GTX 1080 FE Power throttling (not temp throttling)

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kayaknate

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Sep 23, 2014
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So I got my FE in today. I am able to overclock it to a constant 2Ghz and keep temps ~76, which I'm perfectly comfortable with. In heaven the card runs maxed out and consistently smooth with rare to any stutters. But in Paragon it's a total stutter fest. Temps look good. It looks like the stutters are coming from the power % of the card (which I have set to 120%) I see it his 119 -125, stutter like crazy, then return to normal. This happens ever 5-10 seconds. It's unbearable. You'll see in the screenshot linked that the left side's graph (Heaven) looks good. The middle-right (Paragon) is a mess in the power part (top section)

What piece of the puzzle am I missing? I thought if I could keep temps low I'd be good. Is the game just poorly optimized? Does this have anything to do with power phases? What's letting the card constantly hit to much % power, then throttle. How to I fix it?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9gnOxnP8EsiaWNQU0lVXzdUVE0/view?usp=sharing
 
Solution
photonboy
Points:

1) I see no problems indicated in your graph.

POWER is supposed to fluctuate like that. Not ever frame takes the same amount of power, so the card is constantly adjusting the voltage draw to minimize the heat produced. Intel does the same thing on its CPU's.

2) I suspect it's an issue with the GAME itself, but I can't test it.

3) *I'm no expert, but I don't understand how the graphics card could be causing the stutter as the GPU frequency is running without fluctuating (core clock). It can also work fine with fluctuating but where you say you have issues it's not fluctuating.

There may be something I'm missing though, and even if it's not hardware there can be driver settings that need to be fixed.

4) GPU settings:
As I...
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Known issue.... not uncommon with "reference" designs.

http://videocardz.com/60838/msi-geforce-gtx-1080-gaming-x-is-much-better-than-founders-edition

NVIDIA’s own reference design suffers from severe throttling just after few minutes. It probably wouldn’t be that bad if not the frequency spikes. While average clock is somewhere around officially stated boost clock, those spikes cause micro-stuttering, which negatively affects gaming experience.

Hardware.info:

Founders Edition suffers from a horrendous amount of throttling and it runs +- 150 MHz lower all the time.

Meanwhile, MSI GTX 1080 GAMING X generates almost a straight line for GPU frequency (~1910 MHz), with no spikes and rather constant sub-70 C temperature. This should mean that the gaming experience will be much better, and card should theoretically generate better results in most tests. Also according to H.I. this is also the best custom design they so far tested.
Click to expand...



 
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Remember that the card only has a single 8 pin connector, which is not ideal for OC. Try lowering the power limit to 115% and maybe the OC by 100mhz or so. Maybe that fixes it. Also, have you tried running the game with no overclock to see the performance first? With a 1080 I doubt anybody needs an overclock, it performs well, so if you have to dial the OC back a bit, it's not gonna hurt performance. I wouldn't OC something that cost that much money, I'd rather keep my temps lower and extend the card's longevity.
 
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I think that you a misreading that. If it was throttling due to power limits then the core clock would drop, it's not, so the card is happy. I think that what you are seeing is the utilisation dropping, which drags the power down as it simply doesn't need that much any more. The question then becomes why is my utilisation dropping. The would typically be a CPU issue. So what's the rest of the system?

slight update. There might be no clock throttling, the axis on the graph doesn't go high enough to confirm.
 
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So are you saying that it's the number of pins causing the issue?

Also, I turned off the OC completely and left pwoer limit at 120%. Didn't see the power % getting too high, but the game stuttered the same.
 
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i5 4670k @ 4.4
32GB RAM
Asus VI Hero
Game on SSD

Not sure what it means, but MSI AB also says the page file is maxed. Never understood that part of AB.
 
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Throttling seems to be a recurring theme in the reviews:

1. See above quote:

2. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080/30.html
These are very good results, but the GTX 1080 seems to be limited by the board's power limit and temperatures going above 83°C, which will both result in lower clocks due to NVIDIA Boost. Still, the real-life performance gains are there and are significant - take a look below.
Click to expand...

3. Tho i think Jay's 2cents amounts to overcharging, he also documented it and how he "fixed" it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXUo1S55ZUM&index=67&list=WL

Note the statement at the 12:00 minute mark:

"The reality here is that all of the reference cards in the history of the reference cards have done this. This nothing new.".

If you are going to buy a reference card, you should expect thermal throttling.

4. Nvidia promises a fix
http://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-fan-issues-fix/

 
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So I did watch that vid yesterday. I'm thinking I need to do more testing than just Paragon. Also, Nvidia released that driver update with the fan fix today.
 
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Ok. So it does the exact same thing with default settings. I think I just need to try some more games.
 
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1. It's a reference card. Reference cards throttle, this is nothing new; this is expected.

2. The proposed nVidia driver fix should help, dunno if it will solve, but it definitely will be louder.

3. Exchange it for a non-reference card which does not produce this behavior, such as the MSI Gaming detailed above. If ya take this route, do it before the 'fix' comes out. You may not have "grounds" afterwards.

