Zotac GTX 1060 6G Mini Low GPU Usage and FPS

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wblegoboy

Commendable
Apr 3, 2016
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1,510
Hello!

I’ve had my Zotac 1060 Mini (6GB) for about a year now, and I’ve just now noticed some issues regarding FPS and GPU usage. Now that I’ve thought about it, it was always a bit choppy with low FPS at some points. But, hey, it beat my old GTX 460 at least.
Originally, I thought this was due to my cramped Windows 7 installation, so installed Windows 10 on a separate hard drive to run benchmarks there. Surprisingly, I got even lower Novabench scores, placing my Mini at the 2nd percentile of all GTX 1060 cards (previously it was 8th).
I do not believe this is a bottlenecking or power issue, as I have an 850W power supply with two Intel Xeon processors and 32 GB of RAM. So far, I’ve tried three different Nvidia drivers (the previous driver for each being uninstalled by DDU), two PCIe slots, Maximum performance settings in the Nvidia control panel, multiple games and benchmarks, and allowing the GPU to get proper ventilation (it is for sure not temperature throttling). One discovery I have made is that the GPU will typically only reach 52% usage in Novabench tests despite the ability to go higher.
At this point, I don’t believe I can receive a replacement as I’ve misplaced the original box, so I’m wondering what solutions the Tom’s Hardware community might suggest.

Thanks,
Will

(P.S. sorry for lack of pizazz, I’m typing this on my phone)
 
Solution
C
I think your Xeons are a bottleneck :/ Could you tell what xeons you got? Usually xeons run at lower Ghz then Desktop CPUs. Games often see an increase in performance with higher clockspeed then with more cores.
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I think your Xeons are a bottleneck :/ Could you tell what xeons you got? Usually xeons run at lower Ghz then Desktop CPUs. Games often see an increase in performance with higher clockspeed then with more cores.
 
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Solution

I have Xeon E5-620s, running at 2.4GHz. This would really suck if those were the problem! If they are, are there any overclocking options for them?
 
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For testing purposes, I removed the secondary CPU to test the first only. On the CPU test in Novabench, the CPU hit 100% usage (that was to be expected). However, on the GPU tests, none of the CPU cores even passed 74% usage. These tests were performed while the Xeon was slightly overclocked with SetFSB from 2.4 to 2.55 GHz and the GTX 1060 from a base clock of 1500 MHz to 1700. While I did notice an improvement with the GPU score (FPS averaged 64), it was still far from what could be achieved - the benchmark was only running at about a quarter of my resolution!

At this point, I don't believe it is a problem with graphics card itself, any of the Nvidia drivers, Windows versions (including background software processes) or my PCIe slot. One thing to note, however: I discovered that, for days, CPU1 had been idling at about 70 degrees Celcius - very hot. I don't know if this has damaged the Xeon in any way yet, bit I resolved this by tightening the heatsink (it doesn't have a fan).

If you have any more suggestions I'd love to hear them. If it really is a clock speed problem in the CPU then I can go and buy new LGA1366 Xeons with a higher base clock.

 
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Nevermind, I think you are correct in that my Xeons are bottlenecking my 1060 Mini. As soon as I can I'll be looking to purchase better Xeons (I'm highly considering two X5690s).

Thank you for the help - I'm glad I don't have to go through the trouble of buying a new graphics card at least.
 
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