Fluctuating GPU voltage?

[YusExa]

GPU voltage fluctuates down by nearly a whole 0.3V whilst playing games. Does not happen as often in other games, moreso in a specific game, but it is apparent. These fluctuations cause frame stuttering and are only mitigated by restarting the computer. It is not being undervolted, I have no hand in the GPU behaviour, it simply happens on its own. I have tried upping the power limit to give it more breathing room and it still occurs. My temps are entirely fine. Edge temps barely reaching 56 degrees whilst the hot spot reaches no more than 79 (yes this is a high delta, this card has been known to get deltas as much as 60... but I fixed the issue (for now) by just lowering the graphics of the games I play)

 

 

The little dips (ignore the massive spikes down- those are instances where the game window is not open) are the instances where the voltage will drop by 0.3V consistently for whatever reason. 

 

 

The point of where the voltage stabilizes is when I was entered into a match of War Thunder. Peaks of voltage hit 1.20V. Lows hit 0.93V.

 

Specs:

6750XT GIGABYTE
7600X
Rm 750X
32GB, Cl36, 6000Mhz (expo on) G.Skill, trident
SN770 2TB SSD + S70 Blade (boot drive)
GIGABYTE B650 AORUS ELITE AX

[kitnoman]

Well GPU voltage and even usage would really fluctuate depending on how much load or is being utilized. There are more than one reason why you are having this issue. During these dips, did you notice what's the GPU and CPU utilizations are? 

Just going by what you provided, you can try to lock the gpu voltage and frequency using afterburner. So it would consistently run at the same clock and power.

I mean I bet that the drop in power also means a drop in gpu utilization. So the next question is, what are these specific games that's having these issue and during what part of those games? At what resolution are you playing those games at? What happens to the CPU utilization when this happens? How much vram is in use? What other application are running in the background when this happens? Have you already tried to use DDU and reinstall gpu driver and made sure all drivers are updated?

[YusExa]

7 hours ago, kitnoman said:

Well GPU voltage and even usage would really fluctuate depending on how much load or is being utilized. There are more than one reason why you are having this issue. During these dips, did you notice what's the GPU and CPU utilizations are? 

Just going by what you provided, you can try to lock the gpu voltage and frequency using afterburner. So it would consistently run at the same clock and power.

I mean I bet that the drop in power also means a drop in gpu utilization. So the next question is, what are these specific games that's having these issue and during what part of those games? At what resolution are you playing those games at? What happens to the CPU utilization when this happens? How much vram is in use? What other application are running in the background when this happens? Have you already tried to use DDU and reinstall gpu driver and made sure all drivers are updated?

The GPU utilizations are the ones being effected. As shown in the graph and in further observations. The CPU remains roughly unchanged. The game that this occurs the most in is a game called War Thunder. I have noticed this somewhat in Rainbow 6 siege. I played a bunch of Ultrakill recently and never once did I experience frame stuttering. All of those games I play a 1440p high to max settings on graphics. During some observing I have done today, in War Thunder, I was pulling about 6.3GB of VRAM to about 7.2GB. No major applications other than HWinfo, GPUz and afterburner are running in the background. I could try using DDU but I already have done that recently and that still hasn't been a fix to the issue. 

 

This really only happens on War Thunder when an explosion happens but I do not understand why the card is having such a difficult time rendering the animations and graphics. It should be more than capable of handling high octane scenes such as the ones observed in the game. The voltage, for whatever reason, decides to fluctuate and mess up the GPU utilization. Clock stays more or less the same.

[TatamiMatt]

6 minutes ago, YusExa said:

The GPU utilizations are the ones being effected. As shown in the graph and in further observations. The CPU remains roughly unchanged. The game that this occurs the most in is a game called War Thunder. I have noticed this somewhat in Rainbow 6 siege. I played a bunch of Ultrakill recently and never once did I experience frame stuttering. All of those games I play a 1440p high to max settings on graphics. During some observing I have done today, in War Thunder, I was pulling about 6.3GB of VRAM to about 7.2GB. No major applications other than HWinfo, GPUz and afterburner are running in the background. I could try using DDU but I already have done that recently and that still hasn't been a fix to the issue. 

