Issue with frame drops and core speed drops

[dans97]

This issue seems to only be happening on the game "Rust", but I'm not sure the issue is exclusive to just that game. I have posted on the subreddit for rust, and I have had a couple people suggest things, but nothing seems to be working.

Here is my post there.

Here is the contents of the post:

I'm not entirely sure if this problem is with this game, but it is the only game that I have seen the problem in so far, so I figured I'd see if anyone could be of assistance here.

Every 1-2 minutes I get terrible FPS drops, from about 60-70 FPS down to 15-30 FPS, which lasts for about 10 seconds, then it picks back up. This doesn't make the game entirely unplayable, but it's just very annoying, as you could imagine.

I've been monitoring my system with MSI Afterburner and there does seem to be some things that correlate with the frame drops. Here are some screenshots of MSIA:

• 
  http://ezsc.co/1bTegb.png
  http://ezsc.co/1bTehE.png
  http://ezsc.co/1bTehp.png

Some research into this problem made me think that it could be a temperature limit problem, but my card (GTX 680) has a limit of 98C, and I'm only running it at ~60C (Shown in the first image).
There are random drops in my GPU "Core Clock" and some in the "Memory Clock" at around the same time as the frame drops. The "Voltage Limit" and "OV Max Limit" also seem to line up with some (not all) of the frame drops.

Here are my specs:

• 
  CPU: AMD FX-8350 @ ~4.1GHz
  GPU: GeForce GTX 680 4GB
  Memory: 8GB (idk what clock, I can look into if needed)
  PSU: 700W "ModXStream Pro"
  (If anything else is needed, let me know)

I have disabled AMD Cool 'n Quiet in the BIOS, as I figured that may have been underclocking my CPU while running Rust, but it had no effect. I really can't say whether it's a new update that could have caused this or not, as I haven't played in a while before the newest updates. I am stuck on what I can do though, so any help would be appreciated.

I didn't mention in the post, but my graphics drivers are up to date on the latest version: 368.81
I am also not doing any kind of overclocking on my card, the only extra thing I have running on MSI Afterburner is a static fan speed of 85%.

Any help from you guys would be great as well, as this may be more of an issue with my system rather than the game.

 

[n0ns3ns3]

i'd reset the MB bios, uninstall the drivers with DDU + reinstall the driver.
If above does not help, I'd try another PSU (if issue is also present in other GPU intensive apps)

 

[dans97]

i'd reset the MB bios, uninstall the drivers with DDU + reinstall the driver.

I have tried these two steps and the problem seems to persist.

If above does not help, I'd try another PSU (if issue is also present in other GPU intensive apps)

The problem only seems to happen on this one app, however I'm not sure it's a problem with the game itself. It seems to be a problem with my PC that is being shown only with this game, as I have seen no other mentions of any problems like mine anywhere.

I can still try to install a different PSU, and I will post back when I do so. In the meantime, any other suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[n0ns3ns3]

Another option would be clean windows install.

 

[dans97]

Okay, update:

I have tried two different PSU's, one was 700W and one was 500W, and the same thing seems to be happening. However, I also noticed the issue happens in Counter Strike: GO as well, so the issue is not exclusive to Rust, however, the issue does not seem to be happening on any benchmarking software such as FurMark or Heaven, and some games run fine as well such as Skyrim, and Rocket League.

Also, I have downloaded GPU-Z to maybe get some more info on what was happening, and I noticed that every time the frame drops happen, the "PerfCap Reason" is set to "Util" (or perf cap code 16 in the log file), and then it jumps back up to "VRel/VOp". I did some research and if I understand correctly, the "Util" should be fine; if I'm not in a game, unfortunately I am in a game when it happens. I can be just standing still in game with nothing happening on screen, and it will consistently switch back and forth between these two, causing frame drops when it switches to "Util".

Here is a screenshot of my GPU-Z Sensors Tab: http://ezsc.co/1bWA1s.png

I also tried swapping out GPU's to an older one I had laying around; a GTX 560, and the same thing seems to be happening on that, so that makes me think it's not a GPU issue either.

I did recently just switch my motherboard to a new one. Here's the page I bought it from.

I also replaced my stock cooler recently with a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO.

I found this post online where the person seemed to be having a very similar situation, but on a different game. I have also tried everything he has tried, to no avail.

The only thing I can think it would be now are CPU, Mobo, or something with my OS, but I wan't to eliminate all other possibilities before fixing one of these, to avoid any pointless work. Any further help on this would be greatly appreciated.

 

[dans97]

I have had help elsewhere to solve this problem. It turns out it was my motherboard's VRM phase being not enough to properly supply my 125W CPU.
Here's the thread that helped me out: http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3146447/compatibility-issues-bad-board.html

This issue can be closed now.