Lower than normal fps in games with a gtx 1080

DarylDixon · Feb 21, 2018

Hi,

I recently upgraded my pc from a medium-ish rig to a much better one. I checked out some benchmarks and read that I should be averaging ~134 (source) fps in Fallout 4, but I'm only averaging 30 right now, on the same settings, both with and without mods. I even tried turning down settings that are known for being performance-tanking like godrays and shadow view distance, which only gave me a 10fps max increase.

Same deal with Watch Dogs 2: According to a benchmark, I should be averaging 76 fps, but am only receiving 20-35 most of the time, sometimes while driving even going as low as 17 fps... This is both with and without the high res texture pack. Turning off performance-tanking settings doesn't do anything in this game either.

Other games are completely fine however, I average 144 fps in Overwatch for example. I know that some games are just badly optimized, but a gtx 1080 should be able to easily run at least a modless Fallout 4 at at least 60 fps, right? 30 fps average is just ridiculous...

If anyone knows how I could go about fixing this I would very much appreciate the help. I'm not that tech savvy, someone else actually put the parts in my pc, I just chose them.. I don't really know much about overclocking or anything either, so I don't usually touch that. I already tried a clean reinstall of my graphics drivers and that didn't work.

Specs:
Asus Prime B350-plus motherboard
AMD Ryzen 5 1600 six-core processor
2x 8GB DDR4 ram
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 Windforce OC 8GB
256GB SSD, 1TB HDD
Corsair RM850x PSU
BENQ XL2411 144hz monitor
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit installed on SSD

Edit: Dragon Age Inquisition does it too, I should be getting at least around 100 fps on ultra settings but am only averaging 40... which is only slightly over what I got with my old 750ti...

Edit2: So far I tried:

Virus scans
Settings/BIOS checks
Turning on XMP
Moving GPU to another PCIe16 slot
Reinstalling graphics drivers
Reinstalling chipset drivers
Updated BIOS
Changed RAM slots from 2-4 to 1-3
A clean reinstall of Windows 10

And nothing worked...

Edit 02/03/18: I installed a much better PSU like suggested, but obviously there is no change. However, I just monitored my Fallout 4 gameplay using Afterburner and the GPU temperature is between 40-50C, GPU usage never goes above 25% even though I'm in the most graphic intensive part of the world, CPU usage averages 35%, and my FPS is around 20.... I don't even have all my settings on max. I don't know what to do anymore, I'm really frustrated right now cause I feel like I dropped over $1k on new hardware for nothing...

robert.sandru · Feb 21, 2018

A GTX1080 running 1080p games should have no problems reaching higher frame rates - ~30fps is abnormal for sure.

In no particular order:
- Turn off V-sync
- Make sure no special settings are applied to the games in the nvidia driver control panel that override the standard settings (e.g. forced antialiasing settings, forced anisotropic filtering, etc... leave all of them at the default)
- Make sure you're not running other stuff in the background (how loaded is your CPU during the game execution? with a 6 core+ HT CPU you will rarely see more than 50% use on most games as they're unable to use all threads)
- Check that your windows power plan is on maximum performance (not balanced or power saving)
- Check that you're not applying some badly configured OC / power limit profile on your GPU (e.g. using the Gigabyte GPU overclocking utility)
- Reset your BIOS settings to defaults so that you can ensure the CPU / RAM is configured with the defaults (note this is far from ideal and you want to fine tune those but starting with the defaults isn't a bad idea)

Hopefully some of those suggestions help you out...

SkyNetRising · Feb 21, 2018

You should monitor your system performance during gaming.
Use MSI Afterburner - hardware monitoring window.
Significant graphs: fps, cpu usage/temp, gpu usage/temp, gpu memory usage, ram usage, pagefile usage.
Run your game, make screenshots of graphs mentioned and post screenshots.

Hardware monitoring window looks like this:

DarylDixon · Feb 21, 2018

SkyNetRising :

I hope this works. Game I played while monitoring is Watch Dogs 2.

DarylDixon · Feb 21, 2018

robert.sandru :

I have tried multple v-sync on/off combinations both via in-game and via the nvidia control panel, I don't see any changes

- Make sure no special settings are applied to the games in the nvidia driver control panel that override the standard settings (e.g. forced antialiasing settings, forced anisotropic filtering, etc... leave all of them at the default)

Everything is set to "Use global settings", which are these.