 

This really only happens on War Thunder when an explosion happens but I do not understand why the card is having such a difficult time rendering the animations and graphics. It should be more than capable of handling high octane scenes such as the ones observed in the game. The voltage, for whatever reason, decides to fluctuate and mess up the GPU utilization. Clock stays more or less the same.

You could limit voltage to something lower than the spikes using adrenalin or afterburner, also some games are just poorly optimized or use a bunch of hard to render quickly particle effects etc

[YusExa]

8 hours ago, TatamiMatt said:

You could limit voltage to something lower than the spikes using adrenalin or afterburner, also some games are just poorly optimized or use a bunch of hard to render quickly particle effects etc

That might probably be the case at this point. Cause this doens't really occur in any other game and I am pretty sure War Thunder tends to favor nividia cards anyway so- pfftt idk. I did some more testing and found that literally the two major elements that are fluctuating are the voltage which, after trying to limit, will bounce between 0.83 and 1.006 ONLY. Not sure why MSI afterburner isn't locking the voltage despite me enabling the setting but whatever. This also correlates to heavy fluctuating GPU usage. I wish I could tune that as well.

Nothing else, including elements of the CPU, are not being changed. Everything else is consistent besides voltage and GPU usage where fluctuations in voltage result in at least 0.17.

I reset the profile settings in AMD software as well as disabled eco mode on my CPU which seemed to have helped a bit. Do you think that memory instability could also have some sort of play here? I have always had a suspicion that my RAM isn't very good and causing crashes. 

[TatamiMatt]

2 minutes ago, YusExa said:

That might probably be the case at this point. Cause this doens't really occur in any other game and I am pretty sure War Thunder tends to favor nividia cards anyway so- pfftt idk. I did some more testing and found that literally the two major elements that are flacuating are the voltage which, after trying to limit, will bounce between 0.83 and 1.006 ONLY. Not sure why MSI afterburner isn't locking the voltage despite me enabling the setting but whatever. This also correlates to heavy fluctuating GPU usage. I wish I could tune that as well.

Nothing else, including elements of the CPU, are not being changed. Everything else is consistent besides voltage and GPU usage where fluctuations in voltage result in at least 0.17.

I reset the profile settings in AMD software as well as disabled eco mode on my CPU which seemed to have helped a bit. Do you think that memory instability could also have some sort of play here? I have always had a suspicion that my RAM isn't very good and causing crashes. 

I doubt it as the GPU will have its own RAM (thats what VRAM is). Ive also found Afterburner to be a bit funny with AMD cards sometimes and i usually stick with adrenalin as its so easy to use.

 

Voltage will vary anyway, though bouncing between 2 specific numbers seems a bit odd, i wonder if theres a reason for that specifically, have you tried tinkering with war thunders settings to see if differing settings changes the issue/voltage in any way?

[YusExa]

7 hours ago, TatamiMatt said:

I doubt it as the GPU will have its own RAM (thats what VRAM is). Ive also found Afterburner to be a bit funny with AMD cards sometimes and i usually stick with adrenalin as its so easy to use.

 

Voltage will vary anyway, though bouncing between 2 specific numbers seems a bit odd, i wonder if theres a reason for that specifically, have you tried tinkering with war thunders settings to see if differing settings changes the issue/voltage in any way?

The only thing that seems to have a difference is the settings in MSI AB or AMD software. After some more tweaking I was somehow able to widen the gap between the two flucuation points. I think I can learn how to tighten the gap. However, I did notice that the stability of FPS has gotten better slightly. And I think it's more due to the GPU clock and utilization rather than the voltage. It's probably of mix of both. I'm done tweaking for now but tomorrow Ill comeback with an update possibly. 

Edited April 3 by YusExa
Spelling

[Robchil]

Flactuating... i thought it was some mix of fluctuating and flatulating.... that would be a hilarious GPU....