Bizzare 3070Ti behaviour - throttles to minimum clock under any 3D load (game), temporarily fixed by driver reinstall

[just_dave]

Hi everyone,

 

I have a very strange issue with my 3070Ti (EVGA FTW3). About two days ago, I started suffering really low FPS in games that previously ran fine (Doom Eternal @ Ultra Nightmare, 1440p 144Hz G-Synced). At first, I thought the change in the game environment might cause it. But that seemed off as I always had super solid 144 fps during all previous gameplay. When I checked the clocks in Precision X1, I noticed the GPU idling at 1860 MHz (I have "Prefer maximum performance" enabled in the control panel) but immediately dropping to 400ish MHz under any 3D load. I remember the night before, I updated my driver to 536.99, so I rolled it back to .67. After a reboot, it seemingly fixed everything, and I was back running at 144 FPS, no matter what. However, today I booted up the PC once again and was once again stuck at the minimum clock under load. I checked all limits, and everything was fine, temperature, power target, and fans spinning (I run a custom curve that never stops the fans).  Does anyone have an idea what this might be? I wasn't able to google anything, as all throttling behavior is usually paired with hitting some limit. 

[Agall]

10 minutes ago, just_dave said:

Hi everyone,

 

I have a very strange issue with my 3070Ti (EVGA FTW3). About two days ago, I started suffering really low FPS in games that previously ran fine (Doom Eternal @ Ultra Nightmare, 1440p 144Hz G-Synced). At first, I thought the change in the game environment might cause it. But that seemed off as I always had super solid 144 fps during all previous gameplay. When I checked the clocks in Precision X1, I noticed the GPU idling at 1860 MHz (I have "Prefer maximum performance" enabled in the control panel) but immediately dropping to 400ish MHz under any 3D load. I remember the night before, I updated my driver to 536.99, so I rolled it back to .67. After a reboot, it seemingly fixed everything, and I was back running at 144 FPS, no matter what. However, today I booted up the PC once again and was once again stuck at the minimum clock under load. I checked all limits, and everything was fine, temperature, power target, and fans spinning (I run a custom curve that never stops the fans).  Does anyone have an idea what this might be? I wasn't able to google anything, as all throttling behavior is usually paired with hitting some limit. 

What PCIe version does it show in GPUZ?

 

Have you tried different power plans, like balanced? It might affect PCIe link power states and High Performance could be bugged. Usually that just changes the way the scheduler handles boosting and such, but it might include PCIe power states.

 

 

IEEE Xplore Full-Text PDF:

 

What wattage is it drawing when its throttled down like that? ~80W if I'm reading that properly?

[just_dave]

16 minutes ago, Agall said:

 

What wattage is it drawing when its throttled down like that? ~80W if I'm reading that properly?

Yep, around 80W for the core, 100W TBP.

 

16 minutes ago, Agall said:

Have you tried different power plans, like balanced?

Currently set Nvidia power management to "Normal" and it seems to be properly setting the power states of the GPU under all circumstances.

 

17 minutes ago, Agall said:

It might affect PCIe link power states and High Performance could be bugged

Will have a closer look at the Windows power plan then, thanks a lot. I've dealt with this with some esoteric FPGA Linux hardware, didn't expect to be an issue on something as stable as Windows + Nvidia. Thanks a lot for the suggestions

 

[Agall]

2 minutes ago, just_dave said:

Yep, around 80W for the core, 100W TBP.

 

Currently set Nvidia power management to "Normal" and it seems to be properly setting the power states of the GPU under all circumstances.

 

Will have a closer look at the Windows power plan then, thanks a lot. I've dealt with this with some esoteric FPGA Linux hardware, didn't expect to be an issue on something as stable as Windows + Nvidia. Thanks a lot for the suggestions

 

I've seen a few issues with this recently, enough to dig deeper into PCIe substates. If the PCIe version isn't running at its fullest, it might be stuck in a low power state. That could either be induced in Windows and/or the UEFI, where you can usually disable those L1/L2/L3 power states in the UEFI.