GTX 1080 Throttling down?

[Orion1]

Now before you start, please be gentle with me, I am a noob and don't know much about the intricacies of how OC'ing works.

Specs:

M5A99FX Pro 2.0

EVGA GTX 1080 FTW

AMD FX 8350

8 Gigs Ram

What I'm Experiencing:

The main game I play, overwatch, hasn't seen an extremely noticeable performance increase since I switched from my Radeon 7800. When I run the game, with EVGA's precisionX tool, I can see my clock speed throttling down to around 1000, almost halved from what it should be. My GPU temp is reading anywhere from 61 to 65 degrees celcius, which shouldn't cause thermal throttling? So I'm really wondering if there's another issue here that someone might be able to help me with. If there's any additional information needed in order to be of assistance, please let me know. Thanks.

 

[dudeman509]

What is GPU usage %? Is VSync turned on in the game configuration?

 

[Orion1]

Thank you for your response. After doing tests, my GPU utilization percentage in HWmonitor hovered around 35 percent, with vsync off.

 

[dudeman509]

That may suggest a CPU handicap.

If that software doesn't show CPU core utilization, something like MSI Afterburner will. See if one of the CPU cores is pegged at 100% while the rest are mostly idle or less utilized.

 

[audie-tron25]

Or you could just run Task Manager in the background while you play (if you don't want to install MSI Afterburner). If the CPU (or any of its cores) max out frequently, the CPU is the culprit. Depending on if there is anything else running in the background, you may want to consider a motherboard+CPU upgrade if you want to get higher FPS.

 

[Orion1]

The cores appear to be functioning properly. Utilization for all 8 are around 70-85 percent while playing. It's frustrating, because I'm getting 85-115 fps on all low settings, when I know I should probably getting more.

 

[king3pj]

What is your FPS while this is happening. By default Overwatch caps your framerate at 70 FPS if you have a 60Hz monitor even with vsync turned off. Depending on what resolution you are playing at your 1080 might not be running at it's full clock speed because it doesn't need to in order to maintain 70 FPS. This is a feature of the card to draw less power and put out less heat when the full clock speed isn't needed.

I have a i5-4590k, GTX 1070, and a 1440p monitor. When I play Overwatch my 1070 doesn't run at it's full 2000MHz clock speed either. If you are still getting 70 FPS you don't actually have a problem. Overwatch just isn't that difficult for these cards to run and since they cap the framerate by default the card doesn't push itself.

Edit: I see that you posted your framerate while I was typing that. In that case my post doesn't apply. It sounds like you removed the framerate cap. This sounds like a CPU bottleneck. All of your CPU cores are near max.

 

[Orion1]

Yeah, looks like it's time to upgrade the CPU I guess.

 

[king3pj]

Yeah, looks like it's time to upgrade the CPU I guess.

Since you have a GTX 1080 that FX 8350 will be the limiting factor in quite a few games even if you overclock the hell out of it. I wouldn't buy a new CPU just for Overwatch since it doesn't need high end hardware but I doubt you bought a 1080 just for that game.

 

[Orion1]

Yeah, looks like it's time to upgrade the CPU I guess.

Since you have a GTX 1080 that FX 8350 will be the limiting factor in quite a few games even if you overclock the hell out of it. I wouldn't buy a new CPU just for Overwatch since it doesn't need high end hardware but I doubt you bought a 1080 just for that game.

No, not just for overwatch. The processor is almost 5 years old now, I suppose it's needs an upgrade anyway.