Question Borderlands 3, 40fps

LOUISSSSS

Diamond Member
Dec 5, 2005
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My RX580 is getting smoked playing Borderlands 3.

Playing at 1440p @ pretty high settings, the in-game FPS counter is showing about 40fps. My RX580 temps are shooting up to 87F and hover at 85/86F. I get a few screen flickers turning black for 2-5 seconds then turning back on. Do you guys think this is related to the overheating or is it the AMD driver issue? I'm using the latest AMD drivers 20.2.2...
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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That does sound possibly temp-related. I don't like to see GPUs get much above 80, possible 83C. 87C is IMHO too much. (My RX 5700 sometimes hits those temps mining, and it sometimes returns "incorrect GPU share" as well. So something's amiss.)

Btw, if you're not already on Adrenalin 2020 driver 20.2.2, install those now. They are MUCH improved, stability-wise, at least for my RX 5700. Seems OK for my RX 580 4GB Nitro+ card too.
 

LOUISSSSS

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Dec 5, 2005
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1584501394827.png
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Hey larry, see above, i'm on 20.2.2.
Also see 2nd screenshot showing avg 41.4 fps. Wth does Performance Grade Marginal mean? That the rx580 sucks?? lol

hmm... going to find some ways to drop these gpu temps.

CSGO is nowhere near as GPU intensive, i get like 60-70's
 

VirtualLarry

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It appears that you are using multi-display? What happens to the frame-rate in BL3, if/when you turn off or even disconnect the second monitor? Does it improve? There have (I'm not saying that's the current problem) been some issues with multi-mon, and GPU/VRAM clock-selection/adjustment. Sometimes, they don't clock up, or more likely, don't clock down.
 

LOUISSSSS

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Dec 5, 2005
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Hm... never tried disconnecting a 2nd monitor to increase gaming frame rates. Can try it, but that'd be awfully annoying to disconnect a DVI (thats what i'm using on my dell 24" 2nd monitor) cable everytime i turn on a game.

Changing the GPU fan curve in radeon settings to ramp up to 100% @ 60 degrees didn't help, got up to 86C gaming for 10 mins. Stays steady at that temp tho... Any tips on getting a RX580 cooler?
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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Hm... never tried disconnecting a 2nd monitor to increase gaming frame rates. Can try it, but that'd be awfully annoying to disconnect a DVI (thats what i'm using on my dell 24" 2nd monitor) cable everytime i turn on a game.
To be sure, that would be a driver bug, and me asking you to disconnect your other monitor, is only for temporary diagnostic purposes, not every time.
Changing the GPU fan curve in radeon settings to ramp up to 100% @ 60 degrees didn't help, got up to 86C gaming for 10 mins. Stays steady at that temp tho... Any tips on getting a RX580 cooler?
Yeah, sounds like you need a re-paste, under-volt, or both. Are the fans even spinning? (Use a ball-point pen or something, don't use your finger. GPU fans can eat fingers. Ask me how I know. :( )
 
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Arkaign

Lifer
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All Polaris 470/480/570/580s that I've ever worked with (well into the hundreds now), have seen improvements by undervolting. Look up guides, there are plenty. This will reduce heat and throttling, and even combine with a light overclock which will still be cooler and less power hungry than stock.

For Borderlands, try scaling back some of the settings. Just in general for a 570 to have good performance and nice visuals for modern demanding titles, basically the rule of thumb is :

High to Ultra Textures
16X or 'Ultra' AF / Anisotropic Filtering
Low or disabled AA / Antialiasing
Medium Shadows
Ambient Occlusion, set one or two down from max if available
Disable Motion Blur if available
Disable Chromatic Abberation if available
Disable Film Grain if available
Set all other misc detail settings one step down from Ultra, if performance still not ideal, two steps down.
Check that video output is exclusive fullscreen, not windowed fullscreen
Try without Vsync if you need faster response, though combining this with a software or driver based framerate limit is a good idea (depends on your monitor, this mostly applies to people with normal 60hz displays).

The combination of highly detailed textures with much higher framerates by being judicious with settings makes for a much better looking experience compared to higher settings and choppier framerates with tearing or laggy experiences.
 
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Arkaign

Lifer
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Follow the guide above to try to get better results with the 580 and 1440p Borderlands. In the current era, the 580 is more ideally a 1080p High (not all ultra) settings GPU. However, leaving ultra/max textures and lowering the others described above enough should still let you achieve good performance more often than not.
 
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LOUISSSSS

Diamond Member
Dec 5, 2005
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All Polaris 470/480/570/580s that I've ever worked with (well into the hundreds now), have seen improvements by undervolting. Look up guides, there are plenty. This will reduce heat and throttling, and even combine with a light overclock which will still be cooler and less power hungry than stock.

