I need your help guys to confirm a fault with my gpu please

Hey guys,

So I upgraded to a gtx 770 and the fps performance seems to correlate proportionately with that of reviews but I noticed the day after something odd. I noticed a change in visual smoothness/fluidity after minimising and then maximising back into the game.

So I checked the gpu usage in afterburner after doing a few minimising then maximising and driving the car a little (or else there is no dynamic load to test gpu usage stability) and what I found has me thinking there is a potential fault with my new card.

Here is a photo of the afterburner graphs showing the inconsistency/instability of the gpu usage with alternating minimisation/maximisations.



I've circled in red the times where the instability issue occurs and the in game visually impact when the gpu usage is inconsistent is quite noticeable and affects driving performance and lap consistency which is how I came to notice something wasn't quite right. It's feels like a slight undertone of constant microstutter and for anyone who's ever experienced microstutter before knows how annoying it is.

The strange thing is that the issue has a pattern, alternating from instability to stableility in gpu usage with each minimisation to maximisation of rf2 and then playing a little (be it a replay or live driving).

I was hoping some of you guys might be willing to help me out by doing a short test of your own with the afterburner graph open and running rf2 and repeating my method to see if you get the same results as me or not so I can determine whether it's a genuine fault with my new card and if so to get a replacement ASAP.

Also, if anyone has a gtx 770, I would greatly appreciate hearing your results most of all (to rule out it being a gtx 770 related issue).

Many thanks to all that can help me out here!

 

If you mean Alt+Tab, yes, the game slows down after that sometimes. Almost halves the fps once in a while. I wouldn't worry about your card for that.

 

No problem that I see. I get the peaks and troughs near the 99% mark & have done with both my 580's and now 680's. Have you tried VSYNC on VIDEO to eliminate the stutters?

 

M8 your Card is perfectly normal. Here is mine,

 

Alt-Tabbing (or similar) has always been an issue with full-screen games for me and I've been using Nvidia cards since 2007. Sometimes it's OK, sometimes it's stuttery and sometimes the game locks up.

 

It doesn't show Nuno. Can you post again please.

F1Fan07 and others, i don't have this problem with my GTX 670. It's always stable when minimising then maximising. This is why i need confirmation and if possible for some to post screenshots of their graphs like i have done (please).

For instance, Tim , I know your a busy man but if you could please take a few minutes to repeat my test on your gtx 770 for me i would greatly appreciate it. I need to confirm there is a problem with this card or not so i can get a replacement please.

 

Gtx580

View attachment 10813

 

Thank you Kaptainkremmen, if more people could do some tests for me too please, preferably with a gtx 770 or higher as well, much appreciated.

 

I'm on an older AMD card and my graphs usually look like that as well. Especially when I alt tab out of the game. Also when you alt tab out, your GPU drops back to desktop specs. Notice the memory usuage droping as well? rfactor 2 still needs optimizations. Some of us can alt tab out pretty good, some of us crash to desktop.

I think you card working fine. Max temp was 57 as well?

Your card is working fine, you won't see a straight line across with any card really. Especially if your alt tabing in and out.

 

There's nothing wrong with your 770. Here's what my GTX 780 looks like with rF2. The beginning part was starting the game and proceeding to qualify and race sessions with an alt + tab in between. The last 2 were race sessions (5 lap Clio Cup at Mid Ohio 20 cars) separated by alt + tabbing. Like others have mentioned it can be buggy and cause issues in a lot of games. I didn't notice any change in performance but Afterburner does show some more noise on the usage and a little less FPS. Thankfully we have beastly cards. No worries man, just try to avoid excessive alt + tabbing unless necessary. When I had SLI 480's eek pCARS would halve in FPS after an alt tab and stutter like hell. Point is, your 770 is fine and many games will have issues with this.


View attachment 10816

 

Wow, ok thanks guys. These are some very mixed results that to be honest do not make much of any sense.

We have a GTX 580 and GTX 670 that are essentially performing perfectly normal with alt+tab with near constant 100% usage....

And then we have a GTX 670Ti, GTX 770 and GTX 780 performing sub-optimally however my GTX 770 is strangely exhibiting both performances, alternating between perfect and non perfect with alt+tab....

Perhaps some people don't really care because fps performance is still good when the gpu usage is unstable. However as i am the only one with a card (that we know of so far) that is weirdly able to exhibit both cases by simply alt+tab'ing the game and that fact that it was both an easy visual and performance related difference that made me notice something was not right that lead me to discover this problem...i can tell those that have the unstable gpu usage whilst using rf2 that your driving performance is going to be affected, whether your realise it or not (if you have no frame of reference for comparison then you will likely not realise it as it is/has been normal for your since the beginning).

