MSI GTX 1060 6GB running poorly! Help!

[CyroZentaku]

I just recently built my first gaming PC, and have been noticing some nasty framerates while testing it out. In GTA V my frame rate goes from 40-60 (even dropping to the 30s in some areas), on just the default settings (very high), when many benchmarks claim that my GPU should be able to run the game on ultra with a constant of 60fps.

I'm a complete novice when it comes to modern PC gaming, so perhaps there is something I missed or didn't do? I made sure to do a clean install of the GPU's drivers. I can't imagine my CPU would be bottle-necking it, as most sites list it as going far beyond the recommended specs for GTA V. Perhaps it's something on the physical side?

My Specs:
Processor: Intel i7 4770 3.4ghz (no overclocking)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 EXTREME4 ATX LGA1150
Powersupply: SeaSonic Platinum 860W 80+ Platinum
Ram: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2133
OS: Windows 8
Monitor: 1920x1080 60Htz

I've also noticed that shadows in most of the games with good lighting have been looking a little strange; they flicker and look very pixelated. Not all games, but this occurs in Ark, Skyrim/MineCraft with lighting mods,and GTA V (though it seems to look fine during the morning in game in GTA's case).

EDIT:
I've tried running MSI Afterburner and the only thing that looks off to me is that the "power" never goes above 75%. So I'm thinking perhaps there is something wrong with the PSU, or cable supplying enough power. But I'm not sure. My CPU is doing great, however, staying around 30%, so I'm sure it's not bottlenecking.

 

[amtseung]

I've also noticed that shadows in most of the games with good lighting have been looking a little strange; they flicker and look very pixelated. Not all games, but this occurs in Ark, Skyrim/MineCraft with lighting mods,and GTA V (though it seems to look fine during the morning in game in GTA's case).

This is typically a texture smoothing/AA/AO thing when things are turned on in the NVidia Control Panel that conflict with what the game code is trying to do.

Digging through the menu, I found this:
"Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization
Select Off if you see shimmering on objects"

Not sure if this is the same, but it's probably one of these settings that's doing it, especially if it's conflicting with GTA4/5 and Skyrim ENB's. ENB's and anisotropic texture filtering don't play nice together... usually.

I've tried running MSI Afterburner and the only thing that looks off to me is that the "power" never goes above 75%. So I'm thinking perhaps there is something wrong with the PSU, or cable supplying enough power. But I'm not sure. My CPU is doing great, however, staying around 30%, so I'm sure it's not bottlenecking.

It's doing this to me too, but I'm pretty sure it's running at 100% when it needs to. In fact, my "power" thing, fully overclocked, with the voltage slider smacked all the way to the right, never, ever goes over 80%.

CPU at 30%? In game? Something's off, especially for games like Ark and GTA. Temps? Game config files? I think your CPU is holding back your GPU. Whether it's caused by Vsync, a poor implementation of frame smoothing, some other kind of frame buffer sync technology, or CPU thermal throttling, this needs investigation.

 

[CyroZentaku]

I've also noticed that shadows in most of the games with good lighting have been looking a little strange; they flicker and look very pixelated. Not all games, but this occurs in Ark, Skyrim/MineCraft with lighting mods,and GTA V (though it seems to look fine during the morning in game in GTA's case).

This is typically a texture smoothing/AA/AO thing when things are turned on in the NVidia Control Panel that conflict with what the game code is trying to do.

Digging through the menu, I found this:
"Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization
Select Off if you see shimmering on objects"

Not sure if this is the same, but it's probably one of these settings that's doing it, especially if it's conflicting with GTA4/5 and Skyrim ENB's. ENB's and anisotropic texture filtering don't play nice together... usually.

I've tried running MSI Afterburner and the only thing that looks off to me is that the "power" never goes above 75%. So I'm thinking perhaps there is something wrong with the PSU, or cable supplying enough power. But I'm not sure. My CPU is doing great, however, staying around 30%, so I'm sure it's not bottlenecking.

