GTX 970 2D clock issues.

[Holythief]

So i got a MSI gaming 4G GTX 970 yesterday and for a while everything was fine.

Then i started noticing that in between opening different games the card would no longer run at full speed and instead be running at some kind of 2D desktop clock(540/3005) and sometimes even lower at (405/810).

The only way ive found to be able to run at 3D clocks again is to restart the PC. Nothing else does anything.

What I've done so far is remove driver using Driver Display Uninstaller and download and re install the 347.09 Drivers from Nvidia site.

I've set for each game to "Prefer maximum performance" in the Nvidia Control panel.

Neither of these have done anything and when the GPU drops to lower clocks it still gets stuck there and wont go back up.

Any info/help on this matter would be appreciated.

Also this happens regardless of if the GPU runs at stock (1114/7010) or overclcoked (1250/7400)

 

[Law-II]

Hi

Double check Windows Power settings are set to maximum performance and that PCI Express [Link State Power Management] set to off

Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Power Options\Change Advanced Power Settings

could try:
Nvidia Control Panel
Manage 3D Settings
Force Global Settings [power management] set to Prefer Maximum Performance

atb

Law-II

 

[Holythief]

Changed power management to High performance (which turned link speed management off) as well as set global power settings in nvidia control panel to max performance.

This worked but kept my GPU pinned at max clocks even at desktop.

Changed the global power option to adaptive and kept games specified to prefer max performance, one restart later and all seems to be running correctly.

Thanks for the quick reply.

 

[Holythief]

Okay ... so apparently the issue isn't fully solved.

After about 2 and a half hours of no problems the graphics card randomly down clocked again and got stuck.

I really have no clue what could be causing this.

Should i try an older driver ?

 

[Law-II]

Hi

Should i try an older driver ?

Would be a good place to start; [as this can be resolved Forced in default settings]

Uninstall any third party overclocking software's
Uninstall and deep clean drivers [select: clean install]
re-install older / stable driver

*using 347.09 here on a GTX 780 with no issues [maybe a GTX 970 inherent driver bug that needs ironing out]

Note: Would also raise a ticket with MSI and see what their Tech Support have to add.

Edit: out of interest are the motherboard chipset drivers up to date?

atb

Law-II

 

[eidairaman1]

You running any overlays?

 

[Holythief]

I was running afterburner and the normal steam overlay in games. Other than these, no.

For a while i was running nvidia shadowplay which i thought may have caused the issue but after disabling it i still had the same problems.

Also after having dropped to 344.16 which was the most updated on msi site i seem to be fine again. But im not sure if its 100% fixed so ill post if/when it beaks again.

 

[eidairaman1]

Turn off after burner and run without any overlays.

 

[Holythief]

Turned off all overlays. Had gpuz running in background so i could check clocks after i was done.

For the most part it was fine but when i went to minimise game to check something on the web the clocks dropped again and got stuck.

Since this has happened ive tried forcing it to see if a specific thing causes it to happen but i cant pin it down to any one thing (chrome/skype/outlook) it just decides randomly to drop clocks.

Note: Would also raise a ticket with MSI and see what their Tech Support have to add.

Edit: out of interest are the motherboard chipset drivers up to date?

I tried to send a technical support request through the msi website but i came across some error, ill try again tomorrow.

And yes all motherboard chipset drivers are up to date.

 

[eidairaman1]

Yeah games are normally meant to be run by itself. Id tag the game maker and nvidia on this.

Id try the game in full screen and see if any slow downs occur.

 

[Piotr]

Yeah games are normally meant to be run by itself. Id tag the game maker and nvidia on this.

Id try the game in full screen and see if any slow downs occur.

Turned off all overlays. Had gpuz running in background so i could check clocks after i was done.

For the most part it was fine but when i went to minimise game to check something on the web the clocks dropped again and got stuck.

Since this has happened ive tried forcing it to see if a specific thing causes it to happen but i cant pin it down to any one thing (chrome/skype/outlook) it just decides randomly to drop clocks.



