Mystery - extremely low FPS on low graphics settings - GTX 960

[quietk]

Hey folks,

I'm relatively new to the PC gaming world and I've been having some terrible FPS / stuttering / occasional crashing issues that I'd love some help fixing.

They happen on all graphics settings on all of the games I've been playing (WoW, Overwatch, Witcher 3). They are slightly better on the lowest setting (more intermittent FPS drops and stuttering - down to 5-10 FPS) except for Witcher, which is unplayable regardless.

My setup should be able to handle much higher settings. Here's what I'm currently working with:

Windows 10
Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 4 gb
i5 4590
8gb ddr3 ram
Corsair AX 750 psu
Gigabyte GA-B85N Phoenix mobo
Samsung 850 500gb ssd
One fan connected to mobo

Drivers have been wiped clean and reinstalled multiple times. I'm only installing the graphics driver and physx driver (no GeForce experience, no audio hd, no 3D).

I ran a benchmark with 3Dmark and everything seemed fairly solid. Temps remained manageable. FPS was around 45. But then I'll go and try and play a game and it's unbearable.

Like I said, I'm new to this, so I'm probably missing something pretty obvious (hopefully). I've been reading all of the articles I can and trying all of their suggestions with no luck :-(. Thanks for any help!

 

[The Extension]

I know this sounds ridicoulous but what OS are you using?

 

[quietk]

Ah, right. Windows 10. Updated the original post to reflect this.

 

[The Extension]

I have few worries with Windows 10, its used to BSOD me sometimes, and explorer.exe crashed every so often, it has other problems, im not sure if it was because it was in beta, wouldnt know since I didnt use it since mid-2015, when playing a game quickly alt tab and go in Task Manager there you can see if the game is using full potential of the system, maybe it only uses 100 mb of RAM for ex., if that is the case, try setting the priority to High, or Very High, just dont do Real Time, since that screws up services of the system and sound bugs out.

 

[quietk]

I see a good amount (1800mb or 50%) of RAM going to the game or so. Definitely using my system.

It's so intermittent - sometimes things will run fairly smoothly - that I can't help but wonder if I'm not dealing with occasional power issues or temp issues. However, I'm not quite sure how to diagnose those (particularly PSU issues). When I ran the benchmark, my CPU temps were at 50 deg celsius and my GPU was at 65 deg celsius...

 

[The Extension]

Well my best bet is to do a benchmark inside of a game, or stand in one spot inside of a game so performance doesn't change, turn on HWiNFO program (https://www.hwinfo.com/download.php) to monitor voltages of PSU, and see how is FPS connected to it, I hope this helps C:

 

[quietk]

Thanks - I downloaded HWiNFO and logged all of the hardware usage. I can't seem to find any common thread...but it could be my untrained eye and lack of knowledge...

Here are the logs:
WoW test: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mVLUuaq_bf1SK4r3OnPkn12d43Uug1f_KeTx2p_1kPg
Witcher 3 test: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fhiwMRO0pmWdp6ViS3U5ZbdYLcw5Xqy2vbeqdBssGpI

 

[The Extension]

It is very consistent, but your GPU does seem to dip now and then, I read online on this forum (http://www.overclock.net/t/1520307/gpu-voltage-dropping-and-therefore-core-clock) that they seem to be worried by 1.121 to 1.165, and your drops from 1.2 to 0.8xx sometimes, this is usually caused by lack of power, what is the wattage of your Crosair AX 750 PSU, judging by the name its 750W, but thats it quite uncommon wattage, thats why I'm asking.

 

[quietk]

It is very consistent, but your GPU does seem to dip now and then, I read online on this forum (http://www.overclock.net/t/1520307/gpu-voltage-dropping-and-therefore-core-clock) that they seem to be worried by 1.121 to 1.165, and your drops from 1.2 to 0.8xx sometimes, this is usually caused by lack of power, what is the wattage of your Crosair AX 750 PSU, judging by the name its 750W, but thats it quite uncommon wattage, thats why I'm asking.

