[PSA] Chrome is killing your GPU thermals

[Baldwin90]

Linus touched on this in The Wan Show back on 7/18/14 (http://youtu.be/3fPSk5TSxTk?list=UUXuqSBlHAE6Xw-yeJA0Tunw) but there is more to it. THIS DOESN'T APPLY TO EVERYONE, but it did apply to me. I honestly don't know the specific details and configuration, but I do know this, Chrome can run your GPU in 3D mode, even when it's not open. This only applied to me when I was using SLI, but it made it so my cards would stay at 894MHz instead of idling at 50MHz. It took 3 calls to EVGA to finally find the cause. Even after rebooting the computer and not opening Chrome, it was still at 894MHz. It turns out that in the system tray there was a Chrome icon indicating that Chrome was running. I had to click on that icon in the system tray and un-check the section that said "allow chrome to run in the background." Instantly my GPU clock went down to 50MHz.

 

Here is how important this is. At idle, min fan speed (30%), 0% load, the cards were running at 88 C and 77 C at 40% fan speed. They now idle at 38 C at 0% load. This is reason enough to check your thermals and to be sure that you aren't wasting a ton of power, just because Chrome is making your cards run in 3D mode.

[Excon]

You temps shouldnt have gone that high even though the cards where boosted to 894mhz, doesnt make sense you said it was at "0%" load which it clearly must not have beene

[Jade]

No idea what kinds of screwed up your Chrome is, but my GPUs idle the same even with it closed entirely.

[Jerakl]

My GPU doesn't lower clock rates at idle. Atleast not when I last checked. Maybe I'm just blind.

[SlaughterSmurf]

My 780ti is at 28 with %29 fan speed so idk what's wrong with your card....

[Muzicfreq]

um my PC only uses memory usage in chrome.....

so yeah...

[Baldwin90]

You temps shouldnt have gone that high even though the cards where boosted to 894mhz, doesnt make sense you said it was at "0%" load which it clearly must not have beene

Trust me, I ran every utility possible that could track GPU load. Keep in mind that it was at min fan speed (30%). Now it only gets to 40 at min fan speed. There is a clear difference. And I can assure you that Chrome wasn't mining

[Baldwin90]

No idea what kinds of screwed up your Chrome is, but my GPUs idle the same even with it closed entirely.

This doesn't happen to everyone. The GPU would go down to 50MHz with only one card, but once you have them running in SLI Chrome running in the background would not let the GPU lower the clock speed, due to it forcing the card to run in 3D mode. Check with EVGA if you don't believe me. The were the ones that pointed out the issue.