GTX460 drops its core clocks to 405MHz until reboot (edit: fixed! details by notty22)

[Idontcare]

at least you figured it out, now you can enjoy it.

Exactly, and hopefully others will benefit from knowing the fix if they suffer similar issues.

On a side note, I think maybe my performance expectations were a little misaligned with reality.

I love that MSI on-screen display server which overlays your fps in the upper right corner of the game in magenta so you can see just how wind your GPU is sucking.

Playing a moderately older game like Dragon Origins (not even a DX11 title) on a rather moderate screen resolution of 1920x1200 with all my eye-candy turned up and I only muster about 30 fps. Sometimes it dogs down around 17 and 18 fps for certain fight scenes. This is with the 460 @ 854MHz.

It's playable