3000 point difference in fire strike between two tests

[HongerigPaard]

Hi!

I'm having a 3000 point difference in performance on the Fire Strike 3Dmark bench. As I am really new to computergaming, I have no idea how this is possible as the different results are achieved on the same system, with the same drivers etc, mostly on the same hour. The tests display a different base clock, where the 'bad' ones display the advertised clock, while the good ones show a much higher base clock. On the good tests, the graphic shows i'm in the region of performance where I need to be with my setup.

The only reason I could think of is a black/white diplayed bsod with some weird tears on the screan after plugging in my usb headset a few days ago. Afterwards, my bios settings also changed back to boot from CD-drive. Could this have changed some other performance-related settings as well? Or could it have been a powersurge doing some reall hardware damage? The latter seems a bit odd to be as I am also able to get the results I could expect with my setup, and i'd think hardwaredamage would give a consistent problem. The problem also changes with restarting, though not consistenly.

First run of tests was done because of a fps drop in game. These were bad. Then I rebooted a few hours later and it was an enormous difference on sky diver. Without rebooting I ran fire strike and it was bad again. After a reboot, fire strike was okay as well, from 2 fps to 20-30. After this, I did 3 test without rebooting which were all good, so it doesn't seem consistently related with rebooting, although being turned on for a period of more than an hour seems to have an effect. I reckon the difference shouldn't be a 200 fps drop. And again: not consistent..

I really have no idea how to fix this, I just got this pc secondhand from a friend to start with pc gaming, and it worked like a charm before the bsod. It is rather dusty, but again, I'd think the problem would be a bit more consistent if it was because of this...

Links to the tests:

Fire strike results
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/7844775
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/7844482

Sky diver results
http://www.3dmark.com/sd/3912313
http://www.3dmark.com/sd/3911610


Thanks for helping me out!
If additional information could help, just say what you need!

 

[Sergeant_Sneaky]

Does your performance drop the longer you play? How are your GPU and CPU temps? If the temps are okay, try a DDU reinstall of the drivers. What are your full specs including PSU make/model?

 

[HongerigPaard]

First of all, thanks for answering!

My performance stays the same after a long session. Gpu/cpu temps always stay under 45°c, so I also think that can't be a problem unless its a faulty reading as well (like the clockspeed)

Going to do try the ddu this evening when I get home!

I also read about the gtx 600 and other series that they get stuck on a 2d clock after using chrome. When come to think of it, rebooting mostly helps this problem, and chrome opens to see my 3dmark results so that could explain some bad tests, although this doesnt happen all the time. I'll look a bit more in to it with clock monitors.
Would you recommend gpuZ or afterburner?

You don't think the usb headset isssues could do something that causes this? Because it did something in my bios, i'm inclined to do a bios reset, but i'm not sure how safe that is?

Full specs
- Cooler master centurion 5 II (two casefans)
- Asus P8B75-M LE
- 2 x G. Skill ares 8gb (at standard clock, not 1600)
- i5 3450, standard cooler (no oc)
- Gigabyte gtx 660 (no oc)
- 120 GB OCZ-AGILITY3
- 1TB WD drive
- some cd drive

As for the psu: no idea at the moment, it is faced downwards so the sticker is at the wrong side. I'll try do disassemble when I get home tonight. If it would be a power issue, could disconnecting the WD drive and cd drive help? I never use them anyway.

 

[Sergeant_Sneaky]

I had my clocks jam at 550Mhz or something like that with my 660 a few times, a reboot did help but I think a DDU reinstall was what stopped it returning. I personally use Afterburner because GPU-Z gets the clock speeds of a lot of cards wrong. I'm not sure about the headset causing it, I don't see why it would, and would that cause inconsistencies when it is plugged in?

As for a resetting the CMOS, I would wait until you had tried a clean driver install first, it is safe but you will lose any settings you changed in the BIOS.

Removing the DVD and HDD probably wouldn't help as they don't use a lot of power, also they are probably turning off when not in use.

 

[HongerigPaard]

I had my clocks jam at 550Mhz or something like that with my 660 a few times, a reboot did help but I think a DDU reinstall was what stopped it returning. I personally use Afterburner because GPU-Z gets the clock speeds of a lot of cards wrong. I'm not sure about the headset causing it, I don't see why it would, and would that cause inconsistencies when it is plugged in?

