Something's very wrong with my graphics card - help please.

[Black Panther]

Notably 2D performance, which is at ZERO percentile!

What might be the issue?

 

[EarthDog]

Dont use jenky arse software... what is that?
EDIT: Ahh, its passmark, lol

Are you having desktop 2d issues or using this as The Gospel? Have another pc??? Run the same test and see what happens.

Id guess that its only using 2d/idle clocks and never ramped up..no idea as I've never heard of that software or ever saw it in use until now (EDIT: I dont touch passmark)


EDIT: DL now and checking things out... but I would have MSI AB or something up to see if your clocks jump from idle when running the test...

EDIt2: Well, I DL it.. and it ramped up maybe 1/3 of the way through the test, was up and down a bit until halfway then stayed pegged at 3D clocks. A 1080 scored 994 and 94th percentile.

 

[johnspack]

Don't know if it helps but here's my 2nd gen cpu with a 970 running the same test...

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Notably 2D performance, which is at ZERO percentile!

What might be the issue?

I find sysoft sandra to be a better full spectrum bench but no one gets epic 2d scores on passmark.

 

[johnspack]

Scisoft is way better, and will stress test way beyond aida if you want to be sure of an oc. Any hardcore clocker will have scisoft in their arsenal.....

 

[DRDNA]

Notably 2D performance, which is at ZERO percentile!

What might be the issue?

Did you try a different 2D test yet to see if it is just that bench? Is the Control Panel set to Power Management Mode: "Preferred Maximum Performance" ?

 

[Black Panther]

Is the Control Panel set to Power Management Mode: "Preferred Maximum Performance" ?

Yes.

Later on today I'll try some other benchmarks.

I'm worried because as of this week Fallout 4 started stuttering a lot to the point of being unplayable going from 55 fps to 2 fps and back up, whereas it ran fine before. It stutters even if I try another save or start a new game.

Trying to determine whether the fault is my gpu or my ssd.

 

[P4-630]

Driver related?...

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Yes.

Later on today I'll try some other benchmarks.

I'm worried because as of this week Fallout 4 started stuttering a lot to the point of being unplayable going from 55 fps to 2 fps and back up, whereas it ran fine before. It stutters even if I try another save or start a new game.

Trying to determine whether the fault is my gpu or my ssd.

Youre trying to 1440p or dual 1440p on a 670 = that's your problem

 

[Ruru]

I remember having 670 OC playing Fallout 4 with medium 1080p, that was fine, but 1440 is too much.

 

[DRDNA]

Did you recently update your Graphic drivers? If so roll back to what worked.

 

[EarthDog]

Yes.

Later on today I'll try some other benchmarks.

I'm worried because as of this week Fallout 4 started stuttering a lot to the point of being unplayable going from 55 fps to 2 fps and back up, whereas it ran fine before. It stutters even if I try another save or start a new game.

Trying to determine whether the fault is my gpu or my ssd.

well logic says to use the tools you have to figure it out....

Have msi ab running and check for vram use, gpu use, core clock speed drops, power limit etc, and have task manager open looking for hdd spikes...

Confused though... starts off with a random 2d complaint, moves to 3d and a game....different stories here...id bet a 670 is long in the tooth with 2gb vram and 1440p though...(you habe 4gb so good there..but still check)

 

[Black Panther]

Guys I always played FO4 at 1080p because at native resolution I get under 30 fps.

I haven't changed any in-game quality settings or .ini settings, neither have I added more mods. It's just one day it was very playable, 45-55 fps all the time, then one fine day it just became unplayable with every 5 seconds (if my character is moving) it dropping down to 1-2 fps and back up again.
First thing I did was update graphics driver. Made no difference, so I rolled it back.
Tried other saves and even a new game.

I know this is confusing because a lot of stuff seems to be happening to my pc at the same time. I'm excluding PSU trouble because I bought a new Corsair 850W barely 6 months ago.

For those who have missed my other threads, here's what has been happening:

Last February I decided to upgrade my RAM because I only had 6GB (less than the minimum for FO4 but it still ran fine!)
So I bought a 12GB set of RAM.

I started getting BSOD's which became more and more frequent. I had posted about this because very strangely the BSODs appeared only while browsing the net and NEVER while gaming.
To cut a long story short, I had one bad stick. I removed that stick, and the BSOD's vanished.

