GPU refuses to use it's clock speed in some games.

[William Schnatz]

So I'm having this weird issue where my brand new MSI Radeon R9 380 Gaming 4G refuses to play some games at the 1120 Mhz overclock I have on it. Games like Battlefield 4, GTA V, Mortal Kombat X, and Resident Evil Revalations all run my GPU up at the 1120 I want but as soon as I start playing Fallout 4 or Skyrim, then my FPS get's pushed down to 25-38 for Fallout 4 and 47-55 for Skyrim, both at Ultra. I would be able to accept this if that's how the card just performed, but when I look at GPU clock speeds while playing these game, neither go above 950 Mhz and mostly hover around 650 Mhz. I have no idea what could be causing this to happen in just these games and not others. I'm assuming it's not a driver issue because my old card (VisionTek Radeon HD 7850) ran both these games at the 1020 Mhz overclock that I told it to with the same driver version. I'm really mad about this because I'm seeing better performance in Skyrim with the 7850 then I am with the 380 because it won't run at the speed I want it to. Any ideas why this could be?

 

[Unolocogringo]

Unstable overclock.
When the driver catches a error it will downclock the card.

 

[William Schnatz]

Unstable overclock.
When the driver catches a error it will downclock the card.

What makes no sense to me though is that Battlefield 4, even with resolution scale set to 200%, a far more graphically intensive game, doesn't do this.

 

[sizzling]

What's your cpu and it's usage on each core? If your CPU is holding you back in those games the GPU might be down clocking as it's full power is not needed?

 

[William Schnatz]

Found something out. I turned off power efficiency and now Skyrim runs just fine but Fallout 4 refuses to go past exactly 38 FPS. Main menu: 38 FPS, loading screens: 38 FPS, in-game: 38 FPS.

 

[William Schnatz]

What's your cpu and it's usage on each core? If your CPU is holding you back in those games the GPU might be down clocking as it's full power is not needed?

I have a AMD FX-8300 @ 4.2Ghz and at absolute max while playing Fallout 4, it only reached 45% usage.

 

[William Schnatz]

I'm so confused now. Fallout 4 won't go past the 38 FPS, even at the lowest resolution and graphics settings. I don't have the frame rate limiter on so I'm just stumped.