I need a bit of help guys.

[Aeoniss]

Alright, this issue started up last week. I was basically getting less than 50% of my usual performance out of my GTX 570 SC. Test games included SC2 and Space Marine.

It would give me extremely low fps and claim my GPU was at 100%- but my GPU temp would never increase. Nor would my fan rpm (I monitor with MSI Afterburner).

So I upgrade my driver (one had just released last week as I recall) and reboot my machine. Things work perfectly for roughly 5 days.

Then, randomly some 15min ago in the middle of a SC2 match, my game starts going absolutely nuts in a 3v3 match during a fight. Black flickering, 1fps, textures going missing, nonresponsive... So I alt control out. I go back in, and Afterburner is telling me my GPU is now at 100%, no increase in temp or fan rpm, and my V-SYNCED SC2 game went from 60fps constant to 22-30FPS. Keep in mind that SC2 is not a GPU heavy game, so my performance would never exceed 40% in 3v3's, unless something insane happened on screen all at once of course.

I immediately do Furmark upon exiting SC2 and I get this score:

SCORE:431 points (7 FPS, 60000 ms)

I reboot and perform Furmark again and get this:

SCORE:1275 points (21 FPS, 60000 ms)


My specs (GPU-Z):

GPU
core:820MHz, mem:2000MHz, shader:1640MHz

CPU
Intel® Core™ i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07GHz

RAM
12279 MB Triple Channel DDR3 Corsair Vengeance @ 1600Mhz


Now here's a piece of the puzzle that really threw me, providing my memory is correct: When I did that initial furMark test when my GPU was acting all weird, it said my core clock was like 400Mhz. So basically half the normal performance (which would make sense given the furmark score). This also provides an explaination as to why my GPU could be at "100%" with no Temp or fan RPM increases.

So providing that I'm not remembering things that didn't happen and the facts that I have on hand, how/why would my GPU randomly downclock itself? Why is it starting to happen now? Is it a hardware issue?

My temp and voltage are nowhere near bad levels, I intentionally went out of my way to ensure that would never be an issue. I'm wondering if I need to buy a new card since this one's warranty just expired.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Sounds like it's getting stuck in 2D clocks. Often a driver issue. Try removing all the overclocking software and reinstall drivers.

 

[Aeoniss]

Hm, so you think its a combination of the OC software and the drivers? Not a hardware issue? (literally passing out with relief here).

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Those texture anomalies can happen if your memory is stuck at 2D idle speeds (assuming single monitor, with more than 1 monitor connected they'll always be at max memory speed).

I've seen similar weird behavior from a friends 6970 when he underclocked his memory at the desktop to save power (2 monitor desktop) and forgot to bump the memory back up to default clocks before going into a game.

So your card might potentially be staying at idle clocks for some reason.

Regards,
SB

 

[Aeoniss]

Alright well, I fixed the problem.. Hasn't happened in a good while.

However, just a few moments ago Win7 turned the entire bar into 'basic mode', my CPU cranked up an additional 20 percent,and my GPU shot through the roof in usage. I was not running any game or graphic intensive program.

Curious, I booted up SC2 just momentarily, and my EVGA Precision X software said I had 2 GPU's and both were at 99%.

I only have a single GTX570 SC.

I debated rebooting, but then randomly the problem solved itself.

WTF?

Edit: I should note that during this entire event I combed through the active processes and I could not identify what was doing this..

 

[Grall]

Time for a clean reinstall of your OS methinks... All this looks really really weird, and buggy.