780ti's weird clockspeeds

[revaew]

So I have 2 780ti's is sli and I'm using EVGA precision x to monitor them. Ive been noticing that their clock speeds are weird. Like I'll be playing skyrim and notice that one card will be at 995 MHz but the other will be down around 320 MHz. And I'll be getting around 25-30 fps sometimes. Generally it runs around 60 fps. The weirdness happens with alot of games. They won't clock above 500 MHz but won't produce more fps than 40. Like with tomb raider, I get high 40 fps with one card clocked up to 1000 MHz and the other down around 3-500 MHz. My old, single 7970 gave me better frame rate.

All games are at 1080p at highest settings. I have:
8gb ram
asrock extreme 4
i7-3770k no overclock
750w corsair 750x psu
256gb ssd

Thanks

 

[iAboodz]

Do you have SLi on in nvidia control panel ?

 

[17seconds]

Either turn off VSync or use Adaptive VSync.

 

[revaew]

Yes, sli is on in Nvidia control panel. Would vsync cause that? I would get it if the game was getting 60 fps and didn't need to utilize both cards onto achieve that. But would it still be a problem if vsync is set to 60 but it's only outputting 35?

 

[17seconds]

Yes, sli is on in Nvidia control panel. Would vsync cause that? I would get it if the game was getting 60 fps and didn't need to utilize both cards onto achieve that. But would it still be a problem if vsync is set to 60 but it's only outputting 35?

That is why Adaptive VSync was invented, to prevent a situation where your FPS would be cut in half to ~30 FPS when your framerate dipped below 60 with VSync On. If you have regular VSync enabled, that may explain your FPS dips. With Nvidia cards, regular VSync is now obsolete and should never be used, always use Adaptive VSync.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/04/16/nvidia_adaptive_vsync_technology_review/#.VCGS0yhOTdk

With VSync enabled, there's no way you can get a true gauge of your card's performance. They are being artificially limited to 60 FPS. This will happen even with a single card on less demanding games. Fallout: New Vegas never stressed my GTX 780 Ti, which ran at less than full 3D clocks, all while putting out over 100 FPS.

It's possible the cards are self-throttling on that older DirectX 9 game. But then your FPS is still relatively low, so that might be explained by the use of regular VSync. Turn VSync Off and then play your game to rule out those possibilities. Try out a more demanding game as well.

 

[revaew]

Wow I was unaware of this feature. Thanks for the very informative link. I tried the adaptive vsync out and it seems to be running much better. Thanks

 

[revaew]

Now that I'm trying it with a more demanding game, LotR shadow of mordor, both cards are clocked at 549 MHz and only giving me 30 fps? Any one know why this might be?

 

[17seconds]

I would begin with a clean install of the latest drivers. Download a copy of DDU and use that for the uninstall. The other thing is that game is so new it may not have good driver support yet.

 

[revaew]

I thought about poor driver support, but since it seems to be consistently occurring it makes me think something else might be at play. I'll work on a clean driver install for now. Thanks for the reply.

 

[17seconds]

Best to just start from the beginning and begin ruling out possibilities.

 

[revaew]

I uninstalled with DDU, and did a clean install. I tried running benchmarks of Tomb Raider. My results were min 59, max 91 average 77. According to This Benchmark, I should be getting almost double those framerates. The clock speeds stayed at 549 MHz the whole time.

 

[17seconds]

Time to test each card individually to see which one is defective. With SLI, you can have one card that is defective and unable to boost up to full 3D clock modes. Because of the way SLI works, the other good card will be held back to match the other card's clock speeds. Test each one individually. You can first just disable SLI to see if that helps to identify a bad card. If not, then try to remove a card and test that way.

 

[revaew]

So I tested the cards individually and I ran Unigine Valley benchmark several times. Both cards' clock speed went up to 1020MHz as well as both individually producing: Minimum FPS of ~30, Average FPS of ~75, and Maximum FPS of ~140. Both cards' temps stayed around 68C while both showing 95% usage. This is about the same as both of them together, but they would both have lower clockspeeds when I would run the benchmark with SLI enabled.

 

[17seconds]

Time to look at your motherboard chipset drivers and BIOS. Update both, then make sure that your BIOS is configured correctly.

 

[revaew]

I was out of nthe country for a while but now that I am back, I tried what you said witht eh bios and chipset drivers. I updated both of these. The cards are both running at the same clock rates now but still below the base clock. I looked into EVGA Precision X as well as Rivia Tuner and found a frame rate Targeter set to "60FPS". I changed that to "Max Frames". Now both cards are running at their best. I set the Adaptive V-Sync to be on globally again and now clock speeds are at Base clock and 60 FPS.

Thank you very much for the guidance.

 

[17seconds]

Nice, so it was just some odd setting that got enabled somehow.