GTX 1070 - Terrible Performance - HELP :(

[iamjmb]

Good evening/morning folks. I've been an avid watcher of the Linus Tech Tips YouTube, but have joined the forum tonight in desperate hopes that perhaps the fine people of this forum can help me solve a problem that has been plaguing me for a week now.

 

I'll try to make this as detailed as I can, while still getting directly to the point (I'd rather not waste anyone's time).

 

EDIT

In the interest of avoiding the dreaded TLDR, here's the real short version of my problem

 

I'm experiencing laggy and jittery video, regardless of whether or not the video I'm watching is in a browser, or is a movie file from my hard drive being played on MPC. I previously had a GTX 970 on this same system with no issue. I did a fresh format and install of EVERYTHING this week after purchasing a 3 month old Gigabyte GTX 1070 Mini from someone who took excellent care of it, but now suffer from lag, jitter and occasional screen tearing. In BF4 (the most recent game I own), the problem is present as well, though less noticeable. My FPS range from 37-62 however, and never higher (all default settings).

 

The remainder of this post has as many important details as I could think of, and was done in an effort to avoid anyone needing to ask questions that SHOULD have been included by the OP (myself), as I see this often).
 

 

Let's start with my build and get that out of the way first.

CPU: Intel i7-4790k with an EVO 212 Cooler
Motherboard: MSI Z97 PC Mate - BIOS V4.11 (I've neglected to update because last time I tried, it gave me an error and didn't want to reboot)
Memory: G.SKILL Sniper Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 2400
PSU: CORSAIR RM Series RM850 
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 1070 Mini

 

Running 3 acer S220HQL 60hz monitors (2 monitors on DVI, 1 on HDMI using a DVI to HDMI adapter attached to the monitor)

My windows drive is a Crucial M500. I also have a Kingston SSDNow V300 as a secondary drive for games, and then 2 1TB SATA drives for the "whatevers" (they're a little older but still function well).

Lastly, I'm on Windows 7 x64 (I haven't done Windows update since the release...I mention this because I'm willing to accept that it may be part of the problem, but I tend to avoid updating due to past poor experiences).

 

My most recent Userbenchmark results with NOTHING but Windows open can be seen here: http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/3530672

 

Everything is freshly formatted and installed with the latest up to date drivers on all, nothing over clocked except I guess for the DRAM if you count the XMP profile.

Under a light load with both Chrome and Chromium open with multiple tabs (2 instances of Chrome, one has a video streaming), and several misc smaller programs (such as discord, mIRC and DisplayFusion), my CPU temp is 37-41C with the occasional momentary spike to 44 and my GPU temp sits between 48-51C.
Under this load I'm using about 4.90gb of DRAM and my CPU jumps from 7% to 12%

 

I have Vertical sync set to Adaptive in the Global Settings, Power management mode is set to Prefer maximum performance and Multiple display performance mode is on.

 

So..my problem(s)?
I find myself occasionally suffering from screen tearing in my browsers (I typically use Chromium as my main browser and Chrome for odds and ends), not all the time, but often enough to bother me and it's mostly noticed when I'm watching video. More often than that though, I'm experiencing LAGGY & Jittery video (not quite stuttering and definitely not buffering, but obviously less frames than I should be experiencing, almost like slow motion at times). It's not 100% of the time, but close to half the time. The browsers DO have Hardware Acceleration turned on (as this helped eliminate SOME of the tearing), and the vsync settings are managed by the global settings (I saw no change when I had vsync turned on for specific browsers).

Here's the real kicker though and this is what bothers me the most...I'm also experiencing laggy & jittery video when watching movies through Media Player Classic off of my Hard Drive (it's the only media player I use), and I can't seem to fix it regardless of the settings I play with. Again, not 100% of the time, but far too often to accept. Rather than watching a person run from point a to point b smoothly, it looks like it drops frames in between, or adds additional motion blur that wasn't originally there (this is in movies I've watched over a dozen times and am familiar with, also files that I KNOW are good)

 

Previously I was running a GTX 970 with this exact same system and wasn't experiencing these issues (not that I can recall anyway...maybe I'm just paranoid and expecting too much?), but it had been a year since I formatted, so maybe there's a setting somewhere I'm forgetting. 

In BF4 (the most recent game I own), running only on 1 monitor, I get low framerate warnings almost non stop, regardless of low ping and fast internet, dropping as low as 48fps just in the menu screen alone. In game my FPS ranges from 62 with dips all the way down to 37, and I will notice the occasional jitter. According to the System Performance Test, my system is in good condition, yet my FPS according to the test are 67. 

