Question 3070 not performing as seen in other peoples benchmarks for Red Dead Redemption 2 ?

Sep 3, 2021
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Long story short, I've been playing RDR2 in ultra in 1440p with a 3070 and a Ryzen 5800x for a while now, and I get a frame rate of about 40-60 fps. I know the game is not best optimized for PC but I see other peoples videos with pretty much the same rig running the game at 60-80fps most of the time. My drivers are up to date and I make sure to copy the graphic settings that are shown on these videos but still don't get the same performance. It's not that the game is not playable, but it worries me that I am unable to achieve the same performance with the same graphic card and a equal or better processor.

One thing I notice is that my 3070 doesn't draw as much power as the ones in the videos, mine gets about 200-210W most of the time (sometimes 215-220w) while the ones in the videos draw 240W and more. My GPU usage varies a lot too, 85-98% most of the time, it almost feels like the game is not pushing my GPU enough. The GPU clock is the same tho, 1920mhz most of the time.

It is an Asus prebuilt PC, so I made sure to have Armoury Crate set to performance. I tried checking the power options and nvidia control panel but I don't see any settings that can't be limiting the graphic card's performance here.
My temps are really good too so it can't be anything thermal related. CPU is fine too, the Ryzen is working as expected.

Yesterday I decided to restart the computer and run a few more tests with the same settings, and guess what, performance was spot on! Perfect and smooth, I was getting +65fps in the same areas I was getting 45-50 fps before, and getting +70 fps average in the game's integrated benchmark instead of 55-60 as I usually do. I played for a while with no issues. I thought the problem was somehow fixed even though I had not really done anything special.

Today I started the PC and the first thing I did was running the game and checking that the problem was gone, to my surprise it wasn't, so I am back to the old limited performance. Now I know my pc is capable of achieving the same performance I have seen in videos, yet I am here getting the same frame rate as before, and I can't find out why. I made sure to restart the pc again and avoid running other programs but Rockstar game launcher and afterburner, still the same disappointing result.
What is going on?

EDIT:

EDIT:
Ok so I have more info, I was able to replicate both scenarios again and have noticed this:

-In the good performance scenario, the GPU seems to draw more watts yet the core clock works at lower mhz (1880mhz max). Performance is way superior (65-75fps)
1464-B62-C-DCC2-4-D14-AE77-815-B2-FD364-F0.jpg

-In the bad performance scenario the GPU draws less watts (198-210w) yet the core clock works at higher mhz (1920mhz). Performance is worse (48-58fps)
4-CCF83-EE-0-C47-4-C22-96-E4-E744-FBDCCA1-C.jpg


Both scenarios are within the same area and with the same graphic settings, the difference in performance is huge.

I really don’t know what is going on here.
 
Last edited:
Sep 3, 2021
11
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What PSU are you using?
It is the stock 700w bronze psu.
Have you installed the latest gpu driver directly from NVidia or GeForceExperiance?

As this is an ASUS prebuilt are all drivers up to date from these on the ASUS support page?
I installed it directly from Geforce experience, and tried with a clean reinstall of the NVidia drivers with no results. As far as I know everything seems to be in order driver wise.

What really puzzles me is that I was able to get such a better performance yesterday withour doing any changes, but I am unable to replicate it today.
 
Sep 3, 2021
11
1
15
Ok so I have more info, I was able to replicate both scenarios again and have noticed this:

-In the good performance scenario, the GPU seems to draw more watts yet the core clock works at lower mhz (1880mhz max). Performance is way superior (65-75fps)
1464-B62-C-DCC2-4-D14-AE77-815-B2-FD364-F0.jpg

-In the bad performance scenario the GPU draws less watts (198-210w) yet the core clock works at higher mhz (1920mhz). Performance is worse (48-58fps)
4-CCF83-EE-0-C47-4-C22-96-E4-E744-FBDCCA1-C.jpg


Both scenarios are within the same area and with the same graphic settings, the difference in performance is huge.