As for a resetting the CMOS, I would wait until you had tried a clean driver install first, it is safe but you will lose any settings you changed in the BIOS.

Removing the DVD and HDD probably wouldn't help as they don't use a lot of power, also they are probably turning off when not in use.

Before reinstalling the drivers, I tried to recreate the problem when checking afterburner for the stats. Seems like the clock is actually 1163, while it should be 1033...
Could this difference in clock mean such a big difference in firestrike?
Strange that it would overclock itself even more, I have found someone else who had the same problem with his 660 though.. I'm going to try to update the gpu bios as well so that it hopefully gets back to its normal clock

 

[Sergeant_Sneaky]

I had my clocks jam at 550Mhz or something like that with my 660 a few times, a reboot did help but I think a DDU reinstall was what stopped it returning. I personally use Afterburner because GPU-Z gets the clock speeds of a lot of cards wrong. I'm not sure about the headset causing it, I don't see why it would, and would that cause inconsistencies when it is plugged in?

As for a resetting the CMOS, I would wait until you had tried a clean driver install first, it is safe but you will lose any settings you changed in the BIOS.

Removing the DVD and HDD probably wouldn't help as they don't use a lot of power, also they are probably turning off when not in use.

Before reinstalling the drivers, I tried to recreate the problem when checking afterburner for the stats. Seems like the clock is actually 1163, while it should be 1033...
Could this difference in clock mean such a big difference in firestrike?
Strange that it would overclock itself even more, I have found someone else who had the same problem with his 660 though.. I'm going to try to update the gpu bios as well so that it hopefully gets back to its normal clock

It could be power throttling but it's probably just it's factory overclock, nearly all cards come with a higher than stated clock speed.

 

[HongerigPaard]

I had my clocks jam at 550Mhz or something like that with my 660 a few times, a reboot did help but I think a DDU reinstall was what stopped it returning. I personally use Afterburner because GPU-Z gets the clock speeds of a lot of cards wrong. I'm not sure about the headset causing it, I don't see why it would, and would that cause inconsistencies when it is plugged in?

As for a resetting the CMOS, I would wait until you had tried a clean driver install first, it is safe but you will lose any settings you changed in the BIOS.

Removing the DVD and HDD probably wouldn't help as they don't use a lot of power, also they are probably turning off when not in use.

Before reinstalling the drivers, I tried to recreate the problem when checking afterburner for the stats. Seems like the clock is actually 1163, while it should be 1033...
Could this difference in clock mean such a big difference in firestrike?
Strange that it would overclock itself even more, I have found someone else who had the same problem with his 660 though.. I'm going to try to update the gpu bios as well so that it hopefully gets back to its normal clock

It could be power throttling but it's probably just it's factory overclock, nearly all cards come with a higher than stated clock speed.

I'm not familiar with power throttling, so i'd have to look into that. But wouldn't it make my clock lower instead of higher?
I also don't think it's because of the PSU because everything was working fine before I got that bsod... Or it at least went wrong around that time. That's also why I think it could be related by the way 🙂

I just did the DDU and flashed the bios, that also stated 1033Mhz base and 1098Mhz boost clock. When I opened afterburner, I saw 1033 when opening League of legends (it's handy to use as a test because of the obvious frame drops in it) so I though it was fine, but after starting the actual game it went back to 1163.
Is that still normal when the bios said 1098Mhz as boos clock? It's also strange that the bad benches give the correct clock as base clock. I think Pc-gaming a bit too complicated for me, haha.

For the actual problems themselves, i'll have to update you in a few days as they don't occur all the time. Mostly once a day so I should get back to you soon if it still persists.

Thank you so much for helping me!

Update: I googled the higher boost clock, and it seems to be pretty normal with the card, as they advertise a low boost clock to cover for bad cards. This will also probably mean that there was a reason for the card not to clock this high and staying at base clock with the bad tests, hopefully driver related. Otherwise the PSU story could have some expensive truth to it 🙂

 

[Sergeant_Sneaky]

I had my clocks jam at 550Mhz or something like that with my 660 a few times, a reboot did help but I think a DDU reinstall was what stopped it returning. I personally use Afterburner because GPU-Z gets the clock speeds of a lot of cards wrong. I'm not sure about the headset causing it, I don't see why it would, and would that cause inconsistencies when it is plugged in?

As for a resetting the CMOS, I would wait until you had tried a clean driver install first, it is safe but you will lose any settings you changed in the BIOS.