I tried to send a technical support request through the msi website but i came across some error, ill try again tomorrow.

And yes all motherboard chipset drivers are up to date.

Hello.

Have you managed to solve or at least name the issue with your GTX 970? Recently I noticed same problem - only PC restart helps to solve it. I noticed 2d performance sometimes, and only in Battlefield 4 (maybe because I play so much this game lately). I thought its overheating issue, but I'm using V-sync, and card never exceeds 62 - 63 degrees in benchmarks (MSI afterburner tested).
Its really annoying when game loads and then game starts to go in couple FPS...
My rig specs: I7 4790K (4000mhz), MSI GTX 970, 16Gb 2166mhz ram (G-Skill Ripjaws X), SSD (Crucial MX100) + 750Watt PSU(Be Quiet Dark Power PRO P10 BOX).

Maybe its not a GPU issue - maybe we have some other equipment in common so it gives underclock of GPU in games?

I will also check later whether this speed issue will occur when I will force myself not to use alt + tab during loading screen

 

[xorbe]

Also try powering down the PC, and unplugging the system for 30 seconds. NV cards have been known to get wedged across reboots. Generally these clocking problems only affect OC / super clock cards -- definitely not the first time!

 

[Holythief]

Hello.

Have you managed to solve or at least name the issue with your GTX 970? Recently I noticed same problem - only PC restart helps to solve it. I noticed 2d performance sometimes, and only in Battlefield 4 (maybe because I play so much this game lately). I thought its overheating issue, but I'm using V-sync, and card never exceeds 62 - 63 degrees in benchmarks (MSI afterburner tested).
Its really annoying when game loads and then game starts to go in couple FPS...
My rig specs: I7 4790K (4000mhz), MSI GTX 970, 16Gb 2166mhz ram (G-Skill Ripjaws X), SSD (Crucial MX100) + 750Watt PSU(Be Quiet Dark Power PRO P10 BOX).

Maybe its not a GPU issue - maybe we have some other equipment in common so it gives underclock of GPU in games?

I will also check later whether this speed issue will occur when I will force myself not to use alt + tab during loading screen

The game in question causing the issue for me was "Path of exile"

Whenever i ran the game full screen every once in a while when i tabbed out id drop clocks to 2d clocks (regardless if any overlays like afterburner were running or not) and only a restart would fix it.

My fix for it was to run the game fullscreen windowed. Since i started running it fullscreen windowed ive never had the issue again.

 

[newtekie1]

Just an FYI, this is a driver protection feature. When the nVidia driver crashes it will run the card at the fail safe clocks. This is mainly a feature for people that have overclocked their cards a little too far, so when the card goes unstable and crashes, it can at least recover without a system crash.

If you are overclocking the card, the first thing to do is to return it to stock and see if it still does it. If it does, then there is a problem. It could be just a software conflict issue causing the driver to crash, but it could also be a hardware issue.

 

[xorbe]

Just an FYI, this is a driver protection feature. When the nVidia driver crashes it will run the card at the fail safe clocks. This is mainly a feature for people that have overclocked their cards a little too far, so when the card goes unstable and crashes, it can at least recover without a system crash.

If you are overclocking the card, the first thing to do is to return it to stock and see if it still does it. If it does, then there is a problem. It could be just a software conflict issue causing the driver to crash, but it could also be a hardware issue.

Yeah but usually it drops to stock 3D clocks for 3D, not stock 2D clocks.

 

[qubit]

This looks like driver issues. I see you're not running the latest version either, so grab it from www.geforce.com and try again. Don't waste your time with the MSI driver.

The latest version is 347.52.

Also make sure you have Windows fully patched.

 

[newtekie1]

Yeah but usually it drops to stock 3D clocks for 3D, not stock 2D clocks.

In my experience it doesn't drop to stock 3D clocks, it gets stuck at either 405 or 540.