For Borderlands, try scaling back some of the settings. Just in general for a 570 to have good performance and nice visuals for modern demanding titles, basically the rule of thumb is :

High to Ultra Textures
16X or 'Ultra' AF / Anisotropic Filtering
Low or disabled AA / Antialiasing
Medium Shadows
Ambient Occlusion, set one or two down from max if available
Disable Motion Blur if available
Disable Chromatic Abberation if available
Disable Film Grain if available
Set all other misc detail settings one step down from Ultra, if performance still not ideal, two steps down.
Check that video output is exclusive fullscreen, not windowed fullscreen
Try without Vsync if you need faster response, though combining this with a software or driver based framerate limit is a good idea (depends on your monitor, this mostly applies to people with normal 60hz displays).

The combination of highly detailed textures with much higher framerates by being judicious with settings makes for a much better looking experience compared to higher settings and choppier framerates with tearing or laggy experiences.
followed these settings and got a bit more FPS (48fps), ramping up the fan speed to 100% and moving a front intake fan lower to get cool air below the video card got my max temps after 10 mins to 75C! i'll live with this
 
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Arkaign

Lifer
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followed these settings and got a bit more FPS (48fps), ramping up the fan speed to 100% and moving a front intake fan lower to get cool air below the video card got my max temps after 10 mins to 75C! i'll live with this

Cool, sounds like you've achieved about the best case with what you have to work with :) If you poke around the Adrenalin driver you can find the section to lower voltage a little bit. Probably in range of high 60s at stock clocks.
 

LOUISSSSS

Diamond Member
Dec 5, 2005
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Cool, sounds like you've achieved about the best case with what you have to work with :) If you poke around the Adrenalin driver you can find the section to lower voltage a little bit. Probably in range of high 60s at stock clocks.
Correct me if my mindset is wrong but, i'm not a fan of having to "lower voltage" since i paid good money for the power of the RX580, now i'd have to reduce voltage and possibly reduce either stability or speed to compensate for the video card's high temperatures?
 

Arkaign

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Well I have good news for you. AMD for their own purposes, obstensibly to make for easier high yields and less QA, heavily overvolted a number of GPU models for stock. Out of the box they're needlessly high, which might raise yields from say 96% to 99% (just an example), when 90% will run fine with much less voltage.

The high voltages actually reduces performance due to higher thermals and less boost performance.

There are three schools of thought with regards to undervolting Polaris.

1- Aggressive undervolting combined with clock decreases. This is more for mining efficiency, and people who are more interested in near silent operation and don't mind easing back 5-10%. I don't think this is for most people.

2- Moderate undervolting combined with stock clocks. This is the most common choice. Gets you the identical clock settings, but gives you no less than 100% of stock performance, and even slight benefits due to not hitting throttling limits related to heat limit targets.

3- Light undervolting with a light overclock. This is a little more effort, but pays off with a combination of reduced power and heat in addition to a 5-10% increase over stock performance, all at the same or very slightly less than stock consumption and thermals.

I've yet to personally see a card out of perhaps 150-160 Polaris cards that don't see moderate to high levels of improvement by undervolting. Not quite as extreme as you see with Vega56 undervolt+OC (those were atrociously overvolted out of the box, lol), but still very much worth knowing about and tuning for anyone capable of doing so.
 

Guru

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May 5, 2017
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1440p is way too high of a resolution for such a graphic card, even when the card was released it was a 1080p card, not meant for 1440p gaming, especially not 4 years after its initial release!
 

LOUISSSSS

Diamond Member
Dec 5, 2005
8,771
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Well I have good news for you. AMD for their own purposes, obstensibly to make for easier high yields and less QA, heavily overvolted a number of GPU models for stock. Out of the box they're needlessly high, which might raise yields from say 96% to 99% (just an example), when 90% will run fine with much less voltage.

The high voltages actually reduces performance due to higher thermals and less boost performance.

There are three schools of thought with regards to undervolting Polaris.

1- Aggressive undervolting combined with clock decreases. This is more for mining efficiency, and people who are more interested in near silent operation and don't mind easing back 5-10%. I don't think this is for most people.

2- Moderate undervolting combined with stock clocks. This is the most common choice. Gets you the identical clock settings, but gives you no less than 100% of stock performance, and even slight benefits due to not hitting throttling limits related to heat limit targets.

3- Light undervolting with a light overclock. This is a little more effort, but pays off with a combination of reduced power and heat in addition to a 5-10% increase over stock performance, all at the same or very slightly less than stock consumption and thermals.

I've yet to personally see a card out of perhaps 150-160 Polaris cards that don't see moderate to high levels of improvement by undervolting. Not quite as extreme as you see with Vega56 undervolt+OC (those were atrociously overvolted out of the box, lol), but still very much worth knowing about and tuning for anyone capable of doing so.
1584536325161.png
Hello, ok so let me try to maintain my current clocks for the card (1405 core / 2000 ram) while doing a slight undervolt.

