Help. One year old r9 290 framedrops and low performance

[Celsha]

About 2 days ago my graphics was fine but now I am running at very low performance. I updated my driver to Crimson 16.7.3 but it did not fix the problem. I saw in another thread someone fixed it by increasing the power to their card so I used MSI after burner to do that but it still didn't work. Heres a screenshot of Afterburner http://imgur.com/a/h9DK9

The performance graph is me running Dark Souls 3 with all settings set to low. As you can see the card fluctuates between 0 and 100% usage. I have no idea what could be causing this. Any ideas? Help appreciated!

 

[xFeaRDom]

Hi Celsha,

Have you cleaned the graphics card recently? As this could be causing low performance as it will have to underclock its self if it is running at a too high of a temperature. If the fans are blocked or slowed, or if it is in the heatsink for the graphics card, then the cooling efficiency can be dramatically decreased.

If this does not work, or you have cleaned it. Have you tried reseating it. OR have you tried uninstalling the graphics card driver and reinstalling it?