Question Is my 4080 broken? Keep having to reinstall Nvidia drivers

[thecoolj]

Specs:
- MSI B550M PRO VDH
- Ryzen 5600x
- ASUS TUF RTX 4080 OC
- Ripjaw 64GB 3600MHz
- Corsair RM850x
- Corsair 4000D

I recently upgraded from a 1070 TI to a 4080 and am intermittently experiencing poor performance, often times worse than what I would on my 1070 TI. I noticed it after restarting my PC one time and booting up Battlefield 4. For some reason when this issue occurs I'm only getting about 60 - 80fps at 1440p which is a far cry from normal (when the issue isn't there I easily max out my fps in 1440p according to BF4's in game fps overlay). I had this issue before and thought I fixed it using DDU and reinstalling the Nvidia drivers, but after restarting my PC today the issue seems to have come back. I would prefer not to have to keep reinstalling drivers to be able to play games but I'm not really sure what could be causing this. It also makes the newer gen games completely unplayable (can't even start a save file in Hogwarts Legacy cause of all the input lag due to low fps). I haven't run any benchmarks but I don't think it would fare well anyway. Also, something I've noticed in MSI Afterburner, when the issue is there the memory clock on my GPU is maxed out (11,201MHz) even when idle/not playing any games, but when it isn't the memory clock is pretty low. Everything else looks fine I think besides my CPU temps being a bit high (around 75-85C), but I'm using a stock cooler so I would expect that anyway. Does anyone have any suggestions for this? It almost feels like the drivers are resetting every time I boot up.

 

[Lutfij]

Corsair RM850x
How old is the PSU in your build?

BIOS version for your motherboard at this moment of time? When using DDU, make sure you remove all drivers for all GPU makers, Intel, Nvidia and AMD, then disable the option for the OS to download updates. Then manually reinstall with the latest GPU drivers in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator.

 

[coreybgg]

Hello!

I had a friend face the same issue with high VRAM usage even during idle loads which was resolved by changing the PCIe x16 Bus interface from Auto to Gen 3. I also have a weird issue with a 4090 crashing with Windows resetting drivers and just set this from Auto to Gen 4 last night. Have yet to test extensively, but results a promising.

So depending on the MB that you have, you can do into the BIOS and change to Gen 4, and Gen 3 if the issue persists.

 

[thecoolj]

Hello!

I had a friend face the same issue with high VRAM usage even during idle loads which was resolved by changing the PCIe x16 Bus interface from Auto to Gen 3. I also have a weird issue with a 4090 crashing with Windows resetting drivers and just set this from Auto to Gen 4 last night. Have yet to test extensively, but results a promising.

So depending on the MB that you have, you can do into the BIOS and change to Gen 4, and Gen 3 if the issue persists.

Thanks I'll give this a try as well

 

[thecoolj]

Corsair RM850x
How old is the PSU in your build?

BIOS version for your motherboard at this moment of time? When using DDU, make sure you remove all drivers for all GPU makers, Intel, Nvidia and AMD, then disable the option for the OS to download updates. Then manually reinstall with the latest GPU drivers in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator.

BIOS v is E7C95AMS.2CO and I bought the PSU a little over a week ago. I remember that being an option but decided to leave it checked since I wasn't sure. It looks like manually setting my PCIe x16 Bus interface to Gen 4 may have worked though (strange because I also had to manually set my ram clock speed as well, maybe MB issues?). Clock speed isn't maxed out and frames look fine in a few of the games I'm playing. But I'll definitely follow this procedure when reinstalling drives if it pops up again . Thank you and you as well @coreybgg!