I'm desperate for help here...I've been at this for a good week now trying to make things run smoothly, and I don't feel like this should be the limit of my performance. 

 

I've actually downgraded to the 375.95 drivers per the recommendation of a friend, but saw little difference.

I realized a little too late in the game that my DRAM is 1.65v, and according to PC Part Picker: "The G.Skill Sniper Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 Memory operating voltage of 1.65V exceeds the Intel Haswell Refresh CPU recommended maximum of 1.5V+5% (1.575V). This memory module may run at a reduced clock rate to meet the 1.5V voltage recommendation, or may require running at a voltage greater than the Intel recommended maximum."

This now has me concerned that I may have caused some damage by using the XMP profile and pushing the ram beyond the board's limits. Is that a possibility??

I've since disabled it, causing my ram to want to run at 1333...my performance has only gotten worse as a result. Quite a bit worse actually.

 

I also turned on Triple Buffering momentarily, but saw no improvement.

 

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated folks.

 

Thanks very much in advance.

[Guest]

Welcome to them boards, you might have included a TLDR.

 

Read most of your post, and the main issue you have is some kind of browser lag. Don't know much about it, but wanted to tell you my experiance.

 

Using Firefox on an older computer. Lots of open tabs, usually there is no issue at all. And I mean NO issues AT ALL. I can keep my browser open for several days, and still have it respond quickly. (watching youtube vids as it's biggest load) However... When I'd go watch a youtube live stream, my browser will become laggy as hell after +/- 30 minutes up to half an hour. This also happens when I just pause the vid stream, and remain on the chat.

In the past I used to play poorly optimized browser games. (dark orbit for example) Browser would also become laggy. Memory usage would be around 1.7 gb, and CPU usage ~25-40%. No idea about GPU, because that doesn't show up in windows task manager.

 

Considering your issues seem to be browser related (I gues there are no issues with games?) I think we have a problem in common. We use completely different hardware. We use different browsers. But we both use an older OS, whitout any updates... I'd suggest cleaning up one of your 1 tb drives, so it's empty. Then I'd suggest you disconnect all other drives (because of windows), and install a fresh copy of windows on that drive. Install all drivers and do all them updates. Check if this solves your issues. If it doesn't fix your problems, no harm done. If it does fix your issues, you know you can savely update your windows, or do a fresh install.

[iamjmb]

Your name cracked me up, haha. Thanks for the reply @Dutch-stoner

TLDR is probably the case, but I've seen so many threads where helpful users had to ask questions because there wasn't enough info...I wanted to avoid that if I could. May have done more harm than good I guess, lol.

 

You may be right. Unfortunately though, this is not limited to browsers. It may still be worth going through the Windows Updating process, but I hadn't bothered to update my previous copy of Windows when I was running the 970 either, so I get the feeling that isn't it.

I'm running out of options though, may have to go that route regardless.

[Guest]

As I said, didn't read the entire post. Now I've read something moar.

 

Did you remove all your previous 970 drivers? (there is software for it)

 

At offline content: I get the feeling you are a pirate. I myself had scimilar problems with downloaded content. Same kind of laggy stuff. Seems my codec pack got broken/had to fix it. After that, it worked fine again.

 

Anyways, 2 other things you might want to look at. Uninstalling/removing all previous drivers and do a clean GPU driver install, and if the issue persists, try fixing your codecs. (mine got broken without me doing anything, not even rebooting)

 

*EDIT:

7 minutes ago, iamjmb said:

Your name cracked me up, haha.

Naw, not crack. Just grass.

[iamjmb]

@Dutch-stoner - Everything was a totally fresh install this week. And I do mean everything. 

 

I used DDU to remove the 1070 drivers when I downgraded (for the sake of troubleshooting), but there were no 970 drivers lingering. I formatted everything, even my partitions that didn't have Windows. So codecs and everything are fresh and new too. I even uninstalled and reinstalled those anyway, just in case.

 

Pirate? How'd you know I have a peg leg?

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, iamjmb said:

Pirate? How'd you know I have a peg leg?

I usually don't look below waist level with guys. But your hook for a hand gave it away.

 

On-topic: got no real idea then. If it was my computer, I would check all them settings with the included software. Upgrade windows, or maybe even change OS for testing purposes. But it might also be a curse on that GPU. Why did someone sell a 3 month old modern GPU. Not all of the booty is worth taking on board.

