Very high idle clocks on GTX 1080TI with multiple displays

You are the third person that I read the past few days with the same problem and every time the higher clocks were when third monitor was connected. I guess it's normal?

I am having the exact same issue with My 1080 ti AORUS and 3 monitors. No matter what connectors I'm using it will up the clock speeds to near gaming clock speeds when plugging 3 monitors in which does impact my idle temps pretty greatly. For now using 3rd monitor on internal graphics instead

The question mark in the end was by mistake. I meant to write: I guess it's normal.
I heard even more people with this exact issue so it's possible to be a general bug or how it's supposed to be with 10 series

I have found some forums of people reporting these issues all the way back to 600 series cards. I think this is either a bug NVIDIA has never fixed or some type of engineering limitation. Any other input or fixes people have fiddled with?

I will try this and I might just resort to running the side monitors on my motherboard because of the fact I don't do surround gaming I use the others for productivity when I'm streaming.

Same problem here.

My Specs:
i7 2600K
Strix Gtx 1080TI OC
32GB DDR3
Samsung 23" @60Hz
Samsung 19" @60Hz
Samsung 19" @60Hz

yes this does work !!!! i have z270 gamin 5
7700k
msi founders 1080ti

acer 27" 144hz 1ms via display port
23" samsung 60 hz dual monitor set up

1080ti always 1400mhz around 45c

now im 139 mhz
405 mhz ram

you the man i idnt even know about that setting inside of inspector and i been using it for 4 years lol go figure

pats on back my friend ")

yes i can confirm this works on 1080ti founders edition
windows 10 x64

acer 27" 144hz 1 ms via display port
24"samsung 60 hz 2nd monitor via display port

my probleme was if u have 144hz on one monitor and another monitor to 60 hz it would up clock th gpu no matter what !!! 1400mhz 47 c temps

there was a salution i read that if u select your 144hz monitor and use 120 hz settin via nv panel it fixes the problme but thats a bad fix this fix does the trick perfectly !!!!

thank you very much man i stumbled on this affter 3 years of looking and didnt even know that nv inspector had that setting and i habe been using it for years lol !!

You, my man, deserve a big thanks, so THANKS YOU!!

Thanks, but this is not quite a solution - more a sub-optimal workaround.

The Nvidia multi display power saver option just acts a binary threshold switch, which is useful when in idle, but under load it makes no difference to the card, which will continue to constantly clock at 1442 Mhz (or whatever your card is fixed at) irrespective of how much load the game is putting your system under. In other words, even if you play Minecraft (which requires little gpu horsepower) your card will still be churning out max clock speeds and giving off excess noise/heat as a result. Personally, I'm not happy with this, I would rather my card behaves optimally (as it is designed to).

I raised the issue with Nvidia tech support and they said the card should not be behaving this way, although they had no solution for it.

EDIT:
Hi guys

FYI I heard back from the Nvidia level 2 team and they gave this response below (I haven't tried their suggestion yet. Will try it tonight and update):

Hi,

This is by design for 3 displays at a high refresh rate, it takes more GPU power for the pixel clock speeds required to drive 3 monitors.

If you drop down the refresh rate below 144hz while not gaming it should also fix this issue.

Josh
NVCC

Well, thanks again.

If it helps for the solution and Nvidia wants to replicate the problem, my specs are:

Cpu TR 1950x
MB Asrock Taichi x399, bios 2.0
64 gb (8x8) G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series DDR4 3200 Model F4-3200C16Q-32GTZR
2x EVGA SC Black Edition 1080 ti, no oc, drivers 390.77
Nvidia HB bridge
Three monitors, all connected to GPU 1
Center: Acer Predator XB271HU Abmiprz 27-inch WQHD (2560x1440) connected via displayport
Left and right: Acer GN246HL Black 24" Gaming Monitors, 144 Hz (1920x1080) one connected via DVI and the other via Displayport but with StarTech.com Active Adapter Converter (to obtain 144 hz)
Windows 10 up to date.