It's doing this to me too, but I'm pretty sure it's running at 100% when it needs to. In fact, my "power" thing, fully overclocked, with the voltage slider smacked all the way to the right, never, ever goes over 80%.

CPU at 30%? In game? Something's off, especially for games like Ark and GTA. Temps? Game config files? I think your CPU is holding back your GPU. Whether it's caused by Vsync, a poor implementation of frame smoothing, some other kind of frame buffer sync technology, or CPU thermal throttling, this needs investigation.

Sorry the 30% CPU was for Witcher 3. It goes around 50-60% during peaks in GTA V with temps of 46. I'll try posting screenshots of hardware readings in a moment. I've stabilised the FPS in GTA V by keep everything below Ultra and turning off advanced graphics settings, but I shouldn't have too. I haven't attempted over clocking yet at all, a bit afraid of damaging my card. Might try it sometime soon, though. Doubt it'd be enough difference to get say Witcher 3 on Ultra with hair works from running at 40-50fps to 60-70fps like in the video recordings I've seen.

 

[amtseung]

Sorry the 30% CPU was for Witcher 3. It goes around 50-60% during peaks in GTA V with temps of 46. I'll try posting screenshots of hardware readings in a moment. I've stabilised the FPS in GTA V by keep everything below Ultra and turning off advanced graphics settings, but I shouldn't have too. I haven't attempted over clocking yet at all, a bit afraid of damaging my card. Might try it sometime soon, though. Doubt it'd be enough difference to get say Witcher 3 on Ultra with hair works from running at 40-50fps to 60-70fps like in the video recordings I've seen.

You shouldn't have to overclock your card. GPU Boost 3.0 should put your card at like 2ghz+ anyway as long as the temps stay below 50C (fan speeds at or above 55% will keep this card below 50C pretty much all the time).

My hunch is that your CPU is somehow being held back, and thus never fully loads, slowing down everything else down the river, like your GPU. If it isn't temps, maybe it's a bios setting? 50-60% in GTA5 at ultra is impossibly low. Same game, true ultra, pinned my buddy's 5820k (at 4.5ghz) at 85% with the benchmarking utility. Actually in game, it was even higher.

Oh, and hairworks is utter garbage. It kills framerates for something you can't see. It's pretty much a proprietary tessellation method to murder all the GPU's, on an object so small, with so many additional geometries being generated, just turning it on and leaving it at the lowest level, you'll lose like a good 30% of your fpses. Maxing it out, you'll lose something closer to 70%. You'd have to play the game entirely zoomed into the poor dude's head just to hopefully see a difference anyway. If you zoom out enough to actually play the game, the GPU actually just re-filters all the textures, and all the visible tesselation is lost. From my experimentation, it's worthless and should be removed. From every game. It's a horrible gimmick. Tested with a Maxwell Titan X, the 5820k mentioned earlier, and 32gb of RAM.

/rant

Things to try:
1.) turn off all the power savings features for everything in bios.
2.) in the nvidia control panel, set "multi-display/mixed-gpu acceleration" to "Single display performance mode" and set "Power management mode" to "Prefer maximum performance"
3.) set threaded optimization to on
4.) turn off all the syncs (vysnc, adaptive vsync, gsync, fast, whatever, turn it all off)
5.) unpark CPU cores...?
6.) make sure that your GPU is doing the PhysX (and hairworks) things, and not your CPU, also in the NCP.
7.) dl and install Afterburner 4.3.0, max out the voltage % slider, the thermal limit slider, and the power limit % slider, and try gaming again.

how hot is your GPU getting?

 

[CyroZentaku]

Sorry the 30% CPU was for Witcher 3. It goes around 50-60% during peaks in GTA V with temps of 46. I'll try posting screenshots of hardware readings in a moment. I've stabilised the FPS in GTA V by keep everything below Ultra and turning off advanced graphics settings, but I shouldn't have too. I haven't attempted over clocking yet at all, a bit afraid of damaging my card. Might try it sometime soon, though. Doubt it'd be enough difference to get say Witcher 3 on Ultra with hair works from running at 40-50fps to 60-70fps like in the video recordings I've seen.

