ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Dual OC not for gaming? Should I change?

[Solzet]

Hi,

Two days ago I purchased an ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 Dual OC with the intent of improving my fps in gaming. I bought a new computer a year ago (budget PC, specs below) to be able to play Counter Strike:GO with more than 60 fps. I kept my old graphics card, a GTX 760 2GB, since I knew it would be good enough for CS:GO. It worked perfectly, giving a steady 300+ fps.

However when I moved on to other games, specifically H1Z1 King of the kill, it would not suffice - running just 50-90 fps, depending on the grapichal environment. I have a 140Hz monitor, and I figured it's a waste to play with it on this fps. So... I bought the 1060.

BUT - after installing it, it only gives me 90-150 fps in H1Z1. I was dissappointed for sure, as I'm looking for a steady 140+. However, I know H1Z1 is not optimized and is currently having know fps issues after a recent update. So I figured I'll wait to judge after they fix it (if they ever do).

The real surprise came when I fired up CS:GO. The fps varies HUGLY from 180-300. I run it on low graphics and 4:3, exact same settings as my old GTX 760, which pulled a steady 300+.

What's going on here? Did I make a bad purchase? Is my Processor bottlenecking my card?

I'm considering going back to the store and changing it to a GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X 6GB or a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB STRIX Gaming.

Any help is much appreciated, thanks.

My specs:

Intel Core i3-6100 Skylake
Socket-LGA1151, Dual Core 3.7GHz, 3MB

Corsair CX550M, 550W PSU

HyperX Fury DDR4 2400MHz 16GB

ASUS B150I Pro Gaming/WiFi/Aura, S-1151

Samsung 750 EVO 250GB 2.5" SSD Bulk
SATA 6GB/s, opp til 540/520MB/s

 

[Solzet]

Bump

 

[Jaydip]

What is your GPU utilization?

 

[Solzet]

What is your GPU utilization?

Sorry, I don't know what that means. Can you explain?

 

[Jaydip]

It means that your GPU may not be fully utilized, download GPU-Z and you can find the GPU load in the sensors tab. ASUS probably has some kind of utility which does the same thing as well( iirc it is called GPU tweak).

 

[Solzet]

It means that your GPU may not be fully utilized, download GPU-Z and you can find the GPU load in the sensors tab. ASUS probably has some kind of utility which does the same thing as well( iirc it is called GPU tweak).

Thank you for your answer, Jaydip. Yeah, I installed Tweak II. Maybe I can see the utilization there. If not I'll download GPU-Z.

Just to be sure I understand correctly, am I looking for the percentage of GPU utilization during gaming? What should it be?

 

[Jaydip]

It should be 100% but depending on the scene it maybe a bit lower but over all close to 100% .

 

[Solzet]

It should be 100% but depending on the scene it maybe a bit lower but over all close to 100% .

Thanks. I will check it when I get home from work. If it's lower, does that mean it's getting bottlenecked?

 

[Jaydip]

Yeah

 

[Solzet]

Yeah

Fingers crossed!

 

[Solzet]

Well, it's not looking good.

Here are three pictures from the Tweak II software (link to Imgur).

As you can se the usage is only at about 50% The fans only kick in at one time. There is more info I can post if it will help get a bigger picture.

After the two first tests I reinstalled nVidia Experience and the latest driver. As you can see in the third picture, it didn't help.

What is the problem here?

 

[Solzet]

Update number 2: my PC is for the first time ever acting strange. Twice I've had to force restart it pressing the power button on the cabinet. This happened after I uninstalled drivers and reinstalled. This is really weird.

 

[caswow]

might be cpu bottleneck

 

[Solzet]

might be cpu bottleneck

Is there any way to know this for sure? The i3 6100 Skylake is not yet one year old. Can it really be having trouble already?

 

[Solzet]

I added a new picture where you can see CPU usage during gaming, along with stats from GPU-Z.

