GTX 670 Low Power Percentage, Usage and FPS.

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Frappa

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May 29, 2013
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Hi guys this is my first post :)

I'll start with specs.

Intel Core i5-3550
8 GB Corsair Vengence
EVGA GTX 670 2GB
Gigabyte Z77-D3h Motherboard
Corsair 850W Bronze Power Supply

I play games like BF3, Crysis 3 and other MMO's and the odd thing is, when I get high fps by going into a more secluded area (maybe more than 70 fps) I get decent usages and power. However when I get like 20-40 FPS (Especially in some games) My power and usage is at like 20-50%.

When I get low FPS too, my clock seems to drop as well.

I don't think anything is really throttling the GPU. I know the CPU can't be overclocked but I still wouldn't think 3.9Ghz with turbo would downclock it that hard.

I've reinstalled drivers, have latest firmware for the 670, have the F18 latest update for MOBO. I looked at GPU-Z and it's PCI 3 at 16x and the render test actually pushed it to 99% and max clock.


I'm so stumped guy and i'm kinda sad at the moment :(

Could you guys shed some light?
 
Solution
ingtar33


haha! old school solution bro. I stumbled across that bit of wisdom 20 years ago, i was in high school, trying to game in the summer on an 486 i had built and was overclocking a bit (66mhz 486 overclocked up to 86mhz! i was the boss!)... and had to pop the side of the case off and stick a fan in the opening to keep the system...
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ingtar33

ingtar33

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Dec 17, 2012
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well the turbo on your cpu is variable based on number of threads utilized. the more threads utilized the more the mb will downclock your cpu.

furthermore, if your cpu is at 20-50% utilization when you're having the downclocking that's because the power saving features are kicking in. basically your gpu is bottle-necking, and then your mb is down-clocking your CPU because of light load (because the GPU is bottlenecking) which then makes your cpu the bottleneck which drags fps lower.

Turn off all power saving features... turn off all windows 7 power management features, then your cpu won't downclock when it's under a light load.
 
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T

Traciatim

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Nov 11, 2006
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So, you are saying that in areas where your CPU doesn't have a lot to do because there is nothing in the scene you get high frame rates, but when your CPU has lots of scene work to do because of more detail in the area your FPS slows and your GPU usage drops because it's waiting around on frame data from your CPU. It's hard to tell what exactly you were measuring, I'm assuming GPU usage.

Seems like normal operation to me.
 
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Frappa

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May 29, 2013
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I have windows 7 on High performance and there were settings in the BIOS for power management but I couldn't understand them. Could you please interpret these and help me

I have
-CPU Clock
-Turbo Boost Technology
-Turbo Ratio
-Turbo Power Limit
-Core Current Limit
-CPU Core Enabled
-CPU Enhanced Halt
-C3/C6 State Support
-CPU Thermal Monitor
and CPU EIST Functions


Most of these are set to AUTO and the only features I have in the power management part of the bios is erp and some high precision event timer.
 
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Frappa

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May 29, 2013
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I decided to play a game of SINGLE player borderlands 2 for the fun just to look as well and it was pretty bad...

here is a link to the monitoring capture for like 10 mins of play.

the avg framerate was like 37... power was 79 and usage was 52.

http://imageshack.us/f/443/capturepd.png/

Is this normal? (Temps are fine also)
 
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ingtar33

ingtar33

Glorious
Dec 17, 2012
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oi... sorry i misunderstood your post. i thought you were talking about the cpu.

Your gpu is definitely throttling back... either because your cpu is bottle-necking or because your gpu is overheating. Its one or the other.

I can't comment on which because you don't have a temp graph to go with the power/gpu usage graph.

But yes... if you have an FPS drop while gaming in a high activity area, and your gpu voltages and frequency drop at the same time, either your overheating the gpu or your cpu is bottlenecking because of all the stuff it has to process and can't feed the gpu enough objects to color.

What you need to do is to monitor your cpu usage in conjunction to your gpu usage and fps. if your cpu usage is at 100% while the gpu drops off and down-clocks, then your cpu is the bottleneck. if the cpu usage is normal and the gpu suddenly down-clocks causing an fps drop, then your gpu is overheating.
 
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Frappa

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May 29, 2013
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I ran RealTemp and during the game the CPU load stayed pretty hard at 65.7% but it would jump to max of 75% and min of 43%. The max temp for each core was 60, 60, 58, 52 degrees C. The GPU's temperature stayed at 57*C. I'm pretty sure this is WELL within the normal operating temperatures of the hardware.
 
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ingtar33

ingtar33

Glorious
Dec 17, 2012
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Assume nothing. You have something going on that shouldn't be going on so something isn't functioning properly.

When you start from that point anything no matter how remote is possible, and dismissing possibilities as "unlikely" may cause you a lot of trouble down the road if you dismiss what was in the end the problem.

In this case it's not unheard of for the on-board temp monitors to be un-calibrated, faulty, malfunctioning, or damaged. In some cases the temp data isn't even created from an actual thermometer, rather its formulated by an algorithm that is reported as an estimated temp based on certain criteria none of which include an actual thermometer (*cough*AMD*cough*)

So, yeah... until we know for certain your temps are reading right, don't assume the reported temps are at all accurate.

Simple and nonsensical way to solve the temp question would be to pop the side of your case off, stick a room fan into the openning, and see if the problem goes away. if it does, then it's temp throttling. if it doesn't then that wasn't the problem in the first place and we can move on.

BTW: your cpu is reading 75% load? what about individual cores? Games rarely utilize multiple cores efficiently, so it's not unlikely for the game to be topping out like 2 cores and not sending any spillover to a 3rd or 4th... so if your total cpu us is in the 60%-75% range we could be talking about a game that can only utilize 2-3 threads

Furthermore... if the game is spilling into 3 or 4 threads for gaming your cpu will automatically throttle back the turbo a bit, which will further reduce your FPS
 
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Frappa

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May 29, 2013
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I will be damned.....I took the side of the case off... stuck a fan on the side and on top...

Played the same game and had nearly 99% usage the whole time. The lowest frames I saw was 110. I am home for the summer and my room is really hot. I didn't think it was hot enough to cause something like that.

Thanks ingtar, I appreciate it. This will suffice until I move into my apartment. That's crazy...
 
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ingtar33

ingtar33

Glorious
Dec 17, 2012
9,017
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haha! old school solution bro. I stumbled across that bit of wisdom 20 years ago, i was in high school, trying to game in the summer on an 486 i had built and was overclocking a bit (66mhz 486 overclocked up to 86mhz! i was the boss!)... and had to pop the side of the case off and stick a fan in the opening to keep the system running at all. I think i was playing betrayal at krondor... fun game.

Ever since it's been the go to solution for any suspected case of overheating; i even use it to test the airflow in my case and get a rough calibration for the mb temp readings... as i know doing that will drop the air temp in the case down to within 5C of the room temp, no matter how hot the parts. So if i see more then a 5C drop in temps when i do it, i know I've got iffy air circulation in the case, i also know how accurate the mb/hd temp measurements are.
 
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Solution
ingtar33

ingtar33

Glorious
Dec 17, 2012
9,017
198
45,840


i wouldn't... you probably could, but I've never really investigated... i'm sure its one of the things i turn off instinctively when i'm overclocking. likely part of quiet&cool in amd cpu bios. It might be part of the intel turbo or power management features... someone else might be able to answer that.
 
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