Zotac GeForce GTX 970 Memory issue

Troy_16

Commendable
Mar 17, 2016
8
0
1,510
I recently bought myself a set of parts and built this gaming PC. Unfortunately since setting it up I've been having an issue with "stuttering" fps or micro lag every few seconds (while gaming) that isn't related to my internet. This led me in the search for information on the topic, and after hours of research and tinkering I'm left with a question unanswered.

The graphics card I'm using is Zotac GeForce GTX 970 4GB.
MSI Kombuster Link --> http://www.ozone3d.net/msi_kombustor/

I've obviously read (after purchase and installation, unfortunately) about the issue with the last .5 ram on the card. Although I'm not ruling out that being the issue, some stress tests using MSI Kombuster have me wondering.

I did the FurMark Stress Test to test the memory and at 2gb my results were....

MSI Kombuster
FurMark Stress Test
Score: 5236 points (87FPS)
GeForce GTX 970/PCIe/SSe2
1920x1080, AA: 4x MSAA, 60000ms.

Pretty good right? My results at 3gb weren't so pretty at
Score: 1004 points (16FPS)

With all the other information being the same. My question then is, Is it normal for a GPU to drop performance so significantly going from 50-->75% ram utilization?

Thank you for your time and I appreciate any responses!

-Troy
 

Proofy

Admirable
It isn't, I used 100% of my ram playing GTA V using GTX770 asus II oc and have no issues with it. You can try to RMA it and see if the new one will have the same issues. If it does have the same issues again, then Zotac isn't really reliable
 

Proofy

Admirable


yeah it got tons of bad reviews. Here's similar issue with the same gpu

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2890576/stuttering-zotac-gtx-970-4gb.html

Here's what you can do, go ingame, open some software where you can see your cpu and gpu usage and record it, take screenshots of whatever and post it here :)
 

Proofy

Admirable
Let's see his screenshots first then we'll see if it's indeed gpu issue. I will take my chances and say it's gpu related.

It could really be that .5ram issue or it's just a bad card. Like I said, post the screenshots or a record while you're ingame that's stuttering and we'll see the issue :)
 

Troy_16

Commendable
Mar 17, 2016
8
0
1,510
Here's a short video of the stuttering while I run around on The Division. This stuttering happens on high or low graphics settings and isn't exclusive to this game.
https://youtu.be/jf99SDjRwN0

Here's a picture of the readings during that video.
http://imageshack.com/a/img921/3966/4WqWN3.png

I don't really know if the two are related, but the stuttering makes the effected games virtually unplayable and the drop in performance during the stress test seems excessive.

- Troy
 


What are the gpu and CPU clock speeds whilst it's happening?
 

Troy_16

Commendable
Mar 17, 2016
8
0
1,510
Sorry about the delayed response.

I'm running...
1 x ASRock ASRock Fatal1ty Gaming Fatal1ty Z97 Killer LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
1 x Intel Core i7-4790K Devil's Canyon Quad-Core 4.0 GHz LGA 1150 BX80646I74790K Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics ...
1 x Seagate Desktop HDD ST1000DM003 1TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
2 x G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL10S-8GBXL
1 x RAIDMAX HYBRID 2 RX-630SS 630W ATX12V V2.2/ EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Modular Power Supply, New Version with ...
1 x ZOTAC GeForce GTX 970 4GB ZT-90101-10P
1 x ZOTAC 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) ZTSSD-A4P-120G


http://imageshack.com/a/img922/3333/gWZtPm.png --> Top half (Power, gpu usage, framerate, core clock, memory use)
http://imageshack.com/a/img922/2716/1pV0N4.png --> Bottom half (Cpu usage, ram usage, pagefile usage)

For whatever reason afterburner shows an insane use of system resources? I must be reading it wrong because resource manager tells a different story.
http://imageshack.com/a/img921/6776/HwKVk5.png --> Side by side comparison of RAM use

Thanks again for all the responses and for being so helpful!

- Troy
 
That to me looks like something is interrupting the GPU, the clocks remain the same, so not throttling, CPU usage is not high though.

What happens if you get it to bounce of the temp limit and not the power limit?

Your pagefile useage is really 10GB? with 16GB of RAM?

 

Troy_16

Commendable
Mar 17, 2016
8
0
1,510
Afterburner isn't correctly calculating my pagefile use for whatever reason. It's set by the system to a max of around 2.5gb and only uses around 4% according to resource monitor.

Here's what I tried this morning.

Core Overclock -> +10% ---> No change.
Core Overlock --> +10% --> No change.
Temperature limit increased from 79 -> 89 (Celcius) --> No change.
Reset to default settings.

Memory Clock --> +15% --> No change.
Reset to default settings.

Checked pagefile settings.

System managed size
min 16 MB
reccomended 2937 MB
Currently allocated 2432 MB

Task Manager performance shows
http://imageshack.com/a/img924/9619/oCsIzL.png

Set pagefile to Customer Size
Initial 2000MB
Max 8000MB
Restart

No change.
Reverted Settings.
Restart.

I'm at a loss. I'd be very dissapointed if it was the GPU unit as I already had to RMA the motherboard and the whole set was purchased from Newegg.com from whom I've always had good results in the past.

- Troy
 
That seems like an awful lot of activity though, it could be moving data to the GPU or accessing the HDD for some reason and that's causing the issue. Not entirely sure how you test that. Is it better if you are in one place, is it better if textures are reduced?

Latest drivers?
 

Troy_16

Commendable
Mar 17, 2016
8
0
1,510
Here's a picture with some fresh test results. http://imageshack.com/a/img921/284/5NFhWC.png

The blue area is alt tabbed out of the game.
First red area is standing still in game with high graphic settings on.
Yellow area is running.
Second red is resting after running.
White is where I changed my settings to "low". Rest --> Run --> Closed Application.

The drivers on my graphics card are current and I used a third party program (can't remember the name) to remove all of the old drivers before installing the new ones.
 

Troy_16

Commendable
Mar 17, 2016
8
0
1,510
It's probably worth noting that this issue isn't exclusive to The Division. It occurs on high and low settings in the Overwatch Beta as well, although it's less easy to recreate there.