[iamjmb]

GPU Curse is what I'm afraid of.

He actually sold his entire system, moving to the console world to game with his friends instead.

[Czeekaj]

So your running BF4 on one monitor, and your getting temps under 60 degrees ? What resolution?

I see your bios is not up to date, but you should leave that for now. You do point out your ram. This is just regular ram? not your Video Ram you Over clocked?

Your mother board manual sometimes as a big long list of ram and the recomended voltage. As you mention being a whole 0.1 V + over is a larger increment, I would suspect this could be the first place you should look if it's your ram sticks could be a simple fix. Try running with two sticks in different configerations than one each , if your mobo has a built in Mem check test out your ram. If you don't have any spare sticks around (which would be the easiest way to test if ram is faulty and rest is Okay) that maybe could see your issue resolved if it's one or two faulty sticks maybe testing one or two at a time could find which sticks might cause the issue. If all 4 potentially had suffered the same over voltage. It's quite a bit higher, but it's not out of the relm of resonable voltage ranges they might be okay yet.

However you arn't updating windows which yes it is fustrating I can understand. But the Security patches are almost required if your going to be using the internet. Unless your beyond on top of things and always using Vpn and taking many precautions too lower your attack surface.

Maybe try Tor (at least this is the only browser I find will work in situations when others wont) , to test for tears maybe if you only notice it browing and scrolling, it also may be your moniter but I really doubt that is the issue if it's pulling a steady 60hz and you don't notice it on desktop and files. Your Video card could be what's causing it but you mention you have 3 moniters, which pushing x3 the pixels there is potential there for working the card harder. You can use OC scanner to do a stress test but Tearing usually is not the same as Artifacting from my experience. I had Tearing and flicker on a old dell moniter I had paired with a TV but that was running full screen programs on one, and desktop on the other. But you mention all your monitors are the same. (Are you using same input methods for each?)

You mention Ram speed at 1333, again is this V ram or just your Regular DDR3 at 2400? You could potentially run your ram at over 2000 safely if your CPU clock can take advantage of it.
I had mine running at max speed in my bios and I had blue screens but I had it turned down about 100 under what it was rated at so 1833 or so when I think its rated at about 1900, (I bought two new sticks which are 4gb a piece, I think same speed as when I built the thing but the sticks are same brand but the stuff I bought when it was first built isn't being sold any more some kingston hyperX) But Reinstalling windows fixed my blue screen problems not the ram speed in my case. (you mention you have spare HD you might want to do a test and back up and try just unplugging and running a fresh OS on a extra HDD)

 

However I did once turn on auto OC on my Bios, and with the Ivy Bridge I only ever Fudged with the Turbo Clock. Never the Base clock yet I had turned on Auto Over clock or a 'preformance profile' and ran it only to find out the Bios decided too raise the Base clock too 105 , instead of the regular 100. I saw big boost in clock speeds but I was only using air cooler, however my temps were still fine. The issue really was how it automaticly jacked up the Voltage and I had to dig in bios and compare old default settings to notice.

So a good bench mark is Ashes of Singularity, it can tell you your lows and highs and Graph them. Which you seem to be getting acceptable Frame rates. Esspecially if your using Sync, however it does sound like it's fluctuating (or less than what your used too) a lot which might be an indication of some sort of Wear or OS inefficency. If you still have your 980 or different ram you could do a quick test and see if you can hit stable frame rates. Also concerning voltages I am no expert but if you mobo is not up for it there could be some damages due too the voltage. You shouldn't need too down clock the Ram so much but it's good you tested it, Try too maybe get everything running at base clocks and not use any built in Bios profiles and just save a really conservative set up as a custom profile. The bios sometimes like I had experience with will tweek voltage, and like with ram doesn't actually consult it's manual first even if the ram is okay the Board might not like that voltage with that particular ram.

I personally feel if your OC only start messing with voltage if you need it too get the speeds your after. Aside from that voltage changes that go beyond some offsets should be done incrementally if you can help it. I have very little OC as my first Mobo and Proccessor capable of it aged, I never had a Sandybridge which seems to be the Baseclock tweeker. While I had only really been messing with the Boost clock on my Ivy, When I decided to maybe mess with the Base clock that's when I noticed the Ram speed actually changing and some extra voltage was applied.

Hardware damage can be rough to find as you almost have to test every piece individually to see if you can solve the issue. I'd start with the simple stuff like Ram and Video card if you can. If your CPU has integrated video and you suspect your Card you could test the integrated Graphics too see if you get screen tearing on your browser.

