Gaming Frame Rate Drop

[Denislav Denchev]

Hello,

I have the following configuration which is about a month old:
CPU: Intel i5 6600K
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
GPU: Gigabyte GTX970 G1 Gaming
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 2x4GB
Motherboard: Asus Z170 Pro Gaming
PSU: Seasonic M12II Evo 620W
Drives: Samsung 850 Evo 250GB + Seagate 1TB HDD

Since about 2 weeks I’ve got coil whine when gaming, which doesn’t bother me too much since I play on speakers. However, today I was playing Call of Duty Advanced Warfare and after maybe 20 min the game started dropping its framerate for a second from 130 to about 50 and then going back to 130. It does that every ~10 seconds which is enough to make it unplayable. Interestingly the coil whine stops for a second during then FPS drop.
Then switched to GTA V which was maintain 45 fps vs. 60 fps otherwise. After restart everything came back to normal for the first 20 min after which the problem came up again. I’ve figured out that if I change the Power Management Mode in the NVidia Control Panel to Prefer maximum performance GTA V starts running on 60 fps.

I’ve also noticed in the last days that when I run Far Cry 4, it runs @ 25-35 fps on NVidia’s recommended settings (compared to 65-70 fps before), regardless if I start it immediately after the first boot for the day or after I’ve played something else.

My initial expectation was overheating, however the temperatures seem to be fine (see picture). Any other ideas what may be wrong and potentially what kind of diagnostics I can run?

Thanks,
Denis

 

[truth teller]

GTX 970
98% memory utilization

you need to bring the gpu memory utilization down to about 88% to stop the card from swapping data on its lowest performance 0.5gb memory part. one easy way would be to decrease the texture quality or the frame buffer size by lowering resolution.
if that doesnt stop the issue you could scan for virus, although i doubt its that

 

[Denislav Denchev]

I am not sure if that is the reason, since the issue was reduced a bit after I changed the GPU Power Management Mode.

Also I get the same frame rate drop when playing Battlefield 3, particularly when there are explosions. The VRAM that Battlefield 3 uses is just 1770 MB.
Any other ideas or tests that I can run?

 

[GreiverBlade]

I am not sure if that is the reason, since the issue was reduced a bit after I changed the GPU Power Management Mode.

Also I get the same frame rate drop when playing Battlefield 3, particularly when there are explosions. The VRAM that Battlefield 3 uses is just 1770 MB.
Any other ideas or tests that I can run?

probably a spike above 3.5gb vRAM usage because of the mentioned explosions ... even in BF3, no wonder i hate the 970 and not even consider it as a viable card ... some might not have the issue some have, but hell i see a lot more people complaining FPS drops with a 970, just as i guessed 1st while reading the title of the thread before even reading the 1st post (and nope for me the "80% of the time you'll be fine that issue is minor" is not a good argument )

i have nearly the same setup as you have except that i have a 980, no issue on FPS whatsoever (if i except Skyrim but it was a HDT issue ) in BF3 tested FC4 (from a steam account of a friend)

 

[Denislav Denchev]

I was monitoring the VRAM usage with GPU-Z. In Battlefield 3 there was a scene that a tank was shooting at me every 2-3 seconds, so the frames were dropping a lot, however GPU-Z was not showing any usage above 1800 MB.

Also when the frames drop the coil whine disappears for a second (suggesting that the card is not working that hard), so can it be another component that is bottlenecking it?

In the same time when I first installed Far Cry 4 it was running at 70 fps, whereas now it won’t go above 40 fps, therefore I suspect it may be a defective component.

 

[GreiverBlade]

100% sure that the bottleneck is not the CPU or the RAM or the Motherboard ... as i said i have the same setup but with a 980 instead, if you had a bottleneck, i would also have it

the only component that diverge from me is : your 970, i guess we've found the culprit
either deffective or your OC on it is a tad too high (i wouldn't say it's the PSU as you have the same as me but 130w less )


not the SSD either i have a 500gb of that series in my second computer

 

[peche]

which software do you use for the video card?
Overclock it
GPU Clock Offset: +100mhz
Memory clock offset: +100mhz
Try to run it an see if it coil whines again ...if not
try +50 on both settings....

try to use EVGa Precision X from steam, is pretty easy !
or OC guru II from gigabyte... is almost the same....

let me know...

 

[Denislav Denchev]

I haven’t overclocked the card. During games the Core runs on 1417 MHz. It seems that when the framerate drops in Battlefield 3, GPU-Z shows drop in GPU and Memory controller load, as indicated by the green arrows in the picture.

 

[Filip Georgievski]

I have a different setup than yours but I had same issue a while ago.
GPU temp can be a problem as well.
Also do a benchmark on GPU and see if you find out problems on simular settings.
I guess GPU is a little bit stressed out since all you play are GPU games.
A point of view: BF3 had no problems for me even with CFX. 60fps and not major drops on full HD resolution with my 2 6770 hds.
VRAM is not problem as my cards have overall 2GB VRAM.
Edit: Check voltages on PSU. 620W is maybe a little low for that CPU and GPU. Maybe that is the reason.