You shouldn't have to overclock your card. GPU Boost 3.0 should put your card at like 2ghz+ anyway as long as the temps stay below 50C (fan speeds at or above 55% will keep this card below 50C pretty much all the time).

My hunch is that your CPU is somehow being held back, and thus never fully loads, slowing down everything else down the river, like your GPU. If it isn't temps, maybe it's a bios setting? 50-60% in GTA5 at ultra is impossibly low. Same game, true ultra, pinned my buddy's 5820k (at 4.5ghz) at 85% with the benchmarking utility. Actually in game, it was even higher.

Oh, and hairworks is utter garbage. It kills framerates for something you can't see. It's pretty much a proprietary tessellation method to murder all the GPU's, on an object so small, with so many additional geometries being generated, just turning it on and leaving it at the lowest level, you'll lose like a good 30% of your fpses. Maxing it out, you'll lose something closer to 70%. You'd have to play the game entirely zoomed into the poor dude's head just to hopefully see a difference anyway. If you zoom out enough to actually play the game, the GPU actually just re-filters all the textures, and all the visible tesselation is lost. From my experimentation, it's worthless and should be removed. From every game. It's a horrible gimmick. Tested with a Maxwell Titan X, the 5820k mentioned earlier, and 32gb of RAM.

/rant

Things to try:
1.) turn off all the power savings features for everything in bios.
2.) in the nvidia control panel, set "multi-display/mixed-gpu acceleration" to "Single display performance mode" and set "Power management mode" to "Prefer maximum performance"
3.) set threaded optimization to on
4.) turn off all the syncs (vysnc, adaptive vsync, gsync, fast, whatever, turn it all off)
5.) unpark CPU cores...?
6.) make sure that your GPU is doing the PhysX (and hairworks) things, and not your CPU, also in the NCP.
7.) dl and install Afterburner 4.3.0, max out the voltage % slider, the thermal limit slider, and the power limit % slider, and try gaming again.

how hot is your GPU getting?

http://imgur.com/a/SAdBv this is the lowest fps area I could find in GTA at the moment after having everything on very high (post-processing on ultra... I just realised that very-high is the highest most of the settings go in GTA) and put back on all the advanced graphics back on. My GPU Usage is at it's fullest, but for soem reason power is at 53%. See what I mean? That's a little strange to me. I would think the more usage it gets the more of it's max power it needs to draw from the PSU. I'm a bit bewildered. Perhaps this is normal, but it's weird to someone fresh to PC building like me.

Keep in mind I am using an intel i7, and a lot of people and sites list this processor as being well over the recommended hardware for GTA V and games like Witcher 3.I'll try getting a screenshot of Witcher 3 as well, which always has frame drops in ultra even with hairworks off (just using hairworks as a way to compare my performance against the one in the video). Without hairworks I'm around 48-58 FPS on ultra depending on what I'm looking at.

I did put the GPU on max performance, and set it to single display, but I didn't do many of those other settings yet. in fact, I've never messed with the bios for anything at all (gonna look up how to). threaded optimization was set to auto by default, but I just turned it to ON like you suggested. I assume you mean turning off my v-sync in game, and not the NCP? Not sure how to go about doing steps 5 and 6, I'll take a look after posting this reply.

This is what my NCP looks like atm: http://imgur.com/a/Z5EW2 and http://imgur.com/a/WuWIU anything I should change?

EDIT: Witcher 3: http://imgur.com/a/qKukI (Ultra, Hairworks OFF) I should be going constant 60 with no drops at all if someone can get it to 70+ with hair works on. GPU Usage 99%, but 75% for power.

 

[amtseung]

I think your GPU is performing as intended. GPU Boost 3.0 certainly did kick in, so it's getting enough power and everything. I wouldn't worry about like 90% of the things being monitored on Afterburner, since they seem so counter-intuitive. It's weird, and throws off a lot of people I've spoken to when upgrading to Pascal GPU's.