I might order another branded GTX 770 to see if there's a difference.

Thanks for your input guys, really appreciate it. However i can always do with more data so if you late to the party (thread) and feel like adding to it, please do! Thank you!!

 

DrR1pper trust me when I tell you there is nothing wrong with your 770. Ordering another one will not make ANY difference I can guarantee it. It may be something with the later generation cards or newer nvidia architecture, or possibly related to drivers which may account for these minor differences. It could also be an operating system difference, or even CPU related. There are too many variables that could have an effect on this than to blame your 770. If you're really set on getting to the bottom of this then you need to compile some results with system specs from each user to find out what the common factor may be. Just trying to save you the step of swapping out your GPU. Unless of course you're looking to go 770 SLI then you can test them each individually then both together. Now there's an idea.

 

This is not an rfactor 2 optimisation issue. It is perfectly normal for your gpu core and memory frequency and memory usage to drop to its idle state when minimising any game to desktop as it puts the card into 2D mode.

This happens to me very, very, very rarely to me when alt+tab'ing that the game crashes. It's so rare that in my many 100's of alt+tab tests i never had single a crash.

Well, yes that card is technically working fine as i can play games etc without crashing but this difference in gpu usage is causing a very real issue with performance that i find unacceptable. It's genuinely like a very subtle microstutter which if you haven't experienced or have no frame of reference to know what the difference is, then with no disrespect you can't really appreciate it. Yeah, temp is really good on this card. The cooler is brilliant and also very quite but even if the card were 80+, it still makes no sense how the card is consistent in alternating between stable and unstable gpu usage with something as simple as alt+tab'ing out then back into the game. It makes zero ####ing sense and it's really bugging me.

Well, again, with no disrespect my above posts showing all those who were kind enough to post their gpu usage data tells a different story.

Also shows that the age/generation of the card has no correlation to this phenomena because the gtx 660Ti exhibits unstable gpu usage compared to my newer GTX 670 which has perfect stability.

So now i'm thinking it's perhaps just random luck of the draw (which if true just major sucks!!!) or something else perhaps but i have no other ideas what they may be.

 

This issue is bad enough (for me at least) to possible warrant not bothering to keep a gtx 770 and staying with the 670 if i find it's the same case with another gtx 770.

Your right, there are may other variables that could be the cause but trying another card will hopefully allow me to rule out the biggest one of all on my mind. I know that you don't agree with this possibility but the lack of correlation between gpu generations and the issue might still suggest otherwise. At the very least, testing another card will then give me the peace of mind in knowing that the card is not the issue if the results come back identical and hence i can decide whether to keep one or not and to try to find the real causation (go so far as to reformat my pc perhaps...not done so for since 2010, lol). But that's a last resort to me, i don't want to go reformatting just to test a theory yet, even though i need a reformat anyway.

Also, couldn't SLI if i wanted to. Have a crossfire mobo....a different story to explain why but regardless i'm not looking to go sli again (or still at least for now).

I'm not the best writer and sometimes I come across blunt and/or the wrong why but if i do come across like so, please do not mistaken my posts as a lack of appreciation for your posts (and anyone's else's also). I also appreciate your efforts to try and save me from the hassle of swapping out the gpu but that is honestly not an issue for me, but thank you anyhow!

 

If someone with a GTX 770 could please perform this test as well please....it would be mega appreciated!!!

 

I think it is rare to get a 'straight' line. I specifically ran replay/settings that did so I could test the Alt tab and get a reasonable comparison to your screenshot. As you say though, I cannot get the variation to occur simply by Alt tabbing.

This is what I get with 20 AI on Nords.
View attachment 10826

 

hmm, thanks for posting this. It has sort of thrown me off balance now.

 

Could try running in a window, that should get you the 'straight line' you're after. Whether you feel it's smoother or not is up to you.

 

M8 there's nothing wrong with your card. That is the normal usage of the card and depend of a lot of factors. You never get 100% load constantly,. Its like CPU usage. It never gets a plain line. Don't bother changing that card for other because your card is perfectly healthy

 

Do you not find it odd though, how consistently the gpu usage on my card changes with each and every alt+tab?

Perhaps your right...perhaps there is nothing wrong with my card but i can't help but want to know for sure.