 

[GreiverBlade]

Edit: Check voltages on PSU. 620W is maybe a little low for that CPU and GPU. Maybe that is the reason.

i ran a far way more power hungry setup full OC on a 650W (a 4ghz FX-6300 and a 1150/3000 R9-290) and still had headroom for more... ok now i have a 750w (same model as the OP )
i even ran a GTX580 SLI (ASUS GTX580 Matrix Platinum 890/2500) and a Xeon E3-1275v2 on a 700W before .... no problems holding the whole rig

basically his setup draw:
Load Wattage:421 W
Recommended UPS rating:800 VA
Recommended PSU Wattage:471 W

Amperage (combined)
+3.3V +5V +12V
8.0 A 7.0 A 30.0 A

counting 5 120mm fan in the mix as he didn't give the full setup just the bases (nor did he filled his sys specs )

at 100% TDP
Load Wattage:426 W
Recommended UPS rating:800 VA
Recommended PSU Wattage:476 W

Amperage (combined)
+3.3V +5V +12V
7.9 A 7.0 A 30.4 A


unlike my setup your's is not similar but the issue is: for you the culprit is elsewhere (probably and mostly a CFX issue)

my setup 6 fans 5x120 1x140 1 12v pump 2 led strip 1 AIO 240mm 2 HDD 1 SSD 1 NZXT Grid+(way more power drawing gears in the equation .... yet it's as it follow)
Load Wattage:412 W
Recommended UPS rating:800 VA
Recommended PSU Wattage:462 W

Amperage (combined)
+3.3V +5V +12V
7.9 A 9.3 A 28.3 A


at 100% TDP

at 90% TDP
Load Wattage:401 W
Recommended UPS rating:800 VA
Recommended PSU Wattage:451 W

Amperage (combined)
+3.3V +5V +12V
7.9 A 9.3 A 27.4 A

funny eh? a 970 use more power than a 980??? i didn't expected that, i mean i knew the 970 was a junk (imho)... but not at that point
not a absolute truth ofc ... the calculator i use give an approximation and tend to exaggerate a bit

i am more inclined to say the culprit is the GPU than the PSU (unless it's a overused and old one ... which i doubt, or a faulty unit which is a bit unlikely but ... why not )

 

[bubbleawsome]

That PSU is more than fine. I've run a old i7 and 280x on a 550w before.

 

[Filip Georgievski]

I'm just giving some options.
As I said first and foremost: GPU could be stressed too much, memory fault from OC, wrong OC values, high voltages etc etc.
PSU was my next idea cause in the past I dealt with PSU not giving enough watts to power the hardware.
My rig has a Hantol 900w PSU (720w real power) and I have more than enough power to handle my rig. 50w margin is too thin for me as OCing takes more power and that 50w margin is filled up.

 

[Serpent of Darkness]

I was monitoring the VRAM usage with GPU-Z. In Battlefield 3 there was a scene that a tank was shooting at me every 2-3 seconds, so the frames were dropping a lot, however GPU-Z was not showing any usage above 1800 MB.

Also when the frames drop the coil whine disappears for a second (suggesting that the card is not working that hard), so can it be another component that is bottlenecking it?

In the same time when I first installed Far Cry 4 it was running at 70 fps, whereas now it won’t go above 40 fps, therefore I suspect it may be a defective component.

and

I am not sure if that is the reason, since the issue was reduced a bit after I changed the GPU Power Management Mode.

Also I get the same frame rate drop when playing Battlefield 3, particularly when there are explosions. The VRAM that Battlefield 3 uses is just 1770 MB.
Any other ideas or tests that I can run?

Do you have any software that monitors your CPU temperatures during BF3? Preferably something with an overlay for it like MSI Afterburner? On the CPU side, is the power management set to something less than max performance?

You've claim that you are experiencing issues, in BF3, when you see explosions. I can imagine you're experiencing the same in CoD when you see a heavy renderings of shadows, or fire, or explosions, or smoke. A majority of this is being rendered on the CPU side. So what basically happens is when your GPU starts spitting out images, it needs the CPU to put in the extra detail during the rendering process. Rendering shapes and a lot of the textures are done on the GPU's end. The extra detail that the CPU renders out is shadows, particle effects, floral textures, and some others... Explosions, fire and smoke fall under particle effects.

What I think is happening in your situation is that your seeing high FPS due to the GPU rendering the images, but when the CPU needs to step in a little, it kills the FPS performance. That's just my theory. So you're getting these awkward spikes during a play secession. You see explosion and your FPS performance just drops like nothing, and when the sequence of scenes are complete, you start to get the fps performance back when it's not necessary to render the explosion until it happens again. It's battlefield 3. You're going to see fire, explosions, particle effects, the works.

