[SOLVED] A very unusual problem with a new GPU

[Lauri_]

Hey all. Yesterday I got myself a new (used) GPU, an Asus GTX 1070 Expedition OC. All was nice and dandy and I was really pleased with the performance of the card in desktop games and benchmarks. I played GTA V on very high settings for about an hour and it was all good. Then I decided to play some VR. After booting up a game, it ran perfectly for a few minutes, and then in the middle of action it started lagging like crazy. My FPS was probably between 1 and 10. I went over to look at my temperatures and they were perfectly fine. Then I returned back to the game and I noticed that the problem was gone. OK, so I kept on playing, but then after a few minutes it started again. This time all I did was ALT+TAB out and back into the game. Five seconds max, problem gone. Now obviously I thought that this was a problem with the Oculus (VR) software. But then I played a desktop game with a controller, and what do you know. The same thing happened YET AGAIN. But now I've realized that these lag spikes are somehow connected to me clicking on the game preview with my mouse, as crazy as it sounds. All I need to do to get rid of a lag spike, is literally just left click on my mouse in the game. The performance goes back to normal for a few minutes, and then I can continue playing with my controller or in VR, and then I have to left click on the mouse again after a few minutes. Again and again. It is very annoying, especially in VR. And to be clear, this has happened in every single VR and every single controller game I've played.

I made an ugly-ass photo to demonstrate what's happening:

https://imgur.com/a/myjCGyB

View: https://imgur.com/a/myjCGyB


Please HELP! Any kind of help and suggestions are appreciated!

 

[InvalidError]

Your graph shows that the GPU is maxed-out when lag happens, so it seems like your lag is caused by something hogging the GPU.

If the lag mysteriously appears after 3min of no keyboard/mouse activity and magically disappears, then I strongly suspect you have crypto-mining software/malware waiting for your PC to be idle for 3min (no keyboard/mouse input) before flooring your GPU.

 

[Lauri_]

Your graph shows that the GPU is maxed-out when lag happens, so it seems like your lag is caused by something hogging the GPU.

If the lag mysteriously appears after 3min of no keyboard/mouse activity and magically disappears, then I strongly suspect you have crypto-mining software/malware waiting for your PC to be idle for 3min (no keyboard/mouse input) before flooring your GPU.

Damn, that sounds bad but seeing as it's acting so strangely, that sounds possible. But why would it start happening immidiately after changing my GPU? I didn't have this problem yesterday before changing the GPU.

 

[InvalidError]

What GPU did you have before the GTX1070? If it had less than 6GB of VRAM, the reason the behavior appeared with the new GPU could be as simple as the malware already being on your computer but your old GPU not having enough VRAM to actually run it.

 

[Lauri_]

What GPU did you have before the GTX1070? If it had less than 6GB of VRAM, the reason the behavior appeared with the new GPU could be as simple as the malware already being on your computer but your old GPU not having enough VRAM to actually run it.

Damn man, you got it spot on. It was a malware/crypto miner.
I had scanned my PC before for seeing a new but otherwise very authentic looking Windows-y application in the task manager, but Malwarebytes didn't find anything. I ran Malwarebytes today again and it didn't find anything, but from your reply I decided to try another anti-virus software. HitmanPro found it and Bitdefender found something else too. I tried to play yet again, and it worked perfectly!
Thanks alot man!