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

I know you're set on swapping out the card at this point but it seems pretty obvious this is a software issue rather than hardware. Your 770 does what it's supposed to when you launch the game, for hours on end right? Usage stays high and only when you Alt + Tab out of game is when this happens? It's like minimizing a window, and your OS puts it in the background as lower priority. It may even be a windows limitation since so many games respond this way but for some reason when switching back it seems the game never gets #1 priority or there's another task running in the background that eats up CPU usage. Remember that the number one sign of a CPU bottleneck is low GPU usage at higher resolutions. This should prove to you that it's not an issue with the GPU, but more on the side of the CPU that is feeding it instructions. Do me a favor and monitor your CPU usage at start of game and after Alt + Tab and tell me if it's exactly the same.

 

sure...

I actually swapped out the card to the 670 yesterday for some more testing and it was indeed perfectly normal but then switched back to the 770 today and the performance is consistent with each alt+tab now.....weird.

example:




I have an i5 2500k @ 4.5Ghz. I tried a few different graphics levels (averaging absolute low, roughly medium and absolute high) all at 1080p.


low




medium




high




so gpu usage is practically unable to fluctuate because it's always at the limit on my 770 around the loch drummond benchmark replay when graphics are set to highest. Interestingly, cpu usage seems to correlate with graphical settings and is nearly 100% on highest graphics which surprises me.


So i tested at nords tourist circuit with 0 AI realtime, 20 AI realtime and then a replay of the 20 AI realtime to see if there's a difference between replay and realtime performance.


0 AI Realtime




20 AI Realtime




replay of the 20 AI Realtime

 

Could be a number of things, (I doubt it's a faulty card )

Please check :

Your psu has more than enough power to power your new card, (it will fall off quickly now & again if it's borderline)

In nvidia control panel, select "prefer maximum performance"

Your CPU might be under a heavy load (not balanced with your new card) thus causing bottlenecks
( consider over clocking? )

As a test reduce your resolution -high resolutions can cause all sorts of hell (like stutter etc) , lower resolutions I think actually look better ( but not to low! )

I trust your checking your temps? These newer nvidia gpu's will throttle right down if the temp touches a certain level
(They can cool quickly then throttle back up only to throttle back down again and so )

 

850 Watt PSU (at least 300 Watts to spare)

My i5 2500k is overclocked from 3.3ghz to 4.5ghz. People from the "R9-290 or GTX-770 4GB ??" thread who also have a gtx 670 and the i5 2500k have shown no performance gains from default stock clock of 3.3ghz and up.

I did not experience any of this with my gtx 670 at the same 1080p resolution. Personally, i wouldn't use anything less to play so even if it did have any affect it's wouldn't be a good solution for me.

gpu temps are in the 60-65 region on full load and the core clock and memory clock are completely stable and locked whilst playing.

 

I see , gosh , seems you have it all covered

You have latest mobo / chipset drivers
+sometimes you can set the gpu port (on mobo) to auto or x8 or x16 in the bios -best check this (usually default on auto)

Also if you have x2 ( or x3 ) gpu card slots on your mobo sometimes it matters which ones you use (in the case of less cards than slots)

Just trying to think of everything I can. when strange things happen & if all else fails I'll reset bios then reclock CPU etc,
Then if no go I'll reinstate my pc ( backup / erase / reinstall windows )

 

I appreciate it Adrian and yes there are so many things that could be the issue but i don't want to go on a goose chase just yet and i think it's easier if i get a second card (also from another manufacturer) to make a comparison to rule out the card(s) completely so i can then do a reformat to try an nail as many possibilities in one move (which i need to do anyway but have been reluctant to do so but this this would give me the impetus to do so). This alternate card is also a factory overclocked version and I has even more headroom for further overclocking, so i would keep that one if all pans out well.

 

Yes that's interesting seeing your CPU right near 100% on all cores. That could indicate a potential bottleneck for your GPU, and would become more noticable with more powerful video cards. Here's mine for comparison running a 20 AI race at Loch with Skip Barbers. My CPU is an i7 920 OC to 4Ghz with Hyperthreading (8 core total). I have never seen my CPU max out in any game to date. Most only utilize around 50% total.

View attachment 10835

 

I had the i7 920 (but was only overclocked to 3.3) and then I upgraded to the i5 2500k and overclocked it to 4.5ghz (same performance as the latest i5 4670k @ 4.2) and everything become even smoother, including rfactor 2 (before plugging in this gtx 770).

What gpu are you using?

I would be interested in knowing what your graphics settings are that's causing your graphics cards (in tadem with your cpu that isn't more than 60-70% taxed) gpu usage to be perfectly and consistently 100%.

Even though the high settings has all 4 of my cores nearly maxed out (which doesn't make too much sense to me tbh unless is the combination of AI) they don't appear to be clipping but even if they were it doesn't explain the medium and low settings where the cpu cores are not close to 100% but the problem persists and the gpu usage is fluctuating.

 

I have a 780 as I mentioned earlier. My settings are maxed out completely at 1920 x 1200 with AA through nvidia inspector at 8x msaa and 4x SGSSAA Supersampling. It looks amazing!

 

Palit GTX 770 Jetstream 2gb arrived today. Plugged it straight in and ran the benchmark and here's the gpu usage graph....



The gpu usage now resembles what i saw with my GTX 670 and whilst i have yet to do a thorough driving test to see if i can sense the microstutter i experienced with the zotac, i did not visually notice any in the alt+tab tests during the bench replay i performed earlier.

The card overclockers a tiny bit more (nothing significant) but it's the smoothness that i care about more than anything ofc. So far so good. Will test later and report back if any change.

Thank you to all for chipping in with your thoughts and ideas, despite my actions of going against the majority of advice please believe me when i say that I am nevertheless sincerely grateful for them.

 

To reduce CPU load, go to Nvidia Control Panel and set "pre-rendered frames" to 1.

 

hmm...will give that a shot. I used to use it but must have been removed when i updated drivers at some point.

update:

Replay of the same benchmark recording immediately after 2 laps with identical graphical settings.



HOLY $@#%!

Thank you Tosch!

edit:

oddly enough, I also gained 2-3 fps on my min, max and average around the bench by setting this value to "1".

Got any more tricks up your sleeves?...i'll be cranking out 780 performance soon enough (...i wish).

Out of interest Tosch, how does this work? And should i be using it universally?