Do a web search on 1080 thermal throttling, you will find dozens of reviews, users all experiencing the same thing.... and they aren't using your game or your settings.

 
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Points:

1) I see no problems indicated in your graph.

POWER is supposed to fluctuate like that. Not ever frame takes the same amount of power, so the card is constantly adjusting the voltage draw to minimize the heat produced. Intel does the same thing on its CPU's.

2) I suspect it's an issue with the GAME itself, but I can't test it.

3) *I'm no expert, but I don't understand how the graphics card could be causing the stutter as the GPU frequency is running without fluctuating (core clock). It can also work fine with fluctuating but where you say you have issues it's not fluctuating.

There may be something I'm missing though, and even if it's not hardware there can be driver settings that need to be fixed.

4) GPU settings:
As I said before, go back to default and see if that helps though not sure why it would.

5) GAME settings:
Any time a games stutters you should:
a) Drop settings really low, and
b) disable VSYNC

If the obvious stutter disappears then increase the settings a few at a time and see if a particular setting is causing issues.

Other:
a) The 8-pin is plenty of power for that card. That's been proven.

b) As said, they are tweaking the fan profile though that's not going to affect stuttering like this.

c) These cards are designed to run near 82degC. That's quite safe. Once you figure out the best overclocking vs noise profile you should just leave it alone. Not sure about the Founders card but other non-reference ones allow 93degC on the GPU. 82degC was chosen to be a really reliable temperature to hit regularly. The higher you go above this the less life the GPU has though it's hard to predict.

Anyway, do not worry about hitting the default throttle point in terms of life of the GPU.

d) Games vary in how hot they make the GPU. Some will hit 82degC and throttle down. If that happens fairly often you may want to investigate a case with a side fan to blow air OVER the graphics card in addition to proper air flow.

A CPU liquid cooler will also remove heat directly (rad fan as exhaust) thus the internal case won't get as hot as it would with an air cooler. I don't know how much benefit there would be.

e) GPU Boost 3.0's per voltage point utility will improve a little bit in the future.

Summary:
A lot of confusion about how cards work, but at the very least i see no issues with your hardware.

Your performance is mostly going to be limited by GPU temperature for the Founders card. You can optimize that profile by adjusting a few settings, but once that's done you'd the all you can do is try to reduce temp of the GPU via:
a) side fan
b) CPU liquid cooler
c) improve case air flow

The side fan would likely give the largest benefit, and the others depend on how good your current setup is already.
 
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Solution


This is all very helpful info. I'm going to have to read it in detail when I have more time, but for now I'd just like to add that it does seem to be something with Paragon specifically. Other games seem to run at a more consistent framerate while paragon seems to drop frames. That said, I do see my CPU maxing out on many other games I tested (it sits at about 85-98% on paragon), which could also mean that my CPU is just at it's threshold of bottlenecking the 1080.
 
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Not sure if you found the answer you were looking for yet or not but I thought I might be able to help so here I am. After having the same issue with my FE card I realized that there are different versions of MSI AB that you can choose. The one I use has a drop down arrow next to the power adjustment. Click that and you will see an option to link them. Leave it linked, however, you'll notice the temp changes as you increase the power setting. If you want it to work properly you'll need to over lock your fan. I set it manually to 70-75%. This keeps it plenty cool and allows the gtx 1080 to open its lungs. You should see a noticeable improvement. Let me know :)

Hope this helps
 
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I set my fan curve to 10% higher than the GPU temp (40*=50%fan, 50*=60% fan etc.) This has kept my card below 75* - yes 10* cooler than the stock fan profile. The other thing I did was jack up the power limit to 120%, It rarely hits this (Still occaisionally does) but this eliminates 95% of the power throttling you might experience.

I did not have very much luck overclocking this card and could only get to around +120 mhz with decent stability ~ even that had some small artifacts in witcher 3 so I toned it back a bit.
 
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The card throttles at 82C (not 85C)

+ 120MHz .. is that what you entered in MSI AB or is that what was max observed in GPU_z ? And are we talking core or boost clocks ?
75C is average or peak ?

TPU managed +453
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080/30.html

Guru3D managed +200
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/nvidia_geforce_gtx_1080_review,29.html

Hardwareinfo managed +273 ... but look what happened

GTX-1080-FE-clocks-over-time.png


They started out at 1880, soon after they were topping out at 1795, averaging 1780 and dropping as low as 1680. So while opening GPU_z will read 1880, Boost 3.0's protection features are kicking in and dropping it for short durations down to as much as 1680. If you're getting throttled in any way, you should be able to see that on the sensors tab where Perf.Reason graph will change color
 
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+120hz in AB - It hovered in the mid to high 1900s at this OC. Even without the overclock with the stock fan curve would have it shoot to the 83* max almost immediately. I updated with my custom fan curve to (C*+10%) and it sits at around 72* with a MAX of 75* - MUCH better.

At the +120hz level I would see 100%-110% power usage, occasionally hitting 120% which in turn caused it to hit the limit and downclock. (which makes me sad)
 
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