Removing the DVD and HDD probably wouldn't help as they don't use a lot of power, also they are probably turning off when not in use.

Before reinstalling the drivers, I tried to recreate the problem when checking afterburner for the stats. Seems like the clock is actually 1163, while it should be 1033...
Could this difference in clock mean such a big difference in firestrike?
Strange that it would overclock itself even more, I have found someone else who had the same problem with his 660 though.. I'm going to try to update the gpu bios as well so that it hopefully gets back to its normal clock

It could be power throttling but it's probably just it's factory overclock, nearly all cards come with a higher than stated clock speed.

I'm not familiar with power throttling, so i'd have to look into that. But wouldn't it make my clock lower instead of higher?
I also don't think it's because of the PSU because everything was working fine before I got that bsod... Or it at least went wrong around that time. That's also why I think it could be related by the way 🙂

I just did the DDU and flashed the bios, that also stated 1033Mhz base and 1098Mhz boost clock. When I opened afterburner, I saw 1033 when opening League of legends (it's handy to use as a test because of the obvious frame drops in it) so I though it was fine, but after starting the actual game it went back to 1163.
Is that still normal when the bios said 1098Mhz as boos clock? It's also strange that the bad benches give the correct clock as base clock. I think Pc-gaming a bit too complicated for me, haha.

For the actual problems themselves, i'll have to update you in a few days as they don't occur all the time. Mostly once a day so I should get back to you soon if it still persists.

Thank you so much for helping me!

Update: I googled the higher boost clock, and it seems to be pretty normal with the card, as they advertise a low boost clock to cover for bad cards. This will also probably mean that there was a reason for the card not to clock this high and staying at base clock with the bad tests, hopefully driver related. Otherwise the PSU story could have some expensive truth to it 🙂

Power throttling would cause lower clocks yes, I was referring to the times when your speeds were dropping. It is normal for the boost clock to be wrong, mine says 1126Mhz but my boost is 1278Mhz, even when I overclock the number doesn't budge. I hope it is just a driver issue, so you don't have to pay for anything.

 

[imrazor]

One possibility that hasn't been mentioned is a background program or service hogging your CPU occasionally. A simple way to check for this is to run a utility like Razer Cortex, which kills most background processes and may allow your benchmarks and games to run correctly. Unfortunately Razer Cortex requires you to sign up for an account with Razer. There may be other utilities that accomplish the same thing.

Another possibility is that the BSOD you experienced a few days ago might have corrupted a driver, or Windows itself. If for example it hosed your USB drivers (possible given it was a USB headset), your system may see high CPU utilization for no apparent reason. Could also cause CPU spikes happen if the headset fried your USB port.

 

[HongerigPaard]

I had my clocks jam at 550Mhz or something like that with my 660 a few times, a reboot did help but I think a DDU reinstall was what stopped it returning. I personally use Afterburner because GPU-Z gets the clock speeds of a lot of cards wrong. I'm not sure about the headset causing it, I don't see why it would, and would that cause inconsistencies when it is plugged in?

As for a resetting the CMOS, I would wait until you had tried a clean driver install first, it is safe but you will lose any settings you changed in the BIOS.

Removing the DVD and HDD probably wouldn't help as they don't use a lot of power, also they are probably turning off when not in use.

Before reinstalling the drivers, I tried to recreate the problem when checking afterburner for the stats. Seems like the clock is actually 1163, while it should be 1033...
Could this difference in clock mean such a big difference in firestrike?
Strange that it would overclock itself even more, I have found someone else who had the same problem with his 660 though.. I'm going to try to update the gpu bios as well so that it hopefully gets back to its normal clock

It could be power throttling but it's probably just it's factory overclock, nearly all cards come with a higher than stated clock speed.

I'm not familiar with power throttling, so i'd have to look into that. But wouldn't it make my clock lower instead of higher?
I also don't think it's because of the PSU because everything was working fine before I got that bsod... Or it at least went wrong around that time. That's also why I think it could be related by the way 🙂

I just did the DDU and flashed the bios, that also stated 1033Mhz base and 1098Mhz boost clock. When I opened afterburner, I saw 1033 when opening League of legends (it's handy to use as a test because of the obvious frame drops in it) so I though it was fine, but after starting the actual game it went back to 1163.
Is that still normal when the bios said 1098Mhz as boos clock? It's also strange that the bad benches give the correct clock as base clock. I think Pc-gaming a bit too complicated for me, haha.

