GPU Clocks Fluctuating

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Andrew130601

Commendable
Feb 13, 2017
22
0
1,510
Hi, I'm having some strange behavior with my GPU clocks. I have seen the other posts about this and I found that setting a game in Nvidia Control Panel to 'Prefer Maximum Performance' does fix this for the most part, I just wanted to post this to get a better understanding of what may have happened.

So since I built this PC in November last year I've been running games on the Optimal Power setting because changing to Max performance never changed anything. Clocks would stay at their usual values, 2012 Mhz when overclocked, but 3 days ago they just decided to fluctuate around massively between 203 Mhz and 1671 Mhz barely hitting the boost clock and fps would drop. The drops were like spikes that stayed for half a second, an example is in F1 2016 when handing back the setup tablet to your engineer in the garage there would be a big drop to around 30 fps. All this is with v-sync on limited to 60 fps, don't have a fancy g-sync monitor :(

I have sort of (fingers crossed) corrected it by changing the power setting but it does still every so often spike to 1% GPU usage then back up but this doesn't seem to affect fps. I just wanted to know if anyone can tell me why it might of suddenly changed like this?

Thank you in advance to everyone I really appreciate any help

Specs:

MB - Asus Z170 Pro Gaming
CPU - i7 6700k
CPU Cooler - Corsair H100i V2
GPU - Asus GTX 1080 STRIX A8G
RAM - 2x 8GB Corsair Vengence LPX 3000mhz
PSU - Corsair RM650i
 
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It may just be that you tweaked some settings over the course of owning your card that activated some obscure power saving option. If that's the case, I'd advise completely reinstalling your NVIDIA drivers. I did that when my 980ti kept refusing to go above 500Mhz or whatever the situation was and it fixed the problem.

If that doesn't fix anything, use KBOOST while gaming. It forces the GPU to operate at its highest designated clock speed. Some people will tell you KBOOST is unsafe, but it won't be for you, because your system has plenty of wattage headroom.

If the card somehow does lower its clock speed with KBOOST enabled, then there's either a power delivery or thermal issue. Before trying out what I'm about to explain, make...
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ErikMcLeod

Honorable
Aug 23, 2016
150
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10,760
It may just be that you tweaked some settings over the course of owning your card that activated some obscure power saving option. If that's the case, I'd advise completely reinstalling your NVIDIA drivers. I did that when my 980ti kept refusing to go above 500Mhz or whatever the situation was and it fixed the problem.

If that doesn't fix anything, use KBOOST while gaming. It forces the GPU to operate at its highest designated clock speed. Some people will tell you KBOOST is unsafe, but it won't be for you, because your system has plenty of wattage headroom.

If the card somehow does lower its clock speed with KBOOST enabled, then there's either a power delivery or thermal issue. Before trying out what I'm about to explain, make sure your GPU temps are staying below 90C, preferably in the 70C or lower range. If your temps meet this criterion, try my next suggestion out: make sure your power target is set to 100% AT LEAST - I'd recommend setting that slider/setting to 110% considering your PSU is perfectly capable of handling that card even with a hefty overclock. Sometimes cards will hiccup when power consumption gets too close to your designated limit. This should not be a bottleneck for you because like I said, your PSU is more than capable of powering your system even with hefty overclocks.

Beyond that, just make sure absolutely all power saving options in Windows and NVIDIA are disabled. I'm not sure what OS you're on, but I know Windows 10 updates have had tendencies to reset power saving options for some users. I wouldn't know if a recent update caused this because I'm on Windows 7, but if you're on Win10 that might be worth checking out.

These are the steps I'd take for troubleshooting and fixing this issue. Try them out and let me know what happens. None of these options run any risk of bricking your system, so don't worry about harming your system.
 
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Solution
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Andrew130601

Commendable
Feb 13, 2017
22
0
1,510


Hi Erik, sorry for slow reply. The Issue seems to have been resolved by setting games to 'Prefer Maximum Performance' but I'm really interested in what you said. Yes i am running windows 10 and I wondered that too, if updates could of done it. As for GPU temps I am very safe, the Strix cards have very good air coolers. I have a fan preset that keeps the card as cool as 50 °C because I don't care about noise i just want it as cool as possible. Since I posted this my card has magically been able to play games at 2025 Mhz constant which is higher than before and used to cause driver crashes when it hit that clock. Thank you for all your help :)
 
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