Between an i7 and an i5, most games will have 0 difference in performance. Especially games like Witcher 3, which when pushed, likes to hammer 1-2 cores (2/4 = 50%~ish, regardless of how it's split up by hyperthreading). GTA5 is coded to like more threads though. Regardless, for every game today, an i7 4770 should be plenty. Except Planetside 2. Planetside 2 will forever murder every CPU in existence.

What concerns me is where it says RAM:9156MB when you should have 16GB. Reseat the RAM, use different slots, try and get it to register all 16GB. I think this is a surface symptom of something deeper. Dead RAM? Faulty motherboard? I don't know yet.

Oh, and turn off all that DSR stuff.

 

[CyroZentaku]

What concerns me is where it says RAM:9156MB when you should have 16GB. Reseat the RAM, use different slots, try and get it to register all 16GB. I think this is a surface symptom of something deeper. Dead RAM? Faulty motherboard? I don't know yet.

My task manager tells me I have 16GBs if ram, and it has gone above to 10000MB of ram in Arc. I've been assuming that's just displaying how much ram is currently being used by said game at the moment, since the number flucuates mid-game. Although I have both my ram cards in the last two slots, since it's a bit hard to fit them in with my CPU fan in the way. Not sure if that would effect anything.

Turned off the DSR settings.

 

[amtseung]

What concerns me is where it says RAM:9156MB when you should have 16GB. Reseat the RAM, use different slots, try and get it to register all 16GB. I think this is a surface symptom of something deeper. Dead RAM? Faulty motherboard? I don't know yet.

My task manager tells me I have 16GBs if ram, and it has gone above to 10000MB of ram in Arc. I've been assuming that's just displaying how much ram is currently being used by said game at the moment, since the number flucuates mid-game.

Turned off the DSR settings.

My bad, it threw me for a loop because I usually have afterburner give me both values (used/installed). Ignore what I said before about RAM as long as your task manager tells you you've got all 16GB, and you don't have a large chunk of it as "hardware reserved". It's getting late for me. I must be getting old.

 

[CyroZentaku]

Hmm. I just realized that when I built this PC, I never uninstalled the old mobo drivers. I installed the new ones but never removed the olds ones, unless the installers did that for me. Maybe that could be an issue. I also want to try installing a new copy of windows at some point, since I'm still using a version from my old-pre-built PC, so it's cluttered with bloatware. I haven't even been updating my current OS, since everytime I did on the old PC new glitches would appear that'd make me have to factory reset to fix.

 

[amtseung]

If you went and did a clean install of Windows, that would solve all the problems you've listed above, since you (and I, both) are on unsupported versions of an OS. Before you do this though, I'd say, definitely go remove all the old stuff (could definitely be a driver conflict), and while you're at it, download Guru DDU and run it, and install just the .19 Nvidia drivers, since .33 has all kinds of problems. Then go dig through your list of installed programs and features, and just uninstall stuff you feel like you don't know or don't need. As a last ditch, uninstall geforce experience. I've heard of it causing all kinds of problems when run in tandem with newer games.

 

[LogicBomb31]

You definitely need to do a fresh install of windows if you change the motherboard, new build needs a fresh install. You may find a way to fix everything but it won't be perfect. I guarantee it's very worth it to reinstall windows and I'd jump through the hoops if you don't have the recovery media.

About the flickering, don't touch the PCIe frequency in the BIOS, put to default or 100MHz. If you did not touch PCIe frequency then most likely due to your mucked up windows.
Load default BIOS settings, reconfig to your liking then reinstall windows.

Tip: Defaults might not fully change your boot settings, so I'd recommend UEFI boot mode and NO secure boot for windows.

 

[CyroZentaku]

Hmm. Then I shall go and buy myself Windows 10, gives me a perfect excuse to finally upgrade. Dumb question, but when I install Windows 10, will that erase everything on my HDD? Including all drivers and previous bios? I've never never messed with bios before, or even entered the bios screen. I'd rather avoid having to go do anything where I might screw something important up my mistake.

