GTX 960 Clock Speed Decaying While Gaming.

[Ian Fitchett]

Context:
Hello, this thread is being posted due to what I believe is an issue with a laptop I just bought. I just recently purchased an ASUS ROG GL551JW-DS71 and it's GPU is behaving very strangely. My bouts with customer support have been futile and they are telling me to send the laptop in for servicing, but I'm still not entirely convinced that i have to go that far, so coming here is my last resort before deciding what to do.

Details:
So the laptop seems to have no issues. When launching Crysis 3, the GPU behaves normally for a few minutes. After just a few minutes, the clock speed of the GPU will begin to decay from 1180Mhz until it has finally reached 405Mhz. I have never seen the temperature of my GPU go above 75C, and I have never heard my laptop's fan make more than a peep. On top of that, if I relaunch the game, regardless my GPU's temp, it will repeat the same behanvior. The GPU clock speed starts at 1180 Mhz and quickly drops to 405Mhz. I've noticed that it seems to decay to this exact number: 405Mhz on all games. For instance when running Heroes of the Storm my clock speed also decays to exactly 405Mhz. It seems like something is limiting the output of my GPU but I simply cannot figure out what it is.

Is it normal for GPU clock speed to behave this way? Is this a common/known issue with gaming laptops? Has anyone experienced/seen this before? I would greatly appreciate any help anyone can offer.

Specs:
OS: Windows 8.1 64bit
CPU: i7 4720HQ
GPU: GTX 960 2GB GDDR5
RAM: 16GB DDR3
HDD: 1TB 7200RPM

EDIT: Ok so I started using TechPowerUp GPU-Z which reports the reason a card may be performance capped and it starts reporting a thermal performance cap at just 70C which is barely above idle temperatures. Even for a laptop this seems like a ludicrously low thermal cap.

If you need any more information you can look up the model or ask me here. Again, I appreciate any help that someone may be able to offer.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Sounds like a faulty GPU to me. I'd send it back. There's not much else that could cause that aside from a lack of RAM or memory leak bottlenecking the GPU but going off your specs and the title you listed, that's doubtful. Seems likely to be a faulty GPU regardless that it's not a thermal issue. Could have faulty VRAM or more likely the cores are being throttled for thermal reasons which would also have the effect of the temps failing to rise any further.

 

[Ian Fitchett]

Sounds like a faulty GPU to me. I'd send it back. There's not much else that could cause that aside from a lack of RAM or memory leak bottlenecking the GPU but going off your specs and the title you listed, that's doubtful. Seems likely to be a faulty GPU regardless that it's not a thermal issue. Could have faulty VRAM or more likely the cores are being throttled for thermal reasons which would also have the effect of the temps failing to rise any further.

Thank you for the response. I think I'm going to return this unit for a new one and see there's a difference. Either way I'll update the thread when I know more.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Ok, good luck. I'd be extremely surprised if the new unit had the same behavior.