However I noticed that my pc was acting funny. It was taking much longer to boot and to open programs. I'd type words in the search bar and they appear 4 seconds later whereas before they used to appear immediately. Sometimes my mouse gets 'sticky' i.e. the mouse pointer doesn't move smoothly but gets stuck in one place for a second or two.
So far FO4 was still running fine.

I thought I might still have a RAM problem so I downloaded a performance test which also checked RAM.
Well, this test found my RAM OK. But gave me a warning that my SSD read/write speeds were extremely slow as if it was a normal HDD, and that my graphics card was performing at 39% when compared with other 670GTX's like mine.

So first thing I did was check the Smart status of my SSD - and I do have a SSD problem without any doubt because I have 2 warnings: Retired Block Count and Reallocation Event Count are both at value 10 whereas their threshold is 3.

Suddenly I started getting the stutters in FO4.

To totally exclude RAM issues I put back my old 6GB set of RAM, which didn't solve the problem.

 

[the54thvoid]

Guys I always played FO4 at 1080p because at native resolution I get under 30 fps.

I haven't changed any in-game quality settings or .ini settings, neither have I added more mods. It's just one day it was very playable, 45-55 fps all the time, then one fine day it just became unplayable with every 5 seconds (if my character is moving) it dropping down to 1-2 fps and back up again.
First thing I did was update graphics driver. Made no difference, so I rolled it back.
Tried other saves and even a new game.

I know this is confusing because a lot of stuff seems to be happening to my pc at the same time. I'm excluding PSU trouble because I bought a new Corsair 850W barely 6 months ago.

For those who have missed my other threads, here's what has been happening:

Last February I decided to upgrade my RAM because I only had 6GB (less than the minimum for FO4 but it still ran fine!)
So I bought a 12GB set of RAM.

I started getting BSOD's which became more and more frequent. I had posted about this because very strangely the BSODs appeared only while browsing the net and NEVER while gaming.
To cut a long story short, I had one bad stick. I removed that stick, and the BSOD's vanished.

However I noticed that my pc was acting funny. It was taking much longer to boot and to open programs. I'd type words in the search bar and they appear 4 seconds later whereas before they used to appear immediately. Sometimes my mouse gets 'sticky' i.e. the mouse pointer doesn't move smoothly but gets stuck in one place for a second or two.
So far FO4 was still running fine.

I thought I might still have a RAM problem so I downloaded a performance test which also checked RAM.
Well, this test found my RAM OK. But gave me a warning that my SSD read/write speeds were extremely slow as if it was a normal HDD, and that my graphics card was performing at 39% when compared with other 670GTX's like mine.

So first thing I did was check the Smart status of my SSD - and I do have a SSD problem without any doubt because I have 2 warnings: Retired Block Count and Reallocation Event Count are both at value 10 whereas their threshold is 3.

Suddenly I started getting the stutters in FO4.

To totally exclude RAM issues I put back my old 6GB set of RAM, which didn't solve the problem.

Sounds less like gfx and more like SSD failing. If the data isn't flowing (accessing) correctly for the components to deal with it, these issues would all be relevant. Sticking mouse cursor can be gfx but the slow type speed not so much. I'd reformat/re-install OS if that was an option or boot on a new drive (or even an older drive lying around?)

 

[newtekie1]

I have 2 warnings: Retired Block Count and Reallocation Event Count are both at value 10 whereas their threshold is 3.

That is normal for an older SSD. As a block gets too many writes and starts to fail, the SSD retires that block and re-allocates a block from the reserve area to replace the retired block.

All the warning is saying is that your SSD has done it enough that it is almost out of blocks in the reserve area. This won't affect performance. Though it is a warning that you should start considering a new drive.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

in msinfo32 (system summary), about 14 lines down is BIOS mode. Does it say Legacy or UEFI?

 

[qubit]

@Black Panther Sorry to sound like I'm trying to dodge the issue, but what does the 2D benchmark performance matter? As long as the PC rendering the desktop normally and doesn't feel sluggish, then what does it matter what this benchmark says? The result is likely because the card is running at 2D clocks which are only something like 350MHz or so instead of 1GHz+ so you can see that the performance would drop significantly.

