Borderlands 2 Low FPS with GTX 980?

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adampcpower

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I just got borderlands 2 and tried it out and noticed that i cannot get stable 60FPS on close to high settings which seems weird for my rig. I have a GTX 980 that i havent overclocked and a 4690K not overclocked. Im running on a 2560x1440 and even with some settings on medium in some fights scenes and seemingly out of nowhere i drop to around 40fps. Im looking at MSI Afterburner and it says the GPU usage is staying around 70 percent. whats the problem?
 
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Vynavill

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If the CPU is also constantly at 90~100% load, it might be a bottleneck (although it shouldn't be the case, it's worth checking anyway).

Also, although the game is relatively old and the 980 shouldn't have any problems running them, have you tried lowering physx to normal or low?
 
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adampcpower

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Good idea, I'll check that out when I can and get back. I sure would hope this gpu would be able to max out this several year old game though.. On geforce experience it tells the optimized setting have everything maxed out.
 
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Vynavill

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Yeah, the game can be maxed out relatively easy.
However, I get the feeling it wasn't planned for resolutions above 1080p, and that the system is thus struggling a bit to scale textures correctly. It's just a hunch, honestly, but worth checking IMO.

Physx, on the other hand, are so abused in that game that they actually bog it down. With my AMD GPU and my i5 I obviously can't max them out, but I can keep them on nornal. The amount of clutter generated is just ludicrous....
 
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Vynavill

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Unfortunately, no, but setting them to low is essentially the same thing as disabling them. Only base physics are covered at that level (like ragdolls, jumps and explosions) and no extra clutter is generated.

Used to run the game almost maxed out on a downclocked i5 2500 (TurboBoost disabled, down from 3.3 to 3.0 ghz) and a 1gb HD 6870, so I can pretty much confirm that.

[strike]Since we're still on topic, what are your specs, just in case? If you're having stutters with a decent hardware, the issue might be somewhere else.[/strike]
My fault for not noticing the signature. [strike]Weird tho, the 660 should handle the game well enough. What resolution are you playing at?[/strike]
Aaand I even fail at reading. Never had a multi-gpu system, so I don't know for sure. Is there any way for you to run the game in a single-gpu mode?
 
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adampcpower

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Ok so this is a screenshot of my GPU and cpu performance during a big fight in BL2 with fps droping to around 40. http://i.imgur.com/s4glpKk.png

I dont know why im dropping FPS whhen neither are maxing out. I have setting all to ultra at 1440x2560p except Anisotropic filtering is at x2 only. Also my FOV is at 100 and i have a second 1080p monitor hooked up via HDMI that has these applications on them to monitor
 
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Vynavill

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The game normally uses its own technologies for anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering and other things like that. The GPU's control panel can, however, override those settings with the driver's proprietary technologies.

Depending on the game's optimization, you can get a better or a worse performance.
 
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adampcpower

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Hmm, when changing everything to lowest settings it has same FPS drops at same spots. Is this the games problems or my CPU/GPU/ system in general. This is like the third game ive played on this system so i dont really have a reference point if this is abnormal or not
 
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Vynavill

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I'm assuming you already did this, but are drivers, as well as .NET frameworks, VC++ redistributables and DX libraries, all up to date?

GPU usage is fine, as nothing will fully load one except benchmarking applications (which are specifically made to push it to its limit).
It looks like it averages around 70%, as you said, and CPU is ok too.

EDIT: looking at the image more carefully, temps are constantly on the rise (that usage drop on the graph doesn't correspond to a significant decrease in temperature either); plus, fan speed is set to auto and detects it has to be set to 1%...
Temperature shouldn't be high enough to cause it, but are you sure you're not just experiencing thermal throttling?
Try setting up a user fan profile, starting from 20% at idle temp and up to 80%
 
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adampcpower

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I'm sure the drivers are up to date but how do I check the other stuff. Also the temp was rising because I just started the game and ran to a fight to take the screenshot. When i am in a game for a while the temp even out quickly after about 5 mins
 
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adampcpower

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Ok so I have tried alot of things out and have come to a strange conclusion. I stopped trying on Borderlands 2 because i was getting sick of the insane FPS drops and it was making the game basically unplayable whenever i had to fight more than 4 dudes at once. I was itching for borderlands though so i got the Pre-Sequel because i saw on some review benchmarking site that the gtx 980 and 970 were geting >100 FPS playing it. So i get through a couple hours, solid 60 fps, but i am now in the first expansive/open part of the game and now encounters with groups of enemies cause frame dips - and also frame dips for no real reason in the open area. The dips are way less frequent and severe than in BL2 but notable enough to be frustrating. So i tried my other games in my steam library. Payday 2 and Payday (because they were free this weekend) both ran at the 60 frame cap but both had dips to the same amount very frequently. Like clockwork it would dip to 50 FPS without reason for a few seconds every 2 mins or something. I tried dota 2 and would frame dips in big team fights sometimes when ive never had framedips at same settings with worse GPUs.

