GPU Underperforming

[FelineCaribou]

About three months ago, I had finally found a good price and had want to upgrade my computer with a new GPU as my fiance was wanting an upgrade and was going to take my now previous GPU. I decided on a 7900 XTX as good software upgrades had come in recent times and AMD performance was getting better and thought I'd cross back into Team Red. Gaming had never been better. I noticed the other day that I was having some strange frame drops while playing games. It started while playing Ready or Not as they finally went full release, I would have intermittent frame skipping/dropping which made the game annoying and out right not fun to play for more than 30 minutes. I had tried both DX11 and 12 versions, same issue. I then noticed it further when playing COD, anytime any enemy player would be anywhere on my screen I drop frames and when my system catches up, I would already be dead or dying. Again, not fun. After doing some more benchmarking on other games in my library, I decided to do some "actual" benchmarking with userbenchmark, 3dMark, and FurMark. Every time, my 7900 XTX would come up well under the "average" performance profile (a difference of thousands of points in 3dMark). I wasn't sure what was going on other than it was clear that my GPU has been doing some weird things lately. After going through the benchmarks, it was clear with msi afterburner and with GPU-Z that my gpu is either power limiting and or thermally limiting itself and I cannot figure out how to fix or change it.

 

These screen shots are after 20 minutes of furmark.

 

In some way or another, I cannot get the voltage back to what it should be stock out of the box which should be around 1.0 volts or more.

During each in game benchmark and each benchmark with 3dmark and so on, the voltage refuses to go beyond 740mV let alone 700mV for furmark.

 

For most of the benchmarks, the main temperature sensor doesn't go over 62*C with the hot spot sitting around 72*C ish, and I know for a fact these cards can and should be sitting at higher temps.

The only way I've been able to get past 60*C is due to long runs in furmark.

 

I've tried:

- DDU (multiple times)

- Rolling back drivers (same issue continues)

- swapping over the dual bios switch on the card (multiple times after shutting the computer down etc.)

- Uninstalling and reinstalling the Adrenalin App (twice now)

- DDU (again) to remove the Adrenalin app and other drivers to then download ONLY the AMD driver (Current as of 5 Dec)

- MSI afterburner, overclocking, forcing voltage levels etc.

 

Every time, the "Temp Limit" option in Afterburner has never been accessible and I cannot figure out why. I'm thinking that's the reason why the card is under performing but I have no knowledge how to actually change this either.

 

I don't know what to do now other than RMA the thing. Is there something I missed? Is there someone who has also had this issue? At this rate I'm tired of searching on the internet for this issue, and created an account here to try and ask if anyone can help with some options before I do end up RMA-ing it.

 

System specs:

Ryzen 9 5900X

Quad Channel Corsair 32Gb @ 3600Mhz

MSI Gaming Trio Classic RX 7900 XTX

MSI X570S Carbon Max Wifi (MAG)

Seasonic Platinum 850 PSU

Win10 x64 - 22H2