I really don’t know what is going on here.
 
Last edited:
Sep 3, 2021
11
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Gpu Boost: higher temperatures and running into the power limit more frequently is going to make Gpu Boost dial back the clocks.
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/226278/asus-rtx3070-8192-200922-3
If the bios of this card matches yours, then the 2 screenshots make sense - in one screen, it's running over the power limit, the other isn't.
But I don’t really get it, I mean lower clocks yet more power comsumption and better performance? what do I have to do to make this stable? I just want the gpu to work without worrying about it underperforming.
 
Sep 3, 2021
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Gotcha, I would suggest drivers but I saw earlier you said you did clean install already. Now did you do that through Nvidia GeForce experience ? Or some third party software?
All through Geforce experience. I think it definetely has something to do with the GPU clocks and power consumption, there's some weir relation going on there which is affecting the performance.
 

Phaaze88

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But I don’t really get it, I mean lower clocks yet more power comsumption and better performance? what do I have to do to make this stable?
It's all dynamic. There's a little more to it than this, but power and temperature are the main parameters to watch for.
The cooler these cards run, and the less often power limits are run into, the higher the boost bins are - to an extent. They don't boost to infinity.
If you've been watching it long enough, you should have noticed that there is a number your particular gpu likes to settle on - or at least try to. In the case of my 1080Ti, that's 1949mhz.

I just want the gpu to work without worrying about it underperforming.
That's really difficult to figure out when basing performance off of a single game...
How can we know it's not just this game that has a problem?
How can we know that it's not the driver that has a problem with the game?
 
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Oct 8, 2021
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All through Geforce experience. I think it definetely has something to do with the GPU clocks and power consumption, there's some weir relation going on there which is affecting the performance.
have your tried using ddu to do a clean install of drivers? Sometimes the GeForce experience is sub par in that way. It doesn’t effectively clean all the registries and stuff like that. You could try that and if that doesn’t work you can at least rule gpu drivers out.
 
Oct 8, 2021
56
2
35
It's all dynamic. There's a little more to it than this, but power and temperature are the main parameters to watch for.
The cooler these cards run, and the less often power limits are run into, the higher the boost bins are - to an extent. They don't boost to infinity.
If you've been watching it long enough, you should have noticed that there is a number your particular gpu likes to settle on - or at least try to. In the case of my 1080Ti, that's 1949mhz.


That's really difficult to figure out when basing performance off of a single game...
How can we know it's not just this game that has a problem?
How can we know that it's not the driver that has a problem with the game?
He makes a good point too. I would try some other games. There are some free to play games out there you could use as tests and see if you see any similar activity or suspicions.
 
Sep 3, 2021
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Ok so I had opened another thread on this but just focused on red dead redemption 2, now I have experimented a little with other games and I am experiencing the same problem: my 3070 reduces its power consumption from 215-220W to 175-200W for no apparent reason, and this results in higher gpu clocks (>1920MHz) and lower FPS. This is happening in Red dead redemption 2 and other games/apps like 3D Mark.

As I say it really affects the performance and I don't really understand the relation between Power consumption and GPU clocks here. How come less watts results in more MHz and less fps? I clearly don’t understand this relation because I always thought that more W = more MHz, but here it doesn’t work like that.

I see other peoples benchmarks and notice that they have really stable power consumption, which results in a more stable performance. I tried checking the power options and nvidia control panel but I don't see any settings that can be limiting the graphic card's performance/consumption here.

RDR2:
2-CEB5-C79-0779-4-A13-B463-0491958385-EB.jpg


3D Mark:
E03-EF326-CC1-F-4518-891-B-DF882-FCF5562.jpg



Here it is a picture of RDR2 working as it should, in the same spot as in the other picture, but this time there is a normal consumption, lower MHz and better framerate.

1464-B62-C-DCC2-4-D14-AE77-815-B2-FD364-F0.jpg