SO THEN i tried a boatload of benchmarks, Unigine Valley, Unigine Heaven, 3D Mark 11, 3D Mark 2013, and when comparing my results to other gtx 980s they seem more or less on point.
So i have conluded that this is either a faulty card (?) or just bad drivers? I think i am going to do a clean restore of windows 8.1 and start from scratch. I had a r9 280x previously in the system before i got the 980 and while i thought i followed the necessary steps to totally wipe the old drivers i heard that if not done properly it could slow down your card and do this (I hope).

Looking online i dont see others with this issue if it even is an issue. I just feel like this $550 is not performing as it should with me not being able to find a single game i play that can hold a stable FPS while my old 280x seemed to be able to way more.
 
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adampcpower

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I guess im going to have too. I did a clean restore of windows 8.1, only donwloadded essential drivers for MB, and GPU and stuff, and steam with a few games. Same problems. Im pretty sure this rules out everything except the GPU as i played a bunch of games without problems with a different GPU and as soon as i swap it to this one im getting problems...
 
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adampcpower

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hmm very interesting! Ill be sure to try when i get back today. The thing is, when i run benchmarks like Futuremark 3d and Uneigen Heaven/Valley i am getting good scores that compare to other owners of GTX 980s. I dont know how my in-game performance blows but benchmarks are good... and my rig worked fine with it had a 280x installed so my cpu isint messed up and i just clean wiped windows 8.1
 
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domjam

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i know this thread is way old..but im gettin this exact same problem with borderlands prequal..and im runnign sli 980 tis...witch is ridicules to even get a fps drop and this only happens with physix ..but i got anvida for this resson..not to mention that g force exerpince optomises me for high physx..yet i get frame drops all over the shop at that open area ..espeshaly with the acid..chaning resolution dose not change it either..i am lost with this...been loooking for answers to why this is happning over 2 monthes.and iv found no fix...only things that made it a little better.. one setting power mangment to maximum performance.. and 2 running steam as admin..but despite this still fps drops.wtf. :(
 
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Vynavill

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Run the game in single-GPU mode; let one GPU run normally and set the other as the Physx-dedicated card.
That, or run Physx at medium settings rather than high.

I'm not that knowledgeable about Nvidia, but as of now and from what I know, Physx is too cumbersome to be handled alongside common graphic rendering, no matter the brand.
Also, pre-sequel pretty much uses the same engine as BL2, which was fairly optimized on everything, but stayed bad in Physx.

Last, but not least, the GeForce experience brings more issues than advantages, from what I've seen on my laptop and from the general opinion I read around. Just delete/ignore it.
 
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domjam

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iv allready tryd that and it dosent help. it makes things run alot worse :S this should not be happning with a 980ti sli setup...my friend has identical system to me only diffrance being 970 sli and he runs the game maxed out with physix on ultra at 1080p....this is not so for me..i get mad slowdown on every resolution when anything envolving physix happens ...this is the worst when the acid physix happesn.. il have silky smooth 60fps at 4k .but soon as that physix starts my fps will go as low as 25fps ...im stompt as to why this is happning...im worrid a component in my pc is the cause.. but i dunno i really dunno.. i used core temp last night to see what sort of temp my cpu is and all corse were ranging from 63-65 at max. i dunno if thats normal or not. its overclocked to 4.5 ghz..but i dont get any issues like this with a game like bioshock infinite at 4k maxed out. so im clueles.
 
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KudaraNami

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During heavy combat physx on high setting is still too demanding, even for current new CPUs, it rely a lot on single threading power. Yes, hardware physx runs on the GPU, but it still needs the CPU to feed it when/where etc.

The most common solution people reply with is "just play with physx on low or disable, it just sucks like that". I wanted the eye candy and pew pew. Went reading up on a lot of performance tweaks. Most addressing only the GPU not being powerful enough. But, for me that was not the issue, my gpu had more than enough power. Tthe CPU was bottleneck when physx was on high; wasn't so apparent.

Best work around is to reduce the allowed particle count . Default is set to unlimited which can go crazy on heavy fights with multiple players. My system, 3570K @ 4.4ghz, gtx980ti, max setting, physx high. With the tweak I am now able to maintain mostly 60fps even in heavy combat fire fights.

Read here if you want to tweak it too.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Borderlands/comments/3xmzs2/hardware_for_60fps_with_physx_on_high/cy85c8b
 
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