Question FPS and Power drops, as GPU peaks..?

Apr 7, 2022
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THIS IS AN OLD POST. NEW ONE HERE

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Hey!

Got my Zotac RTX 3080 "Gaming" yesterday, which has replaced my 1080 Ti.
Now, I have a problem which I have failed to find an answer to searching a good while.

While playing DCS in VR (which is what I use to test the card) and so far the only game I've really sat down to play, I run into this weird behavior of the card. It takes the card a while for it to start misbehaving, sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes 2 hours.

So what is it? Well...
Suddenly, the FPS will drop by 1/2 or 2/3 (locked in steps by VR), from 45 (with the odd jump to 90 and other normal fluctuations) to 15.
At the same time, as you see from the image, the GPU is shooting to 100%, and the Power usage (W) drops by an equal amount.

I would normally expect the W to go hand in hand with the GPU %, but it doesn't. And the behavior is completely random; I'm not doing anything special, or going to a "dense" place. It can happen with me sitting there not doing anything.

Today when this happened, I tried bumping up the fans to see if it was correlated with temperatures, but nope (I have marked this with yellow lines in the image).
You can also disregard when the graph shows 0 fps as that's when I have the game in the background, those moments are "normal".

I have mounted the card with the included two "2x6 to 1x8" power cables, and my PSU is a Corsair 750W.

Does anyone have a clue as to what this is? I wish to solve it within this weekend (before Tuesday) so I can decide to keep or return the card.

You can see the image here (I wasn't able to add it to the post)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/42hu80f1tb5jkyh/RTX 3080 odd behavior.png

Edit 2:
So I've now stressed the card running MSI Kombustor for 15 min, and it's stressing the card more than DCS in VR with higher average GPU % load and much higher average Power (W) usage.

And it's doing it without a hiccup.

I've also started OBS and some other tools simultaneously to push the card even further, again without any problems.

Here's an image of this test

Edit 1:
- no this is not normal behavior from DCS. I have never seen anyone reporting this before and I have never seen anything like it. The forums are void of this problem

Anyone? Help is MUCH appreciated.
/Quip
 
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I have mounted the card with the included two "2x6 to 1x8" power cables, and my PSU is a Corsair 750W.
What do you mean two 2x6 to 1x8 cables? If your PSU does not have two 8-pin PCIe cables it automatically disqualifies it for such a power hog as 3080. 3080 needs a Tier A PSU, not just any 750 W unit even made by Corsair. Otherwise you can expect this kind of odd behavior or even worse.
 
Apr 7, 2022
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What do you mean two 2x6 to 1x8 cables? If your PSU does not have two 8-pin PCIe cables it automatically disqualifies it for such a power hog as 3080. 3080 needs a Tier A PSU, not just any 750 W unit even made by Corsair. Otherwise you can expect this kind of odd behavior or even worse.

My PSU, like this one in this image, has two 8-pin ports, named "6+2 & 4+4".
I'm using two of those 8-pin ports. I'm doing what I'm trying to describe below twice. The "First Cable" came with the PSU, and are of this type, and has a single 8-pin plug on one end, and two 6-pin plugs on the other. The "Second cable" came with the Gfx and is its reverse, but shorter.

Code:
       <<  First cable >><<  Second cable  >>

              --- 6-pin :: 6-pin ---
PSU :: 8-pin |                      | 8-pin :: Gfx
              --- 6-pin :: 6-pin ---

(Note: the PSU "First cables" both have a 8-pin plug on one end, and two 6-pin plus 2-pin plugs like in the image, so I could easily use one such set of 6+2 directly (per cable). But I'm not certain this is exactly the same thing as using two of the 6-pin plugs (per cable), so I didn't)

I hope this explains what I've done.
 
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Apr 7, 2022
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So I've now stressed the card running MSI Kombustor for 15 min, and it's stressing the card more than DCS in VR with higher average GPU % load and much higher average Power (W) usage.

And it's doing it without a hiccup.

I've also started OBS and some other tools simultaneously to push the card even further, again without any problems.

Here's an image of this test

I've added this to the original post too
 
Apr 7, 2022
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Hey

I'm still chasing a very odd problem that I'm having.

I got my Zotac RTX 3080 "Gaming" a few days ago, which has replaced my 1080 Ti.
I have used DDU to remove all old drivers and installed nVidia from scratch.
The card is mounted with 2x 8-pin cables, as you can see here.

My problem however, is really really odd.
While playing DCS in VR (which is what I've used basically all the time since getting the new card as it's here that I have the problem).

So what is it? Well...
As you see from this image, the card will suddenly do something which doesn't make any sense at all. It will:
  • spike the GPU at 100%...
  • while lowering (!) power consumption by 1/3
  • while increasing (!) demand on the Bus
  • and the result is a net loss of fps by 2/3 (from 45 to 15)
(Disregard when the graph shows 0 fps as that's when I have the game in the background, those moments are "normal".)

It will stay like the indefinitely, or until I pause the game--which doesn't pause the 3D rendering and VR! After a 5s or so in pause and task switched to a different program, the curves will bounce back and I can go back to the game, for a while until it starts again.

I have also removed all Oculus software following the correct procedures, and reinstalled that too.
I normally use the Quest 2 via a USB cable which is more stable than going by Wi-fi. But I have also tried over Wi-fi, and I have exact same behavior there too, i.e with the VR headset having zero cables going into the PC!

I've stressed the card running MSI Kombustor for 15 min, and it's stressing the card way beyond anything DCS does even in VR, with higher average GPU % load and much higher average Power (W) usage.
I've also started OBS and some other tools simultaneously to push the card even further.
And it's doing this without a hiccup.
Here's an image of this test

I have also run DCS on "pancake" (i.e, not VR) and have zero problems when used like that. And no, this is not normal behavior from DCS. I have never seen anyone reporting this before and I have never seen anything like it. The forums are void of this problem.

Even though I really don't think the problem is related to my PSU, just to be sure, I have today replaced my old Corsair CX750 with a brand new Cooler Master V850 Gold V2. And I still have the same behavior...


I would normally expect the W to go hand in hand with the GPU %, but it doesn't. And the behavior is completely random; I'm not doing anything special, or going to a "dense" place. It can happen with me sitting there not doing anything. That means that the load on the CPU and/or GPU aren't changing.

I have tried bumping up the fans to max to see if it was correlated with temperatures, but nope.


Does anyone have a clue as to what this is?

Anyone? Anything?
Help is MUCH appreciated.