What OS are you running? I'd recommend going to your "resource monitor" with the game being played in the background. Tab out during a play-time scession, pull recourse monitor up from your start. Type it in, click on it. It should pull up a window that shows the processes that are on in the background besides CD or BF3. Make sure you're looking at the CPU side. With CD or BF3 playing in the background, it should have the highest usage. Check to see if your Maximum Frequency on the CPU side is always at 100%. Go back in game, preferably in the training area. Shoot a jeep or tank, set it on fire, tab out and see if it's registering as 100% on the Maximum Frequency. If not, you've pretty much found the issue. If you feel it's something else, omit what I said and try another solution.

Framebuffer values only show what amount of memory allocated by the GPU is being used to store data when images are being processed and rendered to the display adapter. Imo, any discussion about Vram usage during a discussion about my FPS sucks when I see fireballs and particles becomes irrelevant. You're discrete graphic card is doing what its suppose to do: Offload task and executions relating to the rendering of images off the CPU, but only to a certain extent, faster because of the amount of cores that you have in parallel processing. This is part of the reason why the CPU doesn't render images alone anymore. It's to slow, and there isn't enough cores to do it in comparison to a modern GPU. Watching a 6 Core CPU render an image, one frame in 5 minutes to 2 hours is painful to the eye.

A side note. If you increase your core frequency, OC it, seeing as how you have an aftermarket aircooling block on the CPU, pushing the Core frequency up to or near 4.0ghz wouldn't hurt by much. It would improve rendering times on the CPU's end.

 

[GreiverBlade]

50w margin is too thin for me as OCing takes more power and that 50w margin is filled up.

my calculation take OC in account... not stock settings ...

462W recommendation while i have 750W is with a 4.4 CPU and 1278 core (1379 Boost) 1803 Memory GPU so i don't have 50W margin but 338W and already OC
the OP has a stock 6600K and factory OC'ed 970 so i took in account the GPU OC and left the CPU stock (yet even adding 5 fan his rig still demand more power than mine ... funny again, eh? ) so basically he has
204W margin for more OC (i was not saying to take the recommended as the truth but take the above as a example: 450W: 550W is already fine 620W more over 750W totally fine even if i go SLI )

My rig has a Hantol 900w PSU (720w real power) and I have more than enough power to handle my rig.

HANTOL?... oh god ... do you like keeping a fire hazard who has a cement made PFC in it? and 900W : 720W real power might also be wrong ... you could have even less, unlike the OP and i, you have a POS PSU (recognized all around the tech site to be such)

your system (no OC plus 5x 120mm )
Load Wattage:340 W Recommended UPS rating:650 VA Recommended PSU Wattage:390 W Amperage (combined)
+3.3V +5V +12V
8.7 A 8.6 A 22.4 A
at 90%

do yourself and your rig a favor and get rid of that Hantol made piece of c...
even a Seasonic M12II 620W EVO like the op and i would be better (technically they are not even expensive and also fully modular )
no wonder you've dealt with PSU who were not giving enough power to the component
take a look
https://www.google.ch/webhp?sourcei...&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=Hantol+PSU&es_th=1

so for the OP i would suggest to ask Gigabyte about the question of the GPU and see what they answer (if the customer service is not horrid) or ask the shop where he brought it. (since he's at stock factory OC settings )
also pushing the CPU to 4.4 or higher if he can is also an idea (mine is at 4.4) like @Serpent of Darkness mentioned

 

[basco]

do ya play with Vsync on?

 

[Filip Georgievski]

I had the Hantol for 3 years and it is done nicely for my rig. As you can see I got a budget rig so expensive parts is not my kind of thing. I considered Thermaltake, Seasonic, Zalman, and many other psu manufacturers when I bought mine. For half the price more in my country I couldn't even find a psu with 620W or close and mine is 720w. I got my Hantol for 50$ and it works great with my rig. I'm not looking for a psu from a good manufacturer, I'm looking for a good, cheap and good rated psus ( as you saw mine is bronze ).
So you are saying that my psu is hazardous?? Then I'll say that every psu is hazardous. The manufacturer doesn't mean it is crap. Some people have money for more expensive parts and they buy A+ products, some read on the Internet and find good quality and cheap parts to make budget rig.
My psu is just as hazardous as yours. It is electronics. You can't trust it. You can only use it properly and hope your money were well spend.

 

[Filip Georgievski]

Edit: I did unscrew my psu and no concrete is to be found in mine. Pure electronics. Multimeter checked it and all figures on the box were real, and I'm happy with it. If anything was wrong with it, it would have been back to the store 3 years ago and it is not. Never trust a brand. Price is no measure for quality, checking out the psu for yourself is.