I'd suggest running a couple of 3D benchmark and seeing if the card gives you the performance that you expect, which I think it will.

 

[the54thvoid]

Guys I always played FO4 at 1080p because at native resolution I get under 30 fps.

I haven't changed any in-game quality settings or .ini settings, neither have I added more mods. It's just one day it was very playable, 45-55 fps all the time, then one fine day it just became unplayable with every 5 seconds (if my character is moving) it dropping down to 1-2 fps and back up again.
First thing I did was update graphics driver. Made no difference, so I rolled it back.

@Black Panther Sorry to sound like I'm trying to dodge the issue, but what does the 2D benchmark performance matter? As long as the PC rendering the desktop normally and doesn't feel sluggish, then what does it matter what this benchmark says? The result is likely because the card is running at 2D clocks which are only something like 350MHz or so, instead of 1GHz+ so you can see that the performance would drop significantly.

I'd suggest running a couple of 3D benchmark and seeing if the card gives you the performance that you expect, which I think it will.

Does it gaming as well. It's been mentioned already by OP.

 

[qubit]

Does it gaming as well. It's been mentioned already by OP.

Ok, hadn't read that bit, kinda busy here at work. I guess the benchmark matters then. I'd have to think about this carefully when I have more time and without interruptions.

 

[Black Panther]

in msinfo32 (system summary), about 14 lines down is BIOS mode. Does it say Legacy or UEFI?

Legacy

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Legacy

Aha. Pretty sure a recent windows update has something to do with this. See this just happened to me, similar. Windows released a (new??) tool that would change your BIOS Mode from Legacy to UEFI without messing up your windows install. forgot the tool name, sorry. Well anyway I was going to do that since I saw decreasing responsiveness in several things. I am not sure what I did but for some reason my SSD mode decided to switch drive letters and no longer be bootable. At first I thought this was a bad thing, but the only bad part was that I didnt export my Waterfox bookmarks, I had already moved everything off the main drive, documents folders and other default locations were moved to D: drive so the more I thought about the more I saw this as a blessing. I havent had to reinstall Win10 in 3+_ years, this cleared out all that old leftover uninstalled junk and a clean registry to screw up all over again!

Changed the settings in the BIOS for the SSD to use UEFI (I forget which ones atm), and reinstalled windows. During the install, I deleted all partitions and let windows create what it needed. I will say that now that its UEFI mode, there is a lot better responsiveness and less stutter. I tried to induce some latency by going with a small paging file, I set it to 3Gb, so far no ill effects.

Not saying this is for you but it worked out well for me.

 

[Black Panther]

Unigine benchmark:

And compared to others who did it with my same settings:

Unfortunately there was no one with a 670 who did the test, so I can't compare directly.

Does the ranking of my card seem OK?

 

[EarthDog]

Yes.. try with something like heaven or 3dmarl time spy and look at those threads.

They also have a database , well 3dmark does, y9u can compare to.

 

[newtekie1]

Aha. Pretty sure a recent windows update has something to do with this. See this just happened to me, similar. Windows released a (new??) tool that would change your BIOS Mode from Legacy to UEFI without messing up your windows install. forgot the tool name, sorry. Well anyway I was going to do that since I saw decreasing responsiveness in several things. I am not sure what I did but for some reason my SSD mode decided to switch drive letters and no longer be bootable. At first I thought this was a bad thing, but the only bad part was that I didnt export my Waterfox bookmarks, I had already moved everything off the main drive, documents folders and other default locations were moved to D: drive so the more I thought about the more I saw this as a blessing. I havent had to reinstall Win10 in 3+_ years, this cleared out all that old leftover uninstalled junk and a clean registry to screw up all over again!

Changed the settings in the BIOS for the SSD to use UEFI (I forget which ones atm), and reinstalled windows. During the install, I deleted all partitions and let windows create what it needed. I will say that now that its UEFI mode, there is a lot better responsiveness and less stutter. I tried to induce some latency by going with a small paging file, I set it to 3Gb, so far no ill effects.

Not saying this is for you but it worked out well for me.

The motherboard doesn't support UEFI, so Windows 10 will always be installed in Legacy mode. But I've never seen that affect performance like this. Being in UEFI mode only really improves boot time from what I can tell.

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

Run the Superposition Extreme test.