- Make sure you're not running other stuff in the background (how loaded is your CPU during the game execution? with a 6 core+ HT CPU you will rarely see more than 50% use on most games as they're unable to use all threads)

I'm barely running anything in the background (just Steam, chrome, mouse/keyboard config programs, lightshot etc.) and my CPU averages 25-30% while playing Watch Dogs 2 (according to task manager... the screenshot I posted in my previous comment says ~65%?)

- Check that your windows power plan is on maximum performance (not balanced or power saving)

It is

- Check that you're not applying some badly configured OC / power limit profile on your GPU (e.g. using the Gigabyte GPU overclocking utility)

I don't think so.. I have "Aorus Graphics Engine" running in the background (I never touch it) and it's always on Gaming mode rather than OC mode (pic)

- Reset your BIOS settings to defaults so that you can ensure the CPU / RAM is configured with the defaults (note this is far from ideal and you want to fine tune those but starting with the defaults isn't a bad idea)

I'm kinda wary of touching BIOS stuff myself.. If I can't fix it any other way I'll ask my pc builder for help with that

Thank you for your help!

SkyNetRising · Feb 21, 2018

DarylDixon :

Yes, this looks interesting.
So - initially game runs normally at 144fps, gpu usage ~30%.
After short time gpu usage drops, fps drops, gpu memory usage increases to 4GB.
Then GPU usage increases to 70%, but fps never recovers.

I don't know...
could it be some cryptomining malware, that launches with the game?

DarylDixon · Feb 21, 2018

SkyNetRising :

I'm pretty sure the part where it reaches 144fps is when it's either in the menu or the load screen. The game itself starts off at an already low fps the second I load in. I doubt it's a cryptomining program but I'll run some antivirus scans since I've had trouble with that kinda software on my old PC as well

Edit: Scanned with HitmanPro and all it could find was a lot of tracking cookies

robert.sandru · Feb 21, 2018

DarylDixon :

Hey, it seems from the graph that your computer is using the page file so it looks like you're swapping memory to disk - this is going to kill your performance big time.

Can you try to find out what app/process is using so much memory on your machine? You start with 6GB of pagefile used and increase to 13GB once the game loads. However your RAM usage is pegged at 8GB! (and you have 16...)

Try the following to see if it helps: turn your paging off entirely then reboot your computer and post the same chart as you did with RAM and Pagefile curves. (it's usually not recommended to have no page file but for debugging it's ok)

Either this fixes the issue, or some application will throw an "out of memory" error which will help you diagnose.

As long as you haven't exhausted your physical memory, pagefile usage should be extremely low.

EDIT: some instructions to help: https://tunecomp.net/win10-page-file-disable/

SkyNetRising · Feb 21, 2018

Do not disable pagefile. Ever! It is necessary for normal operation of virtual memory subsystem.
You' ll get various memory errors and random issues with all kinds of software.

What you can do, is set it to small initial value (500MB for example) with ability to grow to larger size, if necessary (8GB for example).

Anyway - what MSI afterburner reports as pagefile usage, in fact is committed memory value from task manager. It doesn't actually mean pagefile being used. Only when value gets larger than physical amount of ram, this would mean pagefile being used.

robert.sandru · Feb 21, 2018

SkyNetRising :

It is not required. My computer works perfectly with no pagefile at all - but that's off topic.

I don't have MSI afterburner installed so can't guarantee what OS counter the chart is based on but given the stupidly low framerate, trying without pagefile won't hurt.

DarylDixon · Feb 21, 2018

SkyNetRising :

I set the pagefile to 512mb min and 8192mb max like you advised, restarted my pc and there's still no change in performance

kiemoneiro · Feb 21, 2018

DarylDixon :

Hi,

I recently upgraded my pc from a medium-ish rig to a much better one. I checked out some benchmarks and read that I should be averaging ~134 (source) fps in Fallout 4, but I'm only averaging 30 right now, on the same settings, both with and without mods. I even tried turning down settings that are known for being performance-tanking like godrays and shadow view distance, which only gave me a 10fps max increase.

Same deal with Watch Dogs 2: According to a benchmark, I should be averaging 76 fps, but am only receiving 20-35 most of the time, sometimes while driving even going as low as 17 fps... This is both with and without the high res texture pack. Turning off performance-tanking settings doesn't do anything in this game either.

Other games are completely fine however, I average 144 fps in Overwatch for example. I know that some games are just badly optimized, but a gtx 1080 should be able to easily run at least a modless Fallout 4 at at least 60 fps, right? 30 fps average is just ridiculous...