As you can see the CPU works at 85-90% utilization. Can it be bottlenecking then? If so, wouldn't it be at 100%?

 

[Jaydip]

Just to clear things up, can you download unigine heaven and run the builtin benchmark? this game does not look like stressing anything what so ever.

 

[Solzet]

I will do it tomorrow when I'm back from work. But if the games aren't stressing my computer, why isn't the card utilizing itself 100% to perform better?

And will I ever get confirmation that it is the processor bottlenecking, or will it forever be a speculation? Because if it is, that basically means I have to take chance and buy a new processor for several hundred dollars and it might not make a difference.

 

[Solzet]

I see quite an amount of ppl complaining about low fps with the 1060, only they have an i5 or i7. Even there people are saying it's the CPU bottlenecking the GPU. How can this be? How much does this GPU demand of the CPU. It seems so unlikely.

This is so frustrating. I'm considering taking the card back and change it for a Radeon card.

 

[Jaydip]

The GPU can not function on it's own, CPU makes the frame and delivers it to GPU to render it.You can test it by changing resolutions, If you increase the resolution the GPU frame time will decrease but CPU frame time will be the same, as a result GPU will ask few frames from the CPU, hence less CPU load at higher resolution and vice versa.There are many games which are not very well threaded and does not load all the CPU cores to 100%, it is nothing unusual but if the GPU load is not 100% or close to 100% though you have an unbalanced rig.

 

[Jaydip]

I see quite an amount of ppl complaining about low fps with the 1060, only they have an i5 or i7. Even there people are saying it's the CPU bottlenecking the GPU. How can this be? How much does this GPU demand of the CPU. It seems so unlikely.

This is so frustrating. I'm considering taking the card back and change it for a Radeon card.

It has nothing to with AMD or NVIDIA.

 

[Jon-T]

Runnin W10 Creators edition?

If so try turning game mode off.

 

[SirCanealot]

This is a clear CPU bottleneck. The reason you are not seeing CPU usage at 100% is because games cannot max out every thread at every point (eg, game logic on core #1 might be maxed out, but we might be waiting for the AI thread on core #3 to process so core #1 is not utilised 100%).

Unfortunately dual core CPUs are now not fast enough to run every game at a high framerates. You'll need to look into upgrading to a quad core model, preferably a K model. If you can get a K model and overclock it to 4.4ghz or so (very easy to do), you'll be looking at 60fps+ gaming for the next few years at least.

Whether or not your CPU is only a year old, unfortunately it has never been up to the task of running demanding games at high framerates — remember, high framerates stress the CPU much more than the GPU as the CPU has to create the frames for the GPU to process

Can your model of CPU be overclocked AT ALL? If so, you may want to do some research as even 100-200mhz will help out a little in your case.

 

[ratjacket]

how can this be a bottle neck, if the 760 was getting 300+ and the 1060 is only getting 180-300 on the same game, if it was a bottle neck it would only be getting slightly more than the 760 not a shit load less.

there is something wrong, try the old card again with the current drivers?

what are your temps is it thermal throtle

 

[Guru]

CS:GO is a DX9 game, its very very old and I'm afraid that is the fps you are going to be from any card. The game has not been updated to support any newer API even though it's still very popular.

H1Z1 is also using an older engine, it does support DX11, but H1Z1 might be coded for DX9, I don't know.

Either way both games are terrible in terms of optimization so don't expect miracles. Any new card you purchase will perform the same, so getting a RX 580 for example won't make any difference. In fact AMD is usually weaker since they have historically had more overhead in high level API's.

The 1060 6GB is over 150% faster than the GTX 760 in any modern game, possibly even more. But in an older game that uses DX9 or DX10 older cards might actually perform better in some games.

 

[2is]

Is there any way to know this for sure? The i3 6100 Skylake is not yet one year old. Can it really be having trouble already?

In certain games, yes. It might only be a year or so old, but there's a reason you have processors like i5's and i7's not to mention HEDT i7's and soon we'll have i9's as well.