Nvidia GTX-960 performing far below expectations.

[Kawaii Penguin]

Hi,
I just did a test with my GTX-960 after noticing that games that I used to play are acting a lot more choppy and laggy. Turns out, it's not nearly as good as it used to be about a year ago.
http://prntscr.com/knlmt8

Now, knowing graphics cards the way I do, I would imagine the longevity of any card should be at least a few years. I also know that a lot of cards have different lifespans and I could've just gotten unlucky.

Is there any way to restore the card to its old state? Either by physical cleaning or optimizations on the computer.

Thanks.

 

[TechyInAZ]

Things to check:

New Driver (geforce.com or Geforce Expereince for new drivers)
temperature
Possible bios update for graphics card
Make sure it isn't super dusty.

 

[Philballer17]

The Card will deliver pretty much the same amount of FPS, even if you clean it. Depending on how dirty it is, maybe you will gain 2 FPS and some lower temps. But, nothing drastic.

Unfortunately, the GTX 960 was pretty slow compared to its predecessor GTX 970. The more money you spend on a GPU, the longer it will last.

The less money you spend, the faster it will become obsolete. When the GTX 960 was released, it was a budget card, meant to only last a short period of time. These day's it can probably play games on medium-low details with respectable frame rates. But, anything higher and it will struggle.

This is because games are constantly evolving, and the graphical quality of these games are becoming more demanding. So, the GTX 960 just doesn't have the horsepower.

The more money you put into your card when purchasing it new, the longer it will last.

 

[The prime mediocre]

Unless it's suffered catastrophic damage (water et al.), the actual electrical components should be just as good as they were when you got the card. I'd clean the computer and graphics card thoroughly and make sure the fan(s) is (are) spinning at the correct rate. Then update the drivers. The Maxwell architecture is a little old, but it's aged much better than the one before it (Kepler). It should still be performing well, outside of a couple highly VRAM intensive games (Wolfenstein II comes to mind).

What are you playing?

 

[Kawaii Penguin]

Things to check:

New Driver (geforce.com or Geforce Expereince for new drivers)
temperature
Possible bios update for graphics card
Make sure it isn't super dusty.

Oh yeah. It looks like my drivers date back all the way to late 2017.
https://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/126179/en-us
I swear I've updated it recently though. Must not have properly uninstalled the previous software.

The graphics card is relatively clean. Not too dusty at all.
I'll assume the temperature is OK - but I'll still check it in a bit here after I get the proper drivers.

As for checking for BIOS updates - well, that's something I've never done before. lol

 

[Kawaii Penguin]

To answer a few questions - The 960 has worked well for me for awhile now. I don't generally play the newest of the newest games. Usually games that range from the early 2000's up to 2016. If I need to, I could run games that are past that era on lower settings and be perfectly fine.

I'm installing new drivers now, and if that fixes the issue, I'll pick Techy as the solver of this situation.
Thanks for all the input though.

 

[Kawaii Penguin]

Things to check:

New Driver (geforce.com or Geforce Expereince for new drivers)
temperature
Possible bios update for graphics card
Make sure it isn't super dusty.

Yep! it was the driver. I uninstalled the old one completely and installed the newest game-ready driver. Quite an improvement if you ask me.
http://prntscr.com/knm09c

 

[TechyInAZ]

Glad to hear. It is very rare, but it does happen where a couple of nvidia drivers do completely glitch up.