It is indeed a 750W power supply. Thanks for looking at the logs. Confused why this drop would be happening, it's not like the rest of the system needs that much power?

I have a cheap Corsair CX430 power supply that I tried as well, had the same problems with it.

 

[The Extension]

Im sorry I couldn't answer this, best way is to give it to a technician, it just seem illogical to work well in benchmarks, but if benchmarks are mostly GPU heavy, then you might have a CPU problem.

 

[quietk]

Im sorry I couldn't answer this, best way is to give it to a technician, it just seem illogical to work well in benchmarks, but if benchmarks are mostly GPU heavy, then you might have a CPU problem.

Thanks for your help.

I did some additional logging today and indeed the fps drops correlate to the voltage drops being recorded. Just have to figure out why the hell that is happening...

Also noticed that often when I see a massive fps decrease, I can minimize the game / reveal desktop, give it a sec, and then re-open the window with the game in it and it often clears up the fps decrease...weird...

 

[The Extension]

Since you did try other PSU, you could replace cables that go from PSU to MOBO, but I dont think that is the problem.

 

[quietk]

Good thought, but no luck. I tried swapping out cables. Might just be my MOBO...which is pretty old? Running the F1 bios...but I don't know if any bios updates would do the trick and I'm frankly a little afraid of bricking my MOBO

 

[AljoRaine]

To test the power theory on this you could go into the Nvidia control panel (right click on the desktop), manage 3d settings, program settings (you might need to add an entry for witcher 3 or whatever game you are testing if it is not listed). Select the game from drop down menu, scroll to power management mode and set to prefer maximum performance and apply. This should keep the card ramped up while that application runs. I have had occasions where this has been set to adaptive and has caused problems.

 

[quietk]

To test the power theory on this you could go into the Nvidia control panel (right click on the desktop), manage 3d settings, program settings (you might need to add an entry for witcher 3 or whatever game you are testing if it is not listed). Select the game from drop down menu, scroll to power management mode and set to prefer maximum performance and apply. This should keep the card ramped up while that application runs. I have had occasions where this has been set to adaptive and has caused problems.

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried this a few times and only noticed a small improvement in performance, but the same fps drops were happening.

 

[AljoRaine]

Its a strange one for sure and you seem to have tried a lot of to fix this. I understand your apprehension at flashing the bios. Some seasoned system builders sweat at the thought. It really is a case of do it if you really need to or you are aware that a newer bios version is going to yield a particular result or fix. Maybe worth a bit of research for your motherboard and bios to see if there has been any issues that were addressed in later versions.

How does the drive usage look when gaming? Since the Win10 anniversary update I have had to have Intel Rapid Storage Technology (IRST) installed as one of my game SSDs was at 100% usage with no read/write causing major "freezing" issues.

 

[quietk]

How does the drive usage look when gaming? Since the Win10 anniversary update I have had to have Intel Rapid Storage Technology (IRST) installed as one of my game SSDs was at 100% usage with no read/write causing major "freezing" issues.

Thanks for the help. Drive usage looks perfectly fine. I have the IRST installed and on. Frankly, I never thought to turn it off because I haven't seen problems with disk usage once I updated to an SSD.

Guess I'll look into the bios flash...really dunno what else to do other than suspect a faulty GPU? Though previously I had a GTX 750 installed and was having the same problems...so probably not that...sigh.

 

[logainofhades]

Are you hooking the monitor to the actual graphics card, or to the port on the motherboard? I only ask because I have seen many accidently plug it into the motherboard, instead of the graphics card.

 

[quietk]

Are you hooking the monitor to the actual graphics card, or to the port on the motherboard? I only ask because I have seen many accidently plug it into the motherboard, instead of the graphics card.

It's connected to the graphics card via DVI. Definitely saw plenty of those cases in the forum when researching this issue initially. Thanks for the input!