[SOLVED] Terrible performance on RTX 3080 after crash!

Rozzdog

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Hi! Tried many things but at my wits end here, was editing photos on Adobe Lightroom the other day when suddenly many of the photos had black squares all over them. I closed out and restarted the app and this times the squares were white. The app froze up and the video driver crashed and restarted. Everything went back to normal and I put it down to a blip.. until I started gaming a few days later and performance was terrible in all games, including low demanding indy ones where GPU usage barely scratches 10%. I'm getting constant stuttering, frame skips, and freezes, scaling up with the intensity of the graphical effects and 'busyness' of the scene. I game in 4k 120hz, the problem is still there, although somewhat lessened in 60hz. I should also point out that gaming has been smooth and wonderful for the past 12 months with this build until recently, so no bottlenecks or anything like that.
It may be unrelated to the crash but the only other recent changes are mobo and GPU bios update for resizeable bar and normal video driver updates.
I've tried the following-
DDU'ing and rolling back to older video drivers.
Uninstalling any bad rep Windows updates.
Checking the physical installation of the GPU and RAM are firm and tight.
Turning off Rebar in bios.
Multiple different Nvidia Control Panel configurations.
I can't take it anymore.. is the card dead? Please help!
 
Solution
After weeks of trying different things it turned out to be my RAM profile. I changed it to XMP 2 and nearly all the issues went away. It seems the XMP 1/auto profile made my system really unstable. Something must have changed in the mobo bios update for this to happen, but it seems to have solved now by changing to the default timings. Cheers.

Rozzdog

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I may have read it wrong.
I read it as....you updated the motherboard (a new motherboard).....and also did a GPU BIOS update.
Have you checked temps?
what are your system specs?
May be my bad grammar, it was a just mobo and GPU flash for rebar.
Sorry, thought I had an active signature.

Asus Z390- P | Intel i5 9600KF | Aorus RTX 3080 XTREME | PNY XLR8 32GB 3200Mhz DDR4 (2 x 16GB) | WD SN550 M.2 Pcie 1TB | Crucial MX500 2TB SSD | Corsair RM1000i | Be Quiet! Dark Rock 4 | Lian Li Lancool 2
 

Rozzdog

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I just thought of something. Did you do a CMOS reset, after the bios update, on the motherboard?
[/QUOT
I just thought of something. Did you do a CMOS reset, after the bios update, on the motherboard?
No I did not. Pretty sure I have a case button for that too. I didn't even consider that at all. Would a bad bios configuration really cause poor gaming performance like that? I'll give it a try!
 
Did you get the right bios flash? There are 3 different ones depending on which bios you have.

I also like their warning, pretty much says if it ain't broke dont fix it
Warning:
Because BIOS flashing is potentially risky, if you do not encounter problems using the current version of BIOS, it is recommended that you not flash the BIOS. To flash the BIOS, do it with caution. Inadequate BIOS flashing may result in system malfunction.
 

Rozzdog

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Did you get the right bios flash? There are 3 different ones depending on which bios you have.

I also like their warning, pretty much says if it ain't broke dont fix it
Warning:
Because BIOS flashing is potentially risky, if you do not encounter problems using the current version of BIOS, it is recommended that you not flash the BIOS. To flash the BIOS, do it with caution. Inadequate BIOS flashing may result in system malfunction.
Fair advice. I never usually flash bios apart from when first installing the mobo. However, I really wanted to take advantage of the new resizeable bar capabilities on 30 series cards. I'm pretty positive it was the correct one for the series, I obtained them from the support page. Hope I don't end up regretting it. I've heard of some rare cases of people having issues with this at the outset but that was more outright bricking cards than poor performance.
 

Rozzdog

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A different approach / thought. I know some people have had performance issues relating to power. Any change one of the 12V rails on the PSU is acting up / bad? Can you check the PSU? (or check the PSU connections)

View: https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/jlhoxd/not_enough_power_for_3080/
I've not tested the PSU but it has crossed my mind tbh. I have some sleeved GPU beauty cables for show also that I was thinking of disconnecting to see if that made any difference also. The PSU is only about a year old so I would be very disappointed if that's in bad shape. Also I have 3 seperate channels going into the card. No splitters like the above post. It's my third Corsair unit and they've always been great.
 

Rozzdog

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Ok I have now tried CMOS reset, previous GPU bios, and removed GPU and beauty cables, reinstalled with original cables and tested PSU, all to no avail. Here's where it gets weird. Triple A games all mainly showing lower average frames and many spikes (around a 10fps fluctuation), also a dire Heaven benchmark score. I turned off Ultra low latency and capped frames manually and the spikes are gone and average frames are back up! Ultra Low latency has worked brilliantly for me until now.. it's suddenly completely broken! I tested many triple A games and they seem playable again.. however some Indy games (Artful Escape being a great example) are still a shutter show strangely. Seems a software issue rather than hardware. Something just isn't gelling right. Temps are fine too.
 

Rozzdog

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But did you try with another computer? That way we can know if it's the GPU or something else in your system.
No not yet. Not the easiest thing as I don't have a spare build. I have a couple of friends with custom PCs so may able to tie something up with them over the weekend. Gonna keep tinkering until then in case something else comes to light.
 

Rozzdog

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After weeks of trying different things it turned out to be my RAM profile. I changed it to XMP 2 and nearly all the issues went away. It seems the XMP 1/auto profile made my system really unstable. Something must have changed in the mobo bios update for this to happen, but it seems to have solved now by changing to the default timings. Cheers.
 
Solution