[SOLVED] Graphics card no longer pulling its weight for some reason

[jordanxallen]

Preface with my setup:
GTX 1080 8GB VRAM
16GB RAM
AMD FX-8350 Eight-Core

I've been using this computer to play games for a while. A few days ago I moved across the country which involved a 3 day drive. It was working fine before I moved. When moving it, all I did was remove all the accessories and cables from the back of the PC, and I secured the tower very snugly in the backseat of my vehicle (it should not have jostled around any more than the vehicle itself). That being said, it did spend a few cold days/nights in the car.

Now that I have arrived at my destination, I set the computer back up exactly the way it was before moving, but for some reason when I try to play games I get terrible FPS issues i never had before, and when I monitor the GPU resources, it is almost never using more than 10% of its resources (but often less than 2%) but every once in a while will spike to 100% for a fraction of a second.

To give an example I tried to test it with League of Legends (which is not a demanding game) with uncapped framerate. It would jump back and forth within 130-190 fps with constant stutter and hitches. However the framerate is the only issue, there are no artifacts or other forms of graphical issues. CPU appears to be perform

The computer performs completely normally when not trying to play games (In fact i'm currently using it to post this). Software-wise, nothing has changed on the computer between when it was working and now.

Things I've done:
-Restarted several times over the last day
-Double and triple checked that everything is connected correctly
-Checked the internal components for damage. Nothing is visibly damaged or disconnected
-Removed and reinstalled the GPU
-Checked internal temperatures (all normal as far as I can tell)
-Updated my graphics driver

Nothing so far has had a impact on the issues

Any help would be appreciated

 

[jordanxallen]

As a follow up, I ran Furmark and Unigine Heaven Benchmark without changing or doing anything since my first post

For furmark, it ran well no issues, capped out at about 66 degrees C, and matched benchmarks for a GTX 1080

For the Heaven benchmark, when I first ran it, it was having serious issues with framerates ranging from 2 to 120+ with an average of about 45 fps. Tons of stuttering and slow down. Meanwhile the GPU was getting anwhere from 30-50% usage. For some reason though, after I finished the first benchmark run, the GPU usage shot up to 90-100% and I was getting a fairly consistent 120fps without changing any settings and that time it got a benchmark score that was consistent with what a GTX 1080 should get. It also has maintained that performance in the Heaven benchmark and it hasn't gone back to 45 fps performance even after restarting the benchmark and running it more.

However, I'm still getting the same bad performance when I try to play games.

This makes me think that the GPU is not the issue, but I don't know what could be

 

[jordanxallen]

I guess I'll resolve this for anyone that may find it in the future. It looks like (though I can't be 100% certain) that it was a memory issue. I ran some Memory (both RAM and Drives) diagnostics which didn't show any errors, but immediately after running them, the problems went away without changing anything else. In retrospect, the issues I was experiencing were more consistent with memory problems than with GPU/CPU issues.