GTX 970 not performing as expected

[zengotten]

I recently "upgraded" from a GTX 780 3GB to a GTX 970 4GB. On the graphics card charts found on Tom's Hardware it shows that the 970 consistently beats the 780 by 20-30 fps and is always a close contender to the 780 ti. I've seen this on multiple other reviews as well including a review for the exact 970 I bought.

The problem is that now that I've installed the 970 I am getting worse FPS than I did with my 780. I am now getting FPS similar to what I was getting back when I had my 750 ti.

I used DDU to uninstall my drivers when I switched cards and installed the latest Nvidia drivers for my card. I've tried installing older drivers and messing with the nvidia settings but nothing has changed. Please help!

My specs:

Intel Xeon X5670 OCed to 3.2 Ghz
12GB 1600 Mhz RAM

 

[zengotten]

I ran some benchmarks on the new 970 and noted the FPS I was getting. I installed my old 780 and am now getting nearly double the FPS. This is ridiculous, please help! I used DDU to clean drivers before I installed the 780 and I installed the same exact version of drivers I used with the 970

 

[AreFlame]

Could you monitor your CPU usage on both gpus under load while gaming?

 

[zengotten]

Yes I just swapped them out and I get the same CPU usage, around 25 - 30%, FPS is about half with the 970.

One thing I did notice is that the 970 graphics usage never goes above 51%, but I've seen it go 80% and upwards with the old 780

 

[maxalge]

Yes I just swapped them out and I get the same CPU usage, around 25 - 30%, FPS is about half with the 970.

One thing I did notice is that the 970 graphics usage never goes above 51%, but I've seen it go 80% and upwards with the old 780

power supply make and model?

updated motherboard bios to newest in manufacturer's website?

 

[zengotten]

Power supply: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817703013

Yes my BIOS is updated to the latest version, latest version was released in 2011, my motherboard is a EVGA X58 Classified: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188039

 

[maxalge]

Power supply: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817703013

Yes my BIOS is updated to the latest version, latest version was released in 2011, my motherboard is a EVGA X58 Classified: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188039

disable all power saving features

set windows power options to high performance



run a benchmark like heaven, or valley

im curious to see your score

 

[zengotten]

I changed the power setting from adaptive to maximum performance in the Nvidia control panel and my windows power options were already set to high performance.

Here is the result of the Heaven benchmark on the 970: http://i.imgur.com/YzKkxvs.jpg

I noticed while I was running the Heaven benchmark that my GPU performance was 80 - 100%, this is puzzling because in all of my games I've never seen it above 51%, I even tested out my games again to see if the power setting in the Nvidia control panel fixed anything, I had already changed that setting in the past when I was first trying to figure out what was wrong.

 

[zengotten]

I swapped out the cards again using DDU and everything, here is the benchmark on the 780: http://i.imgur.com/R3k7iyK.jpg

The 780 is still beating the 970 by a little bit.

The 970 seems to be performing fine on the Heaven benchmark but I did not buy this card so I could run Heaven. Any idea why the GPU usage is 100% on Heaven but only 50% on all other games?

 

[maxalge]

I swapped out the cards again using DDU and everything, here is the benchmark on the 780: http://i.imgur.com/R3k7iyK.jpg

The 780 is still beating the 970 by a little bit.

The 970 seems to be performing fine on the Heaven benchmark but I did not buy this card so I could run Heaven. Any idea why the GPU usage is 100% on Heaven but only 50% on all other games?

looks like you have vsync enabled looking at that score


cpu is most likely the issue

which games are you trying to play?

 

[zengotten]

Vsync was not enabled, I used the Extreme preset and it is disabled by default, plus I could see in several scenes I was getting 100+ FPS, if Vsync was enabled the FPS would be capped to 60.

Since I've been swapping the cards out so many times and uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers, one time when I put in the 970 I deselected all of the driver options like the 3D vision, Audio driver, and Geforce Experience and left only the Physx driver selected. I also checked clean install. And after that the 970 started to perform better on all games. It is now performing exactly as good as my 780 did, which is still disappointing but at least it's not half FPS anymore.

I have many many games I play, but the ones I was testing with while I was swapping out the cards were Counter Strike GO, Total War Attila, and GTA 5.

Before I was getting:
CSGO: 70-120fps with the 970 and 250-300fps with the 780
Attila: 37fps average with the 970 and 67fps average with the 780
GTA 5: 20-30fps with the 970 and 70-80 fps with the 780

Now the 970 is performing pretty much exactly the same as the 780, maybe like 5fps less if anything. Like I said it's still disappointing but better than half FPS

I wonder why you would think it was the CPU? I have a beast of a CPU and if it could handle getting 250-300fps alongside the 780 on CSGO then why would it not be able to handle getting at least the same when paired with a different card?

I am unable to select my own post as a solution, would you be kind to just quote this post to I could select your quote as the solution?

 

[maxalge]

Vsync was not enabled, I used the Extreme preset and it is disabled by default, plus I could see in several scenes I was getting 100+ FPS, if Vsync was enabled the FPS would be capped to 60.

Since I've been swapping the cards out so many times and uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers, one time when I put in the 970 I deselected all of the driver options like the 3D vision, Audio driver, and Geforce Experience and left only the Physx driver selected. I also checked clean install. And after that the 970 started to perform better on all games. It is now performing exactly as good as my 780 did, which is still disappointing but at least it's not half FPS anymore.

I have many many games I play, but the ones I was testing with while I was swapping out the cards were Counter Strike GO, Total War Attila, and GTA 5.

Before I was getting:
CSGO: 70-120fps with the 970 and 250-300fps with the 780
Attila: 37fps average with the 970 and 67fps average with the 780
GTA 5: 20-30fps with the 970 and 70-80 fps with the 780

Now the 970 is performing pretty much exactly the same as the 780, maybe like 5fps less if anything. Like I said it's still disappointing but better than half FPS

I wonder why you would think it was the CPU? I have a beast of a CPU and if it could handle getting 250-300fps alongside the 780 on CSGO then why would it not be able to handle getting at least the same when paired with a different card?

I am unable to select my own post as a solution, would you be kind to just quote this post to I could select it as the solution?

I should have specified, temp throttling could be causing this are you monitoring the cpu's temperatures?

also have you updated the mobo bios?

 

[zengotten]

My BIOS has been updated to the latest version since 2011. My CPU never goes above 50 degrees while gaming.