10-20 drop in FPS after waking from sleep or cold boot - occurs randomly

[grmagnu24]

I've been having this odd issue for a long time and I have unsuccessfully tried many things to fix it. Every so often, maybe once or twice a week, I'll boot up my PC (either waking from sleep or from a cold boot) and the GPU performance will be worse by approximately 10-20 fps. The problem will persist until I reboot or put it to sleep and wake again. It typically occurs after my PC has been asleep/shut down for longer periods of time. Unfortunately I can't easily replicate the issue. If I were to put my PC to sleep right now and immediately wake it up, performance would most likely be the exact same. I know it's not a GPU hardware issue because I have upgraded my GPU twice since I built my PC. Additionally, I have not overclocked my GPU or CPU. Any idea what could be the problem?

Things I've tried:
-Looking in event viewer. Found nothing unusual about the times where it boots with worse performance.
-Clean install of graphics driver
-Change power plan to high performance
-Turn on/off hibernate
-Several clean installs of Windows 10 (and I noticed this issue with Window 8 as well)
-Scanned for viruses
-Ran Windows Memory Diagnostics (no errors)

I have a hunch that it relates to the motherboard, the RAM, or a faulty driver. One thing to note is that I'm using an XMP profile with my RAM clocked to 1600Mhz (because it defaults to 1333Mhz). I don't know if that could have any impact, but I thought it would be worth mentioning.
Here's my build:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (Purchased For $275.00)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i GTX 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (Purchased For $110.00)
Motherboard: Asus MAXIMUS VII HERO ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (Purchased For $175.00)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (Purchased For $35.00)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (Purchased For $55.00)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For $189.00)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $50.00)
Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $158.00)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Video Card (Purchased For $690.00)
Case: NZXT H440 (Black/Red) ATX Mid Tower Case (Purchased For $90.00)
Power Supply: EVGA 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $110.00)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro OEM (64-bit) (Purchased For $0.00)
Wireless Network Adapter: Rosewill N900PCE 802.11a/b/g/n PCI-Express x1 Wi-Fi Adapter (Purchased For $24.99)
Monitor: QNIX QX2710 Matte 60Hz 27.0" Monitor (Purchased For $310.00)
Monitor: Acer XB270HU bprz 144Hz 27.0" Monitor (Purchased For $560.00)
Keyboard: Corsair Vengeance K70 Wired Gaming Keyboard (Purchased For $110.00)
Mouse: Logitech G402 Wired Optical Mouse (Purchased For $40.00)
Headphones: Logitech G430 7.1 Channel Headset (Purchased For $49.99)
Total: $3031.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-03-07 19:01 EST-0500

I did manage to run 3DMark with the performance issues and without. Here are some pictures showing the results (I can provide more detailed info if needed):

 

[tsnor]

Nice debugging. Great diagnostic info. The CPU sensitive physics score didn't move. The GPU sensitive stuff is off 15%. Sure looks like PCI infrastructure.

PCIe bus trains up to set its speed and can run slower than normal, fewer lanes. (Here is some deep details on PCIe training from an FPGA manufacturer that provides a PCIe block : http://www.xilinx.com/Attachment/Xilinx_Answer_56616_7_Series_PCIe_Link_Training_Debug_Guide.pdf)

I was going to suggest that you re-seat the video card - however that would have happened during the upgrade. Your board has several PCIe slots, maybe try another pcie slot? Maybe put card in a x4 slot and see if performance is like that you are measuring (down 15%)

Underclocking your memory and seeing if you can get the fail would be interesting. If no fail when you loosen the timings would certainly point to bad memory.

ASUS has a good rep: send a note with a pointer to this forum append. First assume you are at a good BIOS level.

Resetting the BIOS to defaults, save, power off, reboot, set BIOS back the way you want it (OC, XMP) sometimes clears up debris left over from bios updates.

GL.

 

[grmagnu24]

Nice debugging. Great diagnostic info. The CPU sensitive physics score didn't move. The GPU sensitive stuff is off 15%. Sure looks like PCI infrastructure.

PCIe bus trains up to set its speed and can run slower than normal, fewer lanes. (Here is some deep details on PCIe training from an FPGA manufacturer that provides a PCIe block : http://www.xilinx.com/Attachment/Xilinx_Answer_56616_7_Series_PCIe_Link_Training_Debug_Guide.pdf)

I was going to suggest that you re-seat the video card - however that would have happened during the upgrade. Your board has several PCIe slots, maybe try another pcie slot? Maybe put card in a x4 slot and see if performance is like that you are measuring (down 15%)

Underclocking your memory and seeing if you can get the fail would be interesting. If no fail when you loosen the timings would certainly point to bad memory.

ASUS has a good rep: send a note with a pointer to this forum append. First assume you are at a good BIOS level.

Resetting the BIOS to defaults, save, power off, reboot, set BIOS back the way you want it (OC, XMP) sometimes clears up debris left over from bios updates.

GL.

Thank you for the detailed response. I moved my GPU to the next PCI-E lane down on the motherboard and have been running 3DMark frequently (right after PC boots on, after it has been asleep overnight, etc). Not only were the results consistent, but I'm actually getting better performance than I was previously getting, even when I thought everything was normal. I'll post a picture below. I'm not sure if it's worth it to RMA the board, since I might SLI in the future but it would be a pain to not have a motherboard for weeks.

I'm amazed that you were able to identify the problem so quickly, you really helped me out! Thanks again.