If anyone knows how I could go about fixing this I would very much appreciate the help. I'm not that tech savvy, someone else actually put the parts in my pc, I just chose them.. I don't really know much about overclocking or anything either, so I don't usually touch that. I already tried a clean reinstall of my graphics drivers and that didn't work.

Specs:
Asus Prime B350-plus motherboard
AMD Ryzen 5 1600 six-core processor
2x 8GB DDR4 ram
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 Windforce OC 8GB
256GB SSD, 1TB HDD
Some 600-650W PSU, I forgot which
BENQ XL2411 144hz monitor
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit installed on SSD

I know it might sound stupid but is your card set in PCI ex.16 slot not PCI ex.8 ?

SkyNetRising · Feb 21, 2018

DarylDixon :

Can you verify in Task Manager and Resource Monitor, that all 16GB of ram is available?

Lowered performance because of excessive use of pagefile would be possible only, if 8GB or less physical ram was available.

DarylDixon · Feb 21, 2018

kiemoneiro :

There's only PCIe-16 slots on my mobo (and 2 PCI slots but my gpu doesn't fit on that as far as I know)

DarylDixon · Feb 21, 2018

SkyNetRising :

I'm not exactly sure how to read this so I took a screenshot

SkyNetRising · Feb 21, 2018

DarylDixon :

It's all good. All of 16GB ram is usable.

DarylDixon · Feb 21, 2018

I read on another thread that the issue might be with my PCIe-16 slot and that people have successfully fixed this issue by simply switching slots, so I called the guy who built my pc to come over tomorrow to switch slots and see if it helps (I don't know how to do it myself and I don't want to accidentally hurt my hardware). If that doesn't help we'll mess with the BIOS for a bit but other than that I have no clue what else to do

DarylDixon · Feb 22, 2018

We switched PCIe-16 slots and nothing changed. We didn't really have time to mess with the BIOS cause my pc's builder had to go to his job, but we didn't really know what to change either... I know nothing of BIOS settings so idk. I just took some screenshots of random settings while he was working on it, maybe you guys can spot something wrong? Or can tell me what I need to check out? I do know how to navigate the BIOS, I just don't know what settings they're supposed to be on

SkyNetRising · Feb 22, 2018

BIOS screens look good.

BTW - what was your system before upgrades? Did you change motherboard by any chance?
Did you reinstall OS after upgrading?

DarylDixon · Feb 22, 2018

SkyNetRising :

Before this I had:
GeForce GTX 750Ti 2GB
AMD Athlon X4 750K Quad Core Processor, 8GB RAM
Same PSU (Sharkoon, 600 or 650W, I forgot the model)
Gigabyte GA-F2A55M-HD2 motherboard

So yes I did change the motherboard, but no I didn't reinstall my OS, I just put my SSD back in and reactivated the license

SkyNetRising · Feb 22, 2018

DarylDixon :

That's most likely the issue here. After motherboard upgrade it is usually recommended to reinstall windows.
Incompatible drivers from old system may be causing performance degradation.

You can try re-installing motherboard chipset drivers first, then gpu drivers.
If that doesn't help, then OS re-installation would be in order.

DarylDixon · Feb 22, 2018

SkyNetRising :

We already reinstalled the chipset and gpu drivers so I'll try a clean win10 reinstall now, I'll let you know how it goes

DarylDixon · Feb 22, 2018

SkyNetRising :

Reinstall did nothing, sadly..

robert.sandru · Feb 23, 2018

DarylDixon :

Running a bit out of ideas....

Can you test your GPU in a different computer?
Was the GPU cooler ever disassembled? (If yes, maybe it's not making good contact with the GPU and it throttles...)
Same above applies to CPU... is it throttling under load?

DSzymborski · Feb 23, 2018

Considering the number of things you've already likely ruled out, I'd at least try and swap out to a better PSU, even though these aren't the typical symptoms for a PSU problem, if only to eliminate that definitively. I only ask since that's a shockingly low quality PSU to be running with a GPU that goes for a minimum of $800 at the moment.

Lower than normal fps in games with a gtx 1080

Commendable

Prominent

Titan

Commendable

Commendable

Titan

Commendable

Prominent

Titan

Prominent

Commendable

Great

Titan

Commendable

Commendable

Titan

Commendable

Commendable

Titan

Commendable

Titan

Commendable

Commendable

Prominent

Curmudgeon Pursuivant

Share this page