 

[LogicBomb31]

If you're not comfortable going into to BIOS then get a buddy or someone but it's very worth it to correctly setup your PC, done right you'll enjoy your PC for a very long time.

Basically you or your buddy will just need to load the defaults, ensure your SATA HDD mode is AHCI, boot mode is UEFI, secure boot is disabled.
As for the HDD when you reinstall windows after you choose to "install windows" you have to the option to create/delete partitions.
If you're buying a new windows on DVD or USB stick you'll want to fire up whatever you bought, delete all partitions then simply click next to install.

This BIOS config I provided is basically a standard across many PC's, from $10k workstations to our beefy gaming rigs.
The method of installing windows I provided is what 99% of people do.

 

[CyroZentaku]

If you're not comfortable going into to BIOS then get a buddy or someone but it's very worth it to correctly setup your PC, done right you'll enjoy your PC for a very long time.

Basically you or your buddy will just need to load the defaults, ensure your SATA HDD mode is AHCI, boot mode is UEFI, secure boot is disabled.
As for the HDD when you reinstall windows after you choose to "install windows" you have to the option to create/delete partitions.
If you're buying a new windows on DVD or USB stick you'll want to fire up whatever you bought, delete all partitions then simply click next to install.

This BIOS config I provided is basically a standard across many PC's, from $10k workstations to our beefy gaming rigs.
The method of installing windows I provided is what 99% of people do.

I just finished buying and installing Windows 10, and deleted all partitions in the process but... I still seem to have my mobo and GPU drivers, as I was able to connect to the internet right away and my GPU is working. It's even listed in the display adapters. Did I do something wrong, or did Windows 10 just force the drivers upon me? I read about it force driver updates somewhere before. Hmm.

EDIT: Oh, nevermind, I guess it did force drivers on me, as I now have version 372.90 for my GTX 1060 instead of 376.19 I had earlier. I sure hope it didn't reinstall the drivers for the old mobo, as I heard Windows 10 may do that sometimes. lol
Should I try and disable Window's 10 it's automatic driver updates? I'd imagine that would get in the way of clean installing new drivers.

 

[amtseung]

Fresh installing windows doesn't usually result in an automatic installation of Nvidia drivers. I hope the new drivers fixed the issues that the .33 drivers had, since it was unstable and unreliable.

You can't really disable Win10 automatic updates. You have to come really close to bricking the OS to actually achieve that. For example, I gave up on trying to disable them and just left my OS deactivated the last time I changed motherboards, and thankfully, that was a week before the anniversary update dropped.

How is your in game performance now? Has it changed at all?

 

[LogicBomb31]

Deleting all partitions will effectively delete windows, fully. You should of seen just an empty hard drive when you clicked next to install. If you did this then you're good to go, windows installs drivers for everything as soon as you boot for the first time.

Automatic Updates do install an NVIDIA driver when fresh install but that's an ancient version of course. You're almost there.

Google "DDU" install latest version, unzip,reboot into safe mode (Settings -> Update/Security -> Recovery Advanced Startup -> Troubleshooting -> Blah blah -> boot with options, option 4 should be safe mode, press 4. In windows safe mode and run DDU click "recommended" button (it removes all NVIDIA drivers and junk, settings, it will also disable automatic updates of your graphics adapter. The whole process is automatic and reboots for you, once you're back in windows (with low res) install latest driver package.

Never update your driver through GeForce Experience, always flush with DDU and install fresh latest from site.

 

[CyroZentaku]

Fresh installing windows doesn't usually result in an automatic installation of Nvidia drivers. I hope the new drivers fixed the issues that the .33 drivers had, since it was unstable and unreliable.

You can't really disable Win10 automatic updates. You have to come really close to bricking the OS to actually achieve that. For example, I gave up on trying to disable them and just left my OS deactivated the last time I changed motherboards, and thankfully, that was a week before the anniversary update dropped.

How is your in game performance now? Has it changed at all?

