Massive framedrops: Unknown suspect

[mememaster69]

Hi, I guess.

After much profanity I think I've done the only sensible thing and turned this to an audience with greater computer knowledge.
As long as I can remember I've had this issue, but only recently after tweaking with my gpu settings (VIA MSI AFTERBURNER & EVGAPRECISION X OC) it has started concern me.

As the graphs show in the linked image I'm having a throtteling issue.

 

I can't see why this would occur and decided that I'll try and fix it once and for all.
I've tried swapping around fans to acouple of different positions with no luck.

 

Any help would be greatly appretiated

 

MYSPECS:
Mobo: M5A78L-M LX V2
GPU: GIGABYTE 970GTX Windforce 3x (Not G1) (Currently not oc'd)
CPU: AMD FX-8350 (Not oc'd)
RAM: 2x4GB Corsair Vengence CL9 
Drives: 1x500GB 5200rpm HDD 1x ~80GB Intel SSD

Case: FD R4

 

Attatched image: 

[rphawks]

What are you playing?

[mememaster69]

Pretty much everything. CS:GO, Forza Horizon 3, H1Z1, Warthunder, Battlerite, Path of Exile.
The game I was playing when graphs were recorded was H1Z1 soloqueue on EU servers  

[Numbafieve]

I'm not 100% sure its throttling.  I can see a few things it could be, in fact i just solved a similar problem with my own computer.

 

1.turn on the voltage limit monitor on afterburner and the power limit to make sure you aren't tripping those. (Doubt it is but might as well check)

2.your CPU might be a bottleneck (Also doubt it but its a possibility since it isn't overclocked) check by looking at how much of a SINGLE core you are using at a time

3.your RAM might not be fast enough in terms of Mhz (my ram speed was my limiting factor causing my 1070 to not run full tilt) this one has my vote

 

I'm thinking its a bottleneck somewhere due to how your graphs are similar to mine about 3 days ago.  The clock speed doesn't change but the usage does, and 82 degrees isn't exactly pushing it to the limit, my 390 would hit 90 if i let it.  Does it do this in benchmarks like valley or heaven?  Even before i got faster RAM i could run those benchmarks and since they weren't CPU bound my GPU would go full throttle all the time.

[mememaster69]

Recorded graph during Heaven Benchmark, only one miniscule stutter that i noticed, I think it occured during the dip in "voltage limit"

[Numbafieve]

3 minutes ago, mememaster69 said:

Recorded graph during Heaven Benchmark, only one miniscule stutter that i noticed, I think it occured during the dip in "voltage limit"

Beautiful that's exactly what i was hoping to see.  Turn up either your GPU power limit to max if you haven't already and if it is turn up the voltage like 50mv.  Also make the fan curve a little more aggressive to help tame the beast that turning up the power will create.  I usually make my fans hit 90% by 80 degrees.

 

Basically this shows that with the CPU out of the picture basically its not doing the thing anymore.  But before we can deal with that we should give your GPU more to work with.  The next step is to find out a way to isolate if its your RAM or CPU that's the problem, maybe a bit of both.

 

To test if its the CPU open up task manager and go to performance and go play a game for a little while.  then go back and see if any one of the cores is getting loaded pretty high.  My i7 only hits 24% usage during games but that's 24% of all 8 threads. One core is at about 70-90% usage.

 

The RAM is tricky though, I had to go to microcenter and buy a faster set of RAM (how many Mhz is yours by the way?) and test it before returning it if it made no difference.

[mememaster69]

After changing the settings and conducted a quick restart I ran Heaven Benchmark once more and these are the results.

[Numbafieve]

7 minutes ago, mememaster69 said:

After changing the settings and conducted a quick restart I ran Heaven Benchmark once more and these are the results.

 

 

 

Doesn't look like the over volting thing helped the voltage limit so might as well go back to +0mV so that you don't heat up your chip for no reason.  Power limit shouldn't do anything but change it back if you feel like it.

 

otherwise its time to go on to the CPU test thing i explained before.  Since your CPU isn't overclocked and AMD isn't exactly top of the line the problem could lie there.

[mememaster69]

I just finished a session in H1Z1 soloqueue and these were the aftermaths:

(Also felt like I had a tiny bit better preformance (Might just be BS))

Edited November 13, 2016 by mememaster69
(The low end segments are both loadingscreens)

[mememaster69]

I'm also getting 200fps in titlescreen prior to 150 with default settings

[Numbafieve]

6 minutes ago, mememaster69 said:

I just finished a session in H1Z1 soloqueue and these were the aftermaths:

(Also felt like I had a tiny bit better preformance (Might just be BS))

 

that's pretty cool that H1Z1 uses all 8 cores relatively evenly.  It looks like your CPU isn't the problem but it doesn't look like your session was super long either to validate it.  When do you get these frame drops more importantly?  I usually only got frame drops in certain cities on skyrim or when i was doing long range stuff in WoWS.

 

Also we haven't really changed anything so it should all still be the same as of now.  

[mememaster69]

FH3 graphs, Although maybe the worst benchmarking game usable this lags and drops down to 10's and 20's very frequently.

[mememaster69]

the "dip" halfway in the gpu usage % was a result of FH3 dropping to 19fps for 4 seconds straight. (100ms hardware polling interval)

[mememaster69]

here is a full session from 150 to 10 players, i had quite a few lagspikes and random moments when my frames would drop down below 30