpunk is probably a bad choice as it may be CPU or memory bandwidth limited.

Just got Elden Ring downloaded, and it's the same.  Reduced performance, and holding steady at just shy of 70% TDP.  No other bottleneck as far as I can tell.

[BetteBalterZen]

1 minute ago, ajellison83 said:

Just got Elden Ring downloaded, and it's the same.  Reduced performance, and holding steady at just shy of 70% TDP.  No other bottleneck as far as I can tell.

Do you have any vBIOS available for your card? 

[Dukesilver27-]

Does the GPU has dual BIOS? Quite mode and Performance mode?

If so, make sure that you are not on Quite mode.

[BetteBalterZen]

16 minutes ago, Dukesilver27- said:

Does the GPU has dual BIOS? Quite mode and Performance mode?

If so, make sure that you are not on Quite mode.

Sure, would make sense to test, since no one knows what is wrong but these BIOS' usually just change core clock a very little bit and the fan curve. So in theory both BIOS' should not limit the card like this. Still though ,as said, would be fine to test. Could be a bugged BIOS.

[ajellison83]

6 minutes ago, BetteBalterZen said:

Sure, would make sense to test, since no one knows what goes wrong but these BIOS usually just change core clock a very little bit and the fan curve. So in theory both BIOS' should not limit the card like this. Still though,as said, would be fine to test. Could be a bugged BIOS.

When I first installed the graphics card, I had it in quiet mode, and then switched it over to performance mode when the computer was off when I noticed there was an issue. 

 

There is a vbios update, but albeit a very slight difference from what I have already installed.  95.04.31.00.7C instead of the 7B that is on here

[BetteBalterZen]

Just now, ajellison83 said:

When I first installed the graphics card, I had it in quiet mode, and then switched it over to performance mode when the computer was off when I noticed there was an issue. 

 

There is a vbios update, but albeit a very slight difference from what I have already installed.  95.04.31.00.7C instead of the 7B that is on here

So this voltage cap happened after you switched to performance mode? Have you tried switching it back to see if it fixes the issue? 

Can you read any changes on the vBIOS? 

[191x7]

11 minutes ago, ajellison83 said:

When I first installed the graphics card, I had it in quiet mode, and then switched it over to performance mode when the computer was off when I noticed there was an issue. 

 

There is a vbios update, but albeit a very slight difference from what I have already installed.  95.04.31.00.7C instead of the 7B that is on here

What's cooling the 12600K? If the CPU throttles it might bottleneck the GPU...

[ajellison83]

13 minutes ago, BetteBalterZen said:

So this voltage cap happened after you switched to performance mode? Have you tried switching it back to see if it fixes the issue? 

Can you read any changes on the vBIOS? 

Couldn't find the changes for the vBios anywhere on the internet.  Tried a fresh install with DDU with the most current Nvidia driver, but saw on the Asus site that there is what appears to be an older version of the driver that I'm going to give a try once it is done slowly downloading.

[ajellison83]

6 minutes ago, 191x7 said:

What's cooling the 12600K? If the CPU throttles it might bottleneck the GPU...

A Noctua cooler that stays below 80 degrees when running prime95 under full boost

[Alex Atkin UK]

10 minutes ago, ajellison83 said:

A Noctua cooler that stays below 80 degrees when running prime95 under full boost

Have you double checked the PCIe power cables are plugged in securely?  I can't really compare as I went straight for a Corsair 12v HPWR cable, rather than using the horrible adapter.

 

Out of curiosity, have you tried running the Overclocking scanner in MSI Afterburner?  It takes quite a while, I think it was 45 minutes for me, but it tweaks the voltage/clock curve to try to maintain higher clocks.

I did both these things before even trying to use my card, which ironically is the cheapest Zotac I could find.

[ajellison83]

1 hour ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Have you double checked the PCIe power cables are plugged in securely?  I can't really compare as I went straight for a Corsair 12v HPWR cable, rather than using the horrible adapter.

 

Out of curiosity, have you tried running the Overclocking scanner in MSI Afterburner?  It takes quite a while, I think it was 45 minutes for me, but it tweaks the voltage/clock curve to try to maintain higher clocks.

I did both these things before even trying to use my card, which ironically is the cheapest Zotac I could find.

The power cable is plugged in securely.  I swapped it out with the 3080ti in my computer and did a fresh install with DDU, and got the same result.  Barely gets above 200w and has noticably less performance than my 3080ti.  I'm inclined to believe it's a defective card.  I sent an email off to see if I can return it, or if I need to try for an RMA with Asus.  Thanks for all the ideas though.  Much appreciate it.