Just got back from work. Well, my computer is starting up a lot faster, running much smoother in general now, though the FPS hasn't improved too much, it has gotten a fair bit better (not dropping to 45 anymore). I'll update this post once I've done what Logic suggested, about using the DDU program. Though, since you have the same GPU as me, could you tell me what your FPS is like in Witcher 3 on ultra without the hair mechanic on, and without OCing? Been testing at the very beginning area (right when you leave the tutorial with the young girl, and the main character wakes up from some dream. Just want to make sure I'm at the exact FPS I should be at.

 

[amtseung]

Just got back from work. Well, my computer is starting up a lot faster, running much smoother in general now, though the FPS hasn't improved too much, it has gotten a fair bit better (not dropping to 45 anymore). I'll update this post once I've done what Logic suggested, about using the DDU program. Though, since you have the same GPU as me, could you tell me what your FPS is like in Witcher 3 on ultra without the hair mechanic on, and without OCing? Been testing at the very beginning area (right when you leave the tutorial with the young girl, and the main character wakes up from some dream. Just want to make sure I'm at the exact FPS I should be at.

DDU is always good.

First, I don't have the same hardware as you, so our results would not be comparable. The GPU is but a small piece of the entire clockwork that makes the pew pew happen on the screen.

Second, there is no such thing as "exact FPS". Even reputable benchmark sites aren't exact. You have to look at all the benchmarks in existence, look into their testing methodologies, compare the results, have enough prior experience to know what differences in hardware will result in what differences in results, and say, "Okay, my FPS should be within this range, then add on margin of error." It's not exact. Far from it. In fact, if someone built two entirely identical PC's, they'd get different values in every benchmark. It's just the nature of the beast.

Lastly, I don't own Witcher 3. All the testing of most modern triple A titles was done by nabbing my friend's games drive and borrowing his steam account for a while. Since I don't have access to it anymore, and don't want to compromise his Steam account again, I can't test it for you.

 

[LogicBomb31]

Once you installed windows go to mobo manufacturer website and download the chipset inf update. You should also do latest audio driver and lan too. Once this is done and your computer rebooted, go to Geforce experience and loaded optimized game settings for a game you want to play and test it. Provided you're on your optimized BIOS defaults you can rule out software/config. Check all cards/devices/cables are attached firmly.

 

[CyroZentaku]

Alright, thanks for the help guys. I got everything up and running just fine now. Got the latest GPU drivers, and about to update the mobo ones. Just been experimenting with Windows 10 now. Completely new to the OS. Completely forgot about Cortana from when I first heard announcements for Windows 10. Happy with my PC's speeds now, a clean install was really just what I needed to remove all that fps drop and stutter. Looked at a few benchmarks and I know I've got it running properly now.

On a side note I may have expected a bit more power from a card like this then I should have. Was thinking it would be a stable 60 on most everything, but 50-60 at highest settings in most games is pretty decent. As long as I'm no longer getting those terrible 30-40 frame drops.

 

[amtseung]

Cortana and Notifications are the two great performance killers of Windows 10 (well, disregarding the automatic updates you can't do anything about). If you don't feel the need to have intimate conversations with your PC, you may as well turn them all off. There are plenty of guides out there that give you a good list of which Windows Services are useless for 99.9% of PC users.

 

[Gary6922]

Sorry the 30% CPU was for Witcher 3. It goes around 50-60% during peaks in GTA V with temps of 46. I'll try posting screenshots of hardware readings in a moment. I've stabilised the FPS in GTA V by keep everything below Ultra and turning off advanced graphics settings, but I shouldn't have too. I haven't attempted over clocking yet at all, a bit afraid of damaging my card. Might try it sometime soon, though. Doubt it'd be enough difference to get say Witcher 3 on Ultra with hair works from running at 40-50fps to 60-70fps like in the video recordings I've seen

Do you have Nvidia Experience installed? If so and if you don't use it for anything other than drivers then just uninstall it and download driver updates manually. I got a big fps boost by getting rid of it. Also disable steam / origin overlays if you use them.