Best man

I heard back from the Nvidia level 2 team. This was their response (I haven't tried their suggestion yet. Will try it later and update):

Hi,

This is by design for 3 displays at a high refresh rate, it takes more GPU power for the pixel clock speeds required to drive 3 monitors.

If you drop down the refresh rate below 144hz while not gaming it should also fix this issue.

Josh
NVCC

Thanks for the time you are taking with this.

I find Nvidia answers not correct, if I drop down the clocks of the card using your fix the three monitors work as well as with the high clocks, and second, I have tried lowering the monitors hertz, down to 60hz, and the second gpu's clocks do not lower themselves.

Maybe they can take care of this in a future driver update.

Once again, thanks for your support.

Hello,

I know this is an old thread but like many others I have recently come across this issue with my FTW3 EVGA 1080ti. (to be clear this issue seems to affect multiple generations of GTX card...I've seen as far back as the 600 series.) Actually, I've been dealing with it for almost a year now. I've always had a multi-monitor setup ever since I got this card. From the first day I put the tower together, I had idle temperatures around 54 degrees celcius and boosted clock speeds to the maximum. initally I had a 2 monitor setup, but eventually moved to a 3 monitor setup. it's important to note here that my 2 monitor setup also suffered from the locked in raging clock speeds.

After about a year I got tired of seeing such high numbers, after talking to some other owners of 1080tis who's idle temps were far nicer than my own, so i started digging. I came across this thread and gave nvidia Inspector a shot. Unfortunately for me, while it did lower my idle temps, it also came with drastic fluctuations in GPU usage associate with simple mouse and keyboard cursor movement that I couldn't understand, and didn't want to deal with...wasn't really sure if it was affecting performance or anything but it just didn't seem like you'd want going on.

So that's when i got into it with a nVidia tech support rep. Of course we can all come to the conclusion that the rep didn't really provide any real solutions and eventually just blamed the issue on some third party and gave up. I did however through all the troubleshooting I did for the tech narrow down the possible reasons why this driver error, as I believe it is, occurs.

Something I noticed, the clock speeds would only lock up at maximum if I have an HDMI + Display port cable connected to a display via the 1080ti outputs. With that combination of outputs, the 1080ti locks at maximum clock speeds no matter the resolution or refresh rate of either monitor, as far as I can tell. I was able to ad a second display, connected directly to the 1080ti using a DVI cable, and still the proper down clocking for the GPU would be in effect, temps remained very low at idle.

So in my case at least HDMI + Display Port was causing the issue...my best guess is that something is wrong with he driver and it prevents the card from down clocking for some reason. DVI+ Display Port as well as HDMI + DVI work fine for me, and do not lock up the clock speeds. It doesn't seem to matter how many monitors you have, i think it's just a coincidence that most people moving up to 3 monitors will inevitably be using a combination of HDMI and Display Port cables. 1. Because you can't connect more than 1 of anything but Display port cables. and 2. because HDMI carries uncompressed 11.2 audio...no other cable format can do that which is a huge reason why I use HDMI in my setup.

My solution was to move my Display Port, and DVI connections (even though I didn't have to move the DVI) to the onboard graphics. I don't game on the secondary monitors and the onboard GPU still renders 4k 60Hz so it works out fine for me, who has the onboard options.

I know didn't provide much of a solution , and hopefully most people are fine with nvidia Inspector. For the few in my shoes who had problems with nvidia Inspector, or simply do not want any avoidable third party software, simply making sure you do not have an HDMI and Display port display connected directly to your GTX graphics card you should be able to achieve down clocking just fine. Moving either HDMI, or Display port to the onboard graphics unit should solve your problem.

Bit of a late reply, but i had this same issue.
If i unplugged 1 of my 3 monitors it would clock down fine, tried the nvidia inspector solution and that had a delay switching p states.
The issue ended up being when i tried it Nvidia Surround it changed the refresh rate of 2 of my monitors to 59hz from 60hz.
I changed all 3 back to 60hz and it instanly changed p states like it should.
hope this helps.