For the actual problems themselves, i'll have to update you in a few days as they don't occur all the time. Mostly once a day so I should get back to you soon if it still persists.

Thank you so much for helping me!

Update: I googled the higher boost clock, and it seems to be pretty normal with the card, as they advertise a low boost clock to cover for bad cards. This will also probably mean that there was a reason for the card not to clock this high and staying at base clock with the bad tests, hopefully driver related. Otherwise the PSU story could have some expensive truth to it 🙂

Power throttling would cause lower clocks yes, I was referring to the times when your speeds were dropping. It is normal for the boost clock to be wrong, mine says 1126Mhz but my boost is 1278Mhz, even when I overclock the number doesn't budge. I hope it is just a driver issue, so you don't have to pay for anything.

Okay I"ve had the problem again, it got stuck at 300 something Mhz, but this disappeared when Alt tabbing a bit. Weird thing now is that it didn't go to the boostclock, whilst only at 50c max. It is playable again though at 140 fps now when at 1033Mhz. Tried putting it on performance settings in the nvidea settings, but that didn't boost it either

 

[HongerigPaard]

One possibility that hasn't been mentioned is a background program or service hogging your CPU occasionally. A simple way to check for this is to run a utility like Razer Cortex, which kills most background processes and may allow your benchmarks and games to run correctly. Unfortunately Razer Cortex requires you to sign up for an account with Razer. There may be other utilities that accomplish the same thing.

Another possibility is that the BSOD you experienced a few days ago might have corrupted a driver, or Windows itself. If for example it hosed your USB drivers (possible given it was a USB headset), your system may see high CPU utilization for no apparent reason. Could also cause CPU spikes happen if the headset fried your USB port.

That's a possible answer yes, but I don't think it applies for my case as every bench was consistent in cpu performance, the only variable that I encountered was gpu clock and performance.

A fresh windows install also seems like a possible solution to me, definately going to try it when this persists.
About frying the usb: i'm still using it with the headset that did it, I'm quite sure it was just a driver issue when it happened as that is quite frequent with usb headset. But that doesn't take a way that windows or the drivers could have become corrupted because of it. Going to try it now even, haha.

 

[HongerigPaard]

GPU seems be okay again.
Had to go through 2 installs because I forgot to take the extra drives out though, haha.
I don't have a system reserved partition now for some reason, I deleted every partition and formatted the unallocated space though. Hope this doesn't matter much.

Thanks for helping me out!

 

[Sergeant_Sneaky]

GPU seems be okay again.
Had to go through 2 installs because I forgot to take the extra drives out though, haha.
I don't have a system reserved partition now for some reason, I deleted every partition and formatted the unallocated space though. Hope this doesn't matter much.

Thanks for helping me out!

It shouldn't be an issue, it should create one on it's own, sometimes it doesn't show up, who knows why.

 

[HongerigPaard]

And now my screen is flickering black one or twice every now and then.. Maybe it's just a hardware defect...

 

[Sergeant_Sneaky]

And now my screen is flickering black one or twice every now and then.. Maybe it's just a hardware defect...

That is possible, did you mention what PSU you have? I had a quick scroll and couldn't find a model.

 

[HongerigPaard]

And now my screen is flickering black one or twice every now and then.. Maybe it's just a hardware defect...

That is possible, did you mention what PSU you have? I had a quick scroll and couldn't find a model.

Finally got a hold of the sticker. Other treads on here already suggest that its crap because of the low Amp on 12v. It's strange though how it held quite good untill a few days ago, and never gave any problems with the previous owner. (friend of mine, I played on the pc when it was his)
Could a crappy psu cause flickers after a clean install? It's all so strange how solving one problem brings another.. Although the flickers may have been around before, just not as frequent.

It also happens way more when i'm using Firefox and especially when switching to another video on youtube, or closing it down..

Photo: http://imgur.com/esWxXul

UPDATE it's full of molex connections, so quite old i guess, and maybe they have ran out..

UPDATE 2: the molex connectors were not necessary at all as there was a six pin on the psu, and the adapter also just had 4 pins in total because of two missing. He also didn't fix the gpu with screws, so it was just hanging there, awfull. No idea why he would do such a thing.. Stuck the 6-pin in now, removed a shitload of dust and the flicker is gone. Hope it stays this way.

 

[Sergeant_Sneaky]

Did the flicker stay away?