Is it on this screen where i change the "1168" "1150" "1150" "1150" "1150" to something lower?
1. Why is "state 3" higher than "state 4,5,6,7" at 1168?
2. What should i change each of these to to start off? (this is also my WFH computer so reliability is a must)
 

LOUISSSSS

Diamond Member
Dec 5, 2005
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1440p is way too high of a resolution for such a graphic card, even when the card was released it was a 1080p card, not meant for 1440p gaming, especially not 4 years after its initial release!
i'm getting 40-50fps at med-high settings with my RX580 @ 1440p. Not sure if you're new to computers, but usually lowering the settings does it as long as your video card isn't complete shit. 40-50fps is perfectly playable in BL3
 
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Stuka87

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I ran my RX480 for years undervolted, it makes for better performance and cooler temps, which then means quieter fans.

I don't have that system handy right now, but as I recall I set state 6 and 7 to 1150 1050 and 1075. State 4 was at 1000, and state 4 and 5 were basically splitting the difference between 3 and 6.

Edit: fixed voltages that I used after I looked at them.
 
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Arkaign

Lifer
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Ok, so the quick way to do this is to knock 50-75mv off of everything from 4-7. As you can see from Stuka's example, there is a lot more potential in the offerings to go further, but that depends on the quality of the die. The length of time a GPU has seen 1140-1160mv rammed through its guts also has a bit to do with it as well. Electromigration occurs, slowly degrading the die at such high voltages, which lowers its lifespan and makes it more likely to need high voltages to run before dying.

But if you just want to get some good results without trial and error : Cutting 50-75 from 4, 5, 6, 7 is a no brainer setting that won't trip you up. Just cooler and easier on the GPU, it will last longer this way.
 
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LOUISSSSS

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Ok, so the quick way to do this is to knock 50-75mv off of everything from 4-7. As you can see from Stuka's example, there is a lot more potential in the offerings to go further, but that depends on the quality of the die. The length of time a GPU has seen 1140-1160mv rammed through its guts also has a bit to do with it as well. Electromigration occurs, slowly degrading the die at such high voltages, which lowers its lifespan and makes it more likely to need high voltages to run before dying.

But if you just want to get some good results without trial and error : Cutting 50-75 from 4, 5, 6, 7 is a no brainer setting that won't trip you up. Just cooler and easier on the GPU, it will last longer this way.
Ok, i'll try to start with knocking 50mV off each from 4-7, but can you explain to my why state 3 is higher @ 1168 than 4-7 @ 1150mV?
 

Arkaign

Lifer
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Ok, i'll try to start with knocking 50mV off each from 4-7, but can you explain to my why state 3 is higher @ 1168 than 4-7 @ 1150mV?

Probably an error when making that particular GPU VBios. No actual reason I can think of for that level to ever be used beyond extreme OC.
 

Stuka87

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Ok, i'll try to start with knocking 50mV off each from 4-7, but can you explain to my why state 3 is higher @ 1168 than 4-7 @ 1150mV?

Your step 4-7 are all set to manual and have been changed. Those are not stock values.
 

LOUISSSSS

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Your step 4-7 are all set to manual and have been changed. Those are not stock values.
no, i've never gone to these settings in the radeon software. And to confirm, i've just reset all settings in Radeon and it brought it back to those same numbers as above.

safe to drop them all 50mV though? (state 4-7)
 

Arkaign

Lifer
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Probably so, it certainly can't damage anything. Load up Unigine Heaven in windowed mode and let it loop while testing the settings. Values 4-7 would only ever come into play while either gaming or mining, never desktop use and web browsing, non 3d heavy apps. So even if you went bananas and cut it down to something obviously unusable (900mv or something like that) all it would do is blank out on you, and when rebooted it would be in the 1-3 state, go in and adjust upwards.
 

Stuka87

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no, i've never gone to these settings in the radeon software. And to confirm, i've just reset all settings in Radeon and it brought it back to those same numbers as above.

safe to drop them all 50mV though? (state 4-7)

Strange, I have never seen a Polaris card where those states were all identical like that.

So, I found my undervolt settings, I had them saved off. My top core clock was the stock 1306MHz for an RX480 Nitro+. The 580 is just a slightly higher clocked version of Polaris.

State 1-3: stock
State 4: 1000
State 5: 1025
State 6: 1050
State 7: 1075

You may need to play around a little bit to see what is stable. But no real worry of damaging anything. But my temps and fan speed were noticeably lower.
 
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Carfax83

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The biggest performance drop in BL3 comes from volumetric fog believe it or not. Make sure you set it to medium, low or off. No idea why that particular setting is such a GPU hog.
 
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