Are there any issues with the game's performance, yet it still delivers great benchmark results?
Are there any issues with the game's performance, yet it still delivers great benchmark results?
Hey everyone, I need some help here. Specs: Zotac 3080 LHR 10700k 32GB 3200MHz DDR4 850W PSU GPU and CPU are untouched, overclocking wise. Went on a 2 week trip earlier this week. Prior to the trip, PC worked as expected. Back from trip, gaming performance is bad. Like, truly terrible. I get 35fps in counter strike, when I used to easily push 300 at 2560x1440. This is repeatable for all games, but some seem more affected than others. For example, Battlefield 1 gets ~80fps at ultra settings, which, while lower than before, is far better than 35 in counter strike of all things. Still, no games are performing truly how they used to. Here's my troubleshooting steps so far: I immediately pulled out furmark and ran it, only for my card to get completely average results when compared online. Cinebench R13 for the CPU was the same. I performed a furmark test simultaneously with prime95 running to prove it wasnt a total available power issue, and both ran essentially the same as when tested alone, so I've ruled out my PSU being insufficient, or the GPU not getting "good" power or something like that. I've done a complete DDU display driver reset, and then put on NVIDIA drivers from about 2 months ago, which performed the same in both benchmarks and games as I'm currently experiencing. I've since put the most recent drivers back, as downgrading proved to do nothing helpful. I've gone through my entire windows even logs for system and application looking for warnings and errors, but get nothing but DCOM warnings and other unrelated things that have been recurring for years. This potentially seems similar to these issues: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/for...er-reboot/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/for...opicPage=2 Need to reinstall NVIDIA drivers after every reboot otherwise extremely low FPS I have the following issue for about 10 days now: (Specs (laptop): Intel Core i7-11800H, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, 16 GB RAM, Win 10). Every-time I reboot my computer (turn off and on), none of the games I have are playable (10 FPS). I then go and uninstall my drivers from the device manager and i... However the largest difference is that my benchmark tests work completely fine. I'm on the lower end of average on the furmark and unigine leaderboards, but the zotac 3080 wasn't known for performance anyways, and I haven't overclocked at all. With the games performance I'm getting, I'd have to have like 3rd percentile performance, and I don't. During the stress tests and benchmarks, the card will have a full ~98% power draw, 99% utilization according to GPU Shark. When in a game, however, I'm getting something like 30% power draw, 100% utilization, and GPU Shark informs me that it is currently being limited by the GPU Voltage limiter, whereas during the stress tests or benchmarks, it will say it is being power limited. It's also really interesting that with a combination of restarts and stress tests and checking game performance, there have been moments when games perform as expected. Following a system restart, they will go back to poor performance, until I get lucky again. That has happened probably three times amidst 30+ restarts and benchmarks and settings changes and control panel openings and driver installations. Any advice or knowledge is massively appreciated. EDIT: adding in a link to my userbenchmark score, as that also shows high performance. After getting that score, I went and tried playing Counter Strike, Deep Rock Galactic, and Battlefield 1, all of which performed poorly. Please click the green human to continue - UserBenchmark
I started with the card running at x16 3.0. After confirming its specs, I thought it would be fast enough. I swapped out the card and got x8 3.0 performance. Then I moved it to a different PCIe slot and again achieved x8 3.0. After cleaning the contacts with alcohol, I still got x8 3.0. Finally, after putting it back in the original slot, I saw x16 3.0. It’s strange how that turned out, isn’t it?
For testing purposes, I would turn off the iGPU in BIOS just in case issues arise when launching games. Also, check the Windows power settings and set them to maximum performance, and do the same in the NVIDIA control panel.
I gave the iGPU option a try for a while, but the game performance at 2k resolution is far below what my 3080 can handle. It’s disabled in the BIOS, so it doesn’t appear in the display adapters list either. Power settings are all set to high or maximum. I attempted to turn off hardware acceleration and run a game executable manually to push performance to its limit, but neither changed much. The BIOS was also updated just for checking.
This seems odd because, from a GPU perspective, the games should behave the same under stress tests—just rendering tasks. I don’t know why games would ignore the GPU completely despite similar results in CPU and other benchmarks.
Another point is that performance remains consistent regardless of resolution. CS:GO at 720p runs at 40fps, just like at 1440p. There’s no setting I’ve found that’s restricting performance, but it still looks like something is limiting it somewhere.
Reboot
Wait a few minutes
Execute ubm with the browser closed.
Share a LINK to the results page.
So here that is:
https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/63781418
Ignore the NVME drive performance, the poor 980 pro is in an 3.0x4 slot and the other one is in a 3.0x2 slot due to my mobo, so they're getting gimped by that.
HOWEVER, HUGE NEWS LADS, I FOUND A REASON:
scout, you telling me to open cpu-z made me check the graphics tab. Which shows that my GPU is running at a bus interface of not PCIe x16 4.0, but instead.... x1 3.0. Which is....much lower.
How the hell did my card suddenly stop working with x16 in its bus lane? I'm going to open up my case and unseat/reseat the card, make sure the contacts are ok, etc, will update in a bit.
Is there a way in your profile to set it to 4.0 x16 speed? Occasionally, the automatic configurations on devices aren't functioning correctly.
I got the card running at x16 3.0. After reviewing its specs, I wasn't sure my ASUS Prime Z490 would support 4.0, so that seemed like a solid speed for me.
After swapping it out and reinserting it, I got x8 3.0 performance. Then moving it to the second PCIe slot gave me the same result again. After cleaning the contacts with alcohol, I still achieved x8 3.0.
I tried putting it back in the first slot after a reset and got x16 3.0. It's strange how that worked.
I have low expectations for it to last long after this fix, given how finicky the card was. But at least I now know where to look for performance problems on my system. Based on the varying results across slots, I think the issue lies with the card itself. If this happens again, I'll need to revisit troubleshooting.
Thanks everyone for your help—I might have missed checking GPU-z before. I'm marking this as solved.
Second PCIE x16 only supports x8 connectivity, which is typical.
Conclusion:
1. Remove contacts from the card.
2. Place it back into the top X16 port.
It might be a card, a motherboard, or bent pins in the CPU socket.
As it works again, it's likely dust accumulated in the PCIE slot.