GTX 1070 severely under performing

[Spikkel]

I already found the problem, but I wanted to share this in case it might benefit someone else with a similar problem.

 

System: MSI 1070 Gaming X (not overclocked, MSI gaming app, latest nVidia drivers installed), 8700K (not overclocked, with Coolermaster 612 tower cooler), Asus PrimeA motherboard with 64GB Corsair DDR4 @ 2666 with XMP enabled, 700W Thermaltake PSU. (Sytem used for Lightroom high volume photo editing and gaming)

 

The symptoms: Low FPS (around 30 with lows reaching 17) in 1440p at Ultra settings, lowering settings to High and 1080p did not significantly improve results. 3D Mark FireStrike score of around 9000 (instead of around 17000). But it does fine in some other benchmarks. [A GTX 1070 should reach at least 70 FPS in most games at 1440p with settings at Ultra]

EDIT: ... should reach at least 70 FPS in most games at 1440p with settings at High, please also see http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/msi-geforce-gtx-1070-gaming-x-review,1.html

 

Things to consider (gathered from other threads with similar issues): Some GPU tweaking software with an FPS counter overlay (like the MSI gaming App) may hurt performance in some cases, installing/re-installing the latest drivers is usually step 1. Disabling V-sync (or switching to "adaptive" may help in some cases. Some games are just badly optimised and CPU-bound. BUT, most cases ended up being a CPU bottleneck of some sort. (1) Either the CPU is old/under-powered and pinned at a 100% load, (2) the CPU is overheating and thus thermal trotting, or (3) An unstable overclock is keeping the clock cycles low.

 

In my case, the CPU was doing fine at 37 C, and very low load during gaming. With light tasks it wasn't boosting (keeping at 0.75 GHz), I also noticed very bad performance in Adobe Lightroom (photo editing) - thinking it was the GPU since with heavy loads (Prime95 and Cinebench) the CPU was reaching the rated 4.3 GHz - which is a good speed when all 6 cores are working hard. The Cinebench score was good as well...

 

The culprit: Control Panel > Power Options > "Power saver" 

Turns out, with this enabled, the the system cooling policy (under advanced settings) is set to "passive", which means that operating system slows the processor before increasing fan speed. Under heavy loads this is ignored and the CPU seems to be doing its job fine, but moderate to light loads are severely impeded.

 

I hope this post help someone and saves them the 7 days it took me to figure this out.

[Aggravated Salmon]

mhmm haha whenever i get a new system i immediately change the power option to high performance mode. (unless its a laptop)

[Jurrunio]

3 minutes ago, Spikkel said:

A GTX 1070 should reach at least 70 FPS in most games at 1440p with settings at Ultra

False. Ultra settings will need a 1080ti. A 1070 can only do this in high, possibly a mix of high and medium in most cases.

[Spikkel]

14 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

False. Ultra settings will need a 1080ti. A 1070 can only do this in high, possibly a mix of high and medium in most cases.

Actually no (maybe at 4K, but at 1440p it's really pulling it's weight). After fixing the problem my FPS never falls below 60, even when bumping up MSAA above the recommended levels.

 

Check out this review from 3D guru also getting around 70 fps in most games at ultra 1440p:

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/msi-geforce-gtx-1070-gaming-x-review,1.html

[Spikkel]

22 minutes ago, Aggravated Salmon said:

mhmm haha whenever i get a new system i immediately change the power option to high performance mode. (unless its a laptop)

Lessen learned! After this ordeal I would be very reluctant to even enable this on a laptop, unless you're really running low on battery. Lighroom was almost unusable slow, slower than the core 2 quad q8300 on the other system with an insufficient amount of ddr2 ram.

[Jurrunio]

15 minutes ago, Spikkel said:

Actually no (maybe at 4K, but at 1440p it's really pulling it's weight). After fixing the problem my FPS never falls below 60, even when bumping up MSAA above the recommended levels.

 

Check out this review from 3D guru also getting around 70 fps in most games at ultra 1440p:

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/msi-geforce-gtx-1070-gaming-x-review,1.html

3

Half of the game benchmark results are using very high settings, not ultra. Only Doom, Hitman 2016, Anno 2205, Fallout 4, GTA 5, Witcher 3 and Battlefield Hardline achieved that and they are either older games or just not punishing on the graphics card in the first place. Also, average frame rates doesnt really affect how I pick the settings, minimums do. If a game lets me run at 100fps average but 40fps at 1% minimum then I'd still use a lower graphical settings.

[Spikkel]

35 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Half of the game benchmark results are using very high settings, not ultra. Only Doom, Hitman 2016, Anno 2205, Fallout 4, GTA 5, Witcher 3 and Battlefield Hardline achieved that and they are either older games or just not punishing on the graphics card in the first place. Also, average frame rates doesnt really affect how I pick the settings, minimums do. If a game lets me run at 100fps average but 40fps at 1% minimum then I'd still use a lower graphical settings.

I stand corrected. [Will edit the post] Though minimum FPS never dips below 60 on ultra (with higher than preset MSAA) with GTA V, Totalwar: Warhammer, and Tomb Raider a survivor is born. But, as you already noted, this is slightly older games

The point of this thread though is to assist others with under-performing GPUs. Prior to this fix I got an average of 30 FPS with 17 lows. The fix more than doubled average FPS and bumped minimums up to 60 in my use case. 

 

May I kindly ask that you (and others reading this) contribute other possible fixes to under-performing GPUs not yet mentioned. So others my benefit from this.

[Jurrunio]

15 minutes ago, Spikkel said:

May I kindly ask that you (and others reading this) contribute other possible fixes to under-performing GPUs not yet mentioned. So others my benefit from this.

Stupid fan profile

 

Forget about the drivers (sometimes games still start, while in most cases, they dont)

 

Also reinstalling the card. Sometimes the card just isnt fully seated, which leads to the card only getting PCIe x4 or even less speed.