 

Best of luck man, I hope too you its just a software issue as your windows has not been updated. On my laptop I was getting Audio 'skipping' or chopping or what have you. it was deffinitly a virus or some sort of interferience while watching Youtube or doing anything on my browser and I could tell when the Wifi Throttled the audio would skip or streatch out a sound and just be awful. So I reinstalled windows and that issue was resolved.

 

[iamjmb]

Hey @Czeekaj - Thanks for the reply.

In BF4 I find myself getting under 60FPS...I don't know about the temps come to think of it. I imagine getting under 60FPS could be related to the Adaptive VSync, but I wouldn't think that would cause them to dip so low (as low as the high 30s).

 

Yes, only regular system ram has been overclocked, nothing else, and I'm probably using that term loosely. I initially upped the speed to 2200, and then started using the XMP profile to get the most out of it. I never touched anything else by hand, not even the voltages (which is why I'm hoping I haven't caused any damage).

Unfortunately, I do not have any spare ram. I ran memtest86 yesterday for about an hour (not long enough to complete the test, as I had to abort it to move onto other things), and in that time I did encounter an address error, but I've yet to be able to nail that down and rectify it (I haven't found how yet).

 

As far as input methods, 2 of the monitors are on DVI and one is using HDMI with an HDMI to DVI adapter (because these monitors only have DVI and VGA inputs).

 

Yes, the system ram is what wants to run at 1333 in auto mode, but is capable of 2400 (which I had it at for the last week as part of the new system/formatting process).

 

I can go back to the 970, but I'll only be able to run 2 monitors off of it, because I don't have a display port adapter. So I can test BF4 on one monitor with the other open to the desktop, but I'll still be lacking the draw of a third monitor that the 1070 is taking right now, so I imagine it may yield some skewed results. Honestly though, I'm so frustrated with this situation that I may end up back on the 970 regardless.

 

It was suggested I reseat the card as well...while this seems kind of silly to me, I'll give it a go later in the evening when I'm able to get my hands on everything again.

 

Thanks again

[iamjmb]

So here's an unexpected turn.

 

I threw in the towel today and put my GTX 970 back in. Everytime I tried to watch Netflix, every second (one thousand one), the computer would freeze visually. In other words, the audio for the netflix movie would keep going, but the video, my cursor, everything would freeze for about a second, then resume and freeze again like clock work.

So I DDU'd the old drivers, installed the latest for the 970 and the first thing I did was open up Battlefield 4 and found myself getting consistently more than 180FPS (as opposed to the 60 I was getting with the 1070). This I'll attribute to the default settings for the video card being in place (I didn't bother to turn VSync back on, and have no had any screentearing issues, which seems odd to me since they were quite prominent with the 1070 before turning on vsync).

 

Here's the kicker...I'm still dealing with lagging/framedrop/jittery video.

So good news is that I guess that rules out the 1070...bad news is, I'm still absolutely lost.

 

Once again, I'm open to suggestions from the good folks of the forum.

 

 

[Zaki_Owais]

Check if you have any of those power saving or epu modes on.Hope this helps.(you won't believe how much lag they create) 

[XenosTech]

2 hours ago, iamjmb said:

So here's an unexpected turn.

 

I threw in the towel today and put my GTX 970 back in. Everytime I tried to watch Netflix, every second (one thousand one), the computer would freeze visually. In other words, the audio for the netflix movie would keep going, but the video, my cursor, everything would freeze for about a second, then resume and freeze again like clock work.

So I DDU'd the old drivers, installed the latest for the 970 and the first thing I did was open up Battlefield 4 and found myself getting consistently more than 180FPS (as opposed to the 60 I was getting with the 1070). This I'll attribute to the default settings for the video card being in place (I didn't bother to turn VSync back on, and have no had any screentearing issues, which seems odd to me since they were quite prominent with the 1070 before turning on vsync).

 

Here's the kicker...I'm still dealing with lagging/framedrop/jittery video.

So good news is that I guess that rules out the 1070...bad news is, I'm still absolutely lost.

 

Once again, I'm open to suggestions from the good folks of the forum.

 

 

for some god forbidden reason you have to turn off hardware acceleration for nvidia gpu's. Had that same exact problem watching yt, twitch or any video from a browser.

[DoctorZeus]

turn off hardware acceleration in your browser 

[iamjmb]

@Zaki_Owais Is that in BIOS somewhere?

