Zotac GTX 1080 ti mini Underperforming

[pablo.cuervo10]

Hello guys,

I'm new to the forums though I visit the site pretty often, in any case I need to ask you about a problem I think I'm having with my GPU. I finished building my new rig about 3 weeks ago, specs are the following:

Ryzen 5 1600X OC @ 3.9Ghz
Cooler Master Masterliquid lite 120
Asrock Fatal1ty AB350 Gaming-itx/ac
2x8Gb Corsair vengeance DDR4 2400Mhz
Zotac GTX 1080 Ti mini
Crucial MX500 500Gb SSD
Seasonic M12II 620 EVO (620W Bronze certified)
Cooler Master Elite 110

So basically I've been doing some benchmarking lately and I noticed that the card is not delivering the performance it should be, and not by a small margin (performance of the mini is about on par with a FE 1080 Ti) I game at 1080p with a 144Mhz monitor (hence the overkill) and here are some examples:

Rise of the Tomb Raider gets me this results on 1080p Maxed out:
69fps Mountain peak
54fps Syria
54fps Goethermal Valley
I've seen setups like mine get over 100fps avg for those settings.

Ashes of the singularity, 67fps avg on the benchmark, I've seen regular 1080s get much better results than that.

The Witcher 3 will get around 80-90fps avg on towns around velen (not even novigrad) and I occasionally get sudden very short dips of up to 30fps when riding around the countryside (fast).

GTA V:

Pass 0, 87.409103
Pass 1, 85.063026
Pass 2, 95.585388
Pass 3, 110.931992
Pass 4, 88.861366

Again seen systems using my same hardware get much better results at 1080p.

Oh and Battlefront 2, the game will avg 60-70 on a galactic assault, and I get dips going as low as 30FPS!

So, games are not unplayable of course, but I should be getting a lot more performance out of the card and there's a reason I got a 144Mhz monitor. Last time I updated my drivers was 3 weeks ago when I built the rig, temps are normal, CPU got to a max of 67C° after 18 hours of prime95 (with the OC in place), GPU goes between 80-85C° (max I've seen is 87C°) when under heavy load, which is normal for the card too. The only thing I'm starting to get doubts on is the power supply maybe? It's supposed to be a pretty solid unit, though it's not gold cert, just bronze, manufacturer is very reliable on my experience, but maybe with OC on the CPU it's getting to much stress and not delivering for the Ti? I was considering swapping for an EVGA G3 650W, which would also save me some space on the case.
What do you guys Think? Thanks!

 

[malik11]

to rule out other component issues try pushing the gpu to it's limit, enable DSR from nvidia control panel and take tomb raider for example just max out everything and set the resolution to 4k and compare that to other people with similar rigs if you are getting the same results then you are probably bottlenecked by one of the other components.
when you are testing a gpu look at it's usage in games to find out if it's lower than it should be.
i have a 1080 ti and i can tell you no game on 1080p has pushed my gpu beyond 70% my cpu is an 8700k @5ghz so its normal to see gpu usage below 100% on 1080p.

 

[pablo.cuervo10]

I checked clocks and they look normal while benchmarking, you're right on usage though, it rarely ever goes into 80-100% and it's all over the place to be honest, fluctuating pretty quickly. I'll try the 4k bench now, thanks

 

[malik11]

I checked clocks and they look normal while benchmarking, you're right on usage though, it rarely ever goes into 80-100% and it's all over the place to be honest, fluctuating pretty quickly. I'll try the 4k bench now, thanks

it is normal for the gpu usage to be low on 1080p resolution the reason is the 1080 ti was not made for that resolution and the cpu will bottleneck your gpu in most games.
try 4k and see how it goes,
best of luck.

 

[pablo.cuervo10]

So, 4k results were.. just as you would expect from 1080 Ti, almost the exact same as the reviews I've been checking. Then it means I'm being bottlenecked? thats why I get those sudden huge drops? I got around 60FPS avg for Rise of the tomb raider on 4k, yet there were no spikes like I noticed when running at 1080p when it would suddenly drop to 20fps or less, then back at 100+

Problem is I've seen videos of other guys with my same setup and they don't get these sudden stutters, maybe getting ram with more speed for the Ryzen?

EDIT: Upping the voltage a bit (still within manufacturer's recommendation) and setting the CPU on 4Ghz seems to have eliminated the stutters/drops

 

[malik11]

So, 4k results were.. just as you would expect from 1080 Ti, almost the exact same as the reviews I've been checking. Then it means I'm being bottlenecked? thats why I get those sudden huge drops? I got around 60FPS avg for Rise of the tomb raider on 4k, yet there were no spikes like I noticed when running at 1080p when it would suddenly drop to 20fps or less, then back at 100+

Problem is I've seen videos of other guys with my same setup and they don't get these sudden stutters, maybe getting ram with more speed for the Ryzen?

EDIT: Upping the voltage a bit (still within manufacturer's recommendation) and setting the CPU on 4Ghz seems to have eliminated the stutters/drops

I am glad to hear that.

just make sure your cpu temperatures are not too high.

if you ever consider buying new rams don't go over 3200mhz you wont notice any difference in performance beyond that. i had a 2400mhz a few months ago upgraded that and i did gain more frames on lower resolutions in games like
far cry 5 5-10fps+.
to be honest it is not worth the upgrade unless you really want the best out of that 1080 ti.

best of luck.

 

[pablo.cuervo10]

Temps were within safe parameters, it has a good cooling solution anyway. I'll be monitoring while gaming for the day just in case, I'll see about the ram, if I can swap it for not that big a difference I just might. Thanks for all the help!

 

[malik11]

Temps were within safe parameters, it has a good cooling solution anyway. I'll be monitoring while gaming for the day just in case, I'll see about the ram, if I can swap it for not that big a difference I just might. Thanks for all the help!

you are welcome .

 

[pablo.cuervo10]

So I've another question, if I were to replace my ram with another higher clocked one, would that make my cpu OC unstable? I've seen people claiming that high speed ram makes things more difficult when overclocking your cpu, is that so? I wouldn't know because I rarely ever use high speed ram

 

[malik11]

So I've another question, if I were to replace my ram with another higher clocked one, would that make my cpu OC unstable? I've seen people claiming that high speed ram makes things more difficult when overclocking your cpu, is that so? I wouldn't know because I rarely ever use high speed ram

it will have an effect depending on the tested ram's voltage and your motherboard.
sadly there are too many variables here so i can't tell you for sure but in my case i was still able to maintain the same overclock with the same voltages.