Huge FPS drops with Asus GTX 960 OC Strix GPU

[Horn__Christopher]

Hello guys. I bought a new PC like a half year ago,I could always run games in Very High - Ultra graphic settings getting no laggs,or fps drops,but since I installed Assassin's Creed Syndicate and The Wicher 3 I get huge FPS drop in every single game.I play CS:GO daily,I always get 210-280 fps and I sometimes have an fps drop down to 30-60 fps,and I don't know why.

These are my specs:
-ASUS GeForce GTX 960 STRIX DirectCU OC 2GB DDR5 128-bit
-Intel Core i3 4170 3.7 GHz
-Patriot Signature Line 8GB DDR3 1600 MHz of RAM
-Seagate 1000 GB Sata III 64 MB HDD
-Inter-tech Combat Power Plus 550Watt source
-Gigabyte GA-H81M-S motherboard

 

[Horn__Christopher]

*Edit,here are two screenshots taken in GPU-Z just before- and after launching CS:GO
http://postimg.org/image/we1iu4c6j/ -before start
http://postimg.org/image/5e6k7vycr/ -after start

 

[Litzkrieg]

Obligatory question - Do you have the most recent drivers?
So before installing those games, you had high FPS, and after they dropped?
One issue I can see is that your CPU may be bottlenecking your card. Your card is likely faster, and the processor might have a problem with it. Is it every game you are having framerate drops, or just the ones you mentioned? You might try uninstalling them to see if they have something to do with it, but I doubt it.

On your photos, it shows your GPU at 96% load and almost all your memory in use BEFORE you start the game. You may want to double check that. If that is true, what is your card doing?

 

[Horn__Christopher]

Obligatory question - Do you have the most recent drivers?
So before installing those games, you had high FPS, and after they dropped?
One issue I can see is that your CPU may be bottlenecking your card. Your card is likely faster, and the processor might have a problem with it. Is it every game you are having framerate drops, or just the ones you mentioned? You might try uninstalling them to see if they have something to do with it, but I doubt it.

On your photos, it shows your GPU at 96% load and almost all your memory in use BEFORE you start the game. You may want to double check that. If that is true, what is your card doing?

I do have all my drivers up-to-date,before installing The Witcher and The AC Syndicate I had high FPS,the first FPS drop occured while playing The Witcher for like an hour.
And yes,my GPU load is 97% right now as well,and I'm not running any games right now,but I just put the Energy to maximum in nVidia control panel in 3D settings at the global options.And another very interesting thing is that when I get an FPS drop in CS:GO,I fast restart my PC, reconnect to the game and it becomes stable,fps getting back to 200+ FPS again.

 

[Litzkrieg]

That is really weird. It sounds like your card is having cache issues, or it is running something in the background. By resetting it, you are clearing the cache/memory and running it fresh. It shouldn't have much of a load at all when idle... I would try reseating the card in another PCIE slot to see if that is causing a data flow problem, but unlikely. Try completely uninstalling the video card drivers, and doing a clean install of the newest ones, and see if that helps.

It could be a virus or malware. You can troubleshoot this like this:
1. Close all known running apps.
2. Push ctrl-shift-esc (assuming you are using Win7) to open Windows Task Manager.
3. Click the Processes tab, and find the app using up your resources - the offending app will invariably also be using a significant amount of CPU cycles and RAM.
4. Right click Properties on the item from the pop-up to find its physical location on your system.
5. End the process by again right clicking on the process and selecting End Process from the pop-up.
6. Navigate to the folder shown in 4. with Explorer and delete the app (probably a .exe file).

Bitcoin miners use GPU, so make sure one didn't get on your system, like msdn.exe.

I would also do a full malware/virus system scan. Have you installed any questionable, weird programs on your computer?

 

[Horn__Christopher]

That is really weird. It sounds like your card is having cache issues, or it is running something in the background. By resetting it, you are clearing the cache/memory and running it fresh. It shouldn't have much of a load at all when idle... I would try reseating the card in another PCIE slot to see if that is causing a data flow problem, but unlikely. Try completely uninstalling the video card drivers, and doing a clean install of the newest ones, and see if that helps.

It could be a virus or malware. You can troubleshoot this like this:
1. Close all known running apps.
2. Push ctrl-shift-esc (assuming you are using Win7) to open Windows Task Manager.
3. Click the Processes tab, and find the app using up your resources - the offending app will invariably also be using a significant amount of CPU cycles and RAM.
4. Right click Properties on the item from the pop-up to find its physical location on your system.
5. End the process by again right clicking on the process and selecting End Process from the pop-up.
6. Navigate to the folder shown in 4. with Explorer and delete the app (probably a .exe file).

Bitcoin miners use GPU, so make sure one didn't get on your system, like msdn.exe.

I would also do a full malware/virus system scan. Have you installed any questionable, weird programs on your computer?

Wow!I think I had a virus,I have deleted a Java file exe which used 28% of my CPU,and after ending the process and deleting the exe file my GPU Load is down to 2%
http://postimg.org/image/6g28gih7v/ -the file
http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/16/05/26/b7q.png - gpu-z screenshot after deleting the file.

Do you think this caused the problem?

 

[Litzkrieg]

Much better. If your card stays in better shape, probably was the problem.

Since it was in uTorrent, I am gonna guess it was malware hiding and trying to look like the Java update scheduler, which has the same file name. Hopefully it stays healthy!

 

[Horn__Christopher]

Much better. If your card stays in better shape, probably was the problem.

Since it was in uTorrent, I am gonna guess it was malware hiding and trying to look like the Java update scheduler, which has the same file name. Hopefully it stays healthy!

Thank you for the help! Have a nice day!

 

[delrocks22]

Wow, im having the exact same problem with my gtx 960...lucky you for getting such an easy solution :/
my thread : http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3069631/gtx-960-performing.html
help me experienced fellas :'|

 

[DelroyMonjo]

Wicher and Assassin's Creed are a lot more hard core textured than CSGO and that i3-4170 and a GTX960 simply run out of gas, especially when using HIGH or Ultra settings.

 

[Horn__Christopher]

Wicher and Assassin's Creed are a lot more hard core textured than CSGO and that i3-4170 and a GTX960 simply run out of gas, especially when using HIGH or Ultra settings.

They are running very nice now without any lags,I had a malware that used more than 27% of my CPU and my GPU load was above 90% and the memory used was over 1900 MB while on idle. Now,after deleting the malware I have a 0/1/2 % GPU Load on idle and 250 MB memory use.