 

@XenosTech & @DoctorZeus - Turning Hardware Accelerator on was actually an improvement in terms of videos in the browsers. I'll happily turn them back off, but my laggy video isn't only relegated to browsers though. Even with the 970 back in place, I'm still not getting buttery smooth video through MPC like I should be (and used to).

[DoctorZeus]

1 minute ago, iamjmb said:

@Zaki_Owais Is that in BIOS somewhere?

 

@XenosTech & @DoctorZeus - Turning Hardware Accelerator on was actually an improvement in terms of videos in the browsers. I'll happily turn them back off, but my laggy video isn't only relegated to browsers though. Even with the 970 back in place, I'm still not getting buttery smooth video through MPC like I should be (and used to).

improvement as in fix or just slightly less laggy

[iamjmb]

@DoctorZeus - Less screen tearing mostly. Initially I was experiencing regular screen tearing even with VSync on (in browsers).

 

[DoctorZeus]

3 minutes ago, iamjmb said:

@DoctorZeus - Less screen tearing mostly. Initially I was experiencing regular screen tearing even with VSync on (in browsers).

 

did you only change power settings in nvidia?

[iamjmb]

Since the reinstall (which was a total clean install, default settings, etc), the only nvidia setting I've changed is Prefer maximum performance for Power Management. When I was using the 1070, I had that same setting, but also had Adaptive VSync on (currently that's at the default "Use the 3D application setting")

[XenosTech]

Beginning to think this 1070 is more of a head ache than a blessing

[iamjmb]

You're telling me. But given that I'm not having similar (if not identical) problems with the 970, I'm wondering what else it could possibly be. I'd love nothing more than to think that it's a Windows problem, but it's a fresh barely a week old install. 

[DoctorZeus]

1 hour ago, iamjmb said:

You're telling me. But given that I'm not having similar (if not identical) problems with the 970, I'm wondering what else it could possibly be. I'd love nothing more than to think that it's a Windows problem, but it's a fresh barely a week old install. 

Start button -> Right click computer and properties -> Click advanced settings -> Under advanced tab, click performance -> Click adjust for best appearance and click apply then ok. 

 

try the Windows power settings

[iamjmb]

"Adjust for best appearance" only changes "Save taskbar thumbnail previews", but I've turned it on anyway.

 

The only thing in the windows Power Options I saw that I Thought should be changed (and I thought I DID change, actually) was the PCI Express Link State Power Management, which I've turned off (again I think).

[Czeekaj]

Do you experience and freezing/ stuttering when running something like BF4 offline? It could be an internet issue, but you mention your windows install is only a week old so it may be the ram or Cpu doing the freezing? You mention you never oc your CPU, and your ram by defualt wants to run at 1300, which does seem a little low for the speed of that cpu. However you do have 32 gb which may be why. Any kind of sync should drop frame rates a bit but the point of it usually is too make it smoother / steadier frame rates. You could also mess with some settings in Nvidea control panel like going from balanced too preformance preferance on the slider. You can also verify your moniters are set up in a way that may help.

 

[smokefest]

14 hours ago, iamjmb said:

"Adjust for best appearance" only changes "Save taskbar thumbnail previews", but I've turned it on anyway.

 

The only thing in the windows Power Options I saw that I Thought should be changed (and I thought I DID change, actually) was the PCI Express Link State Power Management, which I've turned off (again I think).

Just so you know,

 

If you install a fresh windows, with the drivers for the chipset, audio and stuff, and then install the nvidia drivers for the gtx 1070, all correctly and successfully, even if you don't touch anything in the power management settings or ANYTHING, like if you stick to the "stock" windows with drivers, a gtx 1070 can play bf4 eaaaasily in 1080p ultra settings with absolutely no lag at all.

 

So your problem is not coming from those options for sure.

[smokefest]

12 minutes ago, Czeekaj said:

Do you experience and freezing/ stuttering when running something like BF4 offline? It could be an internet issue, but you mention your windows install is only a week old so it may be the ram or Cpu doing the freezing? You mention you never oc your CPU, and your ram by defualt wants to run at 1300, which does seem a little low for the speed of that cpu. However you do have 32 gb which may be why. Any kind of sync should drop frame rates a bit but the point of it usually is too make it smoother / steadier frame rates. You could also mess with some settings in Nvidea control panel like going from balanced too preformance preferance on the slider. You can also verify your moniters are set up in a way that may help.

 

1300 mhz ram in dual channel = 2600 mhz ram speed