Graphics card no longer pulling its weight for some reason
Graphics card no longer pulling its weight for some reason
I have a computer that was previously working fine for gaming, but now experiences terrible FPS issues and near-zero GPU utilization when playing games. The issue arose after moving the computer across the country in a vehicle. I removed all accessories and cables, secured the tower, and it spent several days in cold conditions. Upon setting it up at my new location, I encountered these problems despite replicating the original setup exactly. When gaming, I get inconsistent FPS drops (ranging from 130-190 fps to stuttering) with games like League of Legends, even with uncapped framerate. The GPU rarely uses more than 10% of its resources, sometimes dipping below 2%, but occasionally spiking to 100% for a brief moment. I've tried restarting, checking connections, inspecting components, reinstalling the GPU, updating drivers, and monitoring temperatures – all without success. The computer performs normally when not gaming. I suspect the cold storage may have affected something within the system, but I’m unsure of what to investigate further.
I guess I'll resolve this for anyone that may find it in the future. It looks like (though I can't be 100% certain) that it was a memory issue. I ran some Memory (both RAM and Drives) diagnostics which didn't show any errors, but immediately after running them, the problems went away without changing anything else. In retrospect, the issues I was experiencing were more consistent with memory problems than with GPU/CPU issues.
Following up on my previous post, I conducted tests using Furmark and Unigine Heaven Benchmark without altering any settings or configurations.
Furmark performed smoothly with no problems, reaching a maximum temperature of approximately 66 degrees Celsius and aligning with expected results for a GTX 1080. Unigine Heaven Benchmark initially exhibited significant challenges, displaying frame rates fluctuating between 2 and 120+ frames per second with an average of around 45 fps, accompanied by substantial stuttering and slowdowns. Simultaneously, the GPU’s utilization was limited to 30-50%. However, following the initial benchmark run, GPU usage dramatically increased to 90-100% while maintaining a stable 120fps without adjustments—and this resulted in a benchmark score consistent with that of a GTX 1080. This performance has persisted within Heaven Benchmark and hasn't reverted to its earlier 45 fps rate, even after restarting or re-running the test multiple times.
Despite these results, I continue to experience poor performance when playing games. This leads me to suspect that the GPU is not the root cause of the problem, though I am uncertain about what other factors may be involved.
Let me document this for potential future readers. It appears—though my assessment isn’t definitive—that a memory problem was at fault. I conducted Memory tests (covering RAM and storage drives), which yielded no errors; however, shortly after completing these tests, the problems disappeared without any other modifications. Looking back, the symptoms I observed were more indicative of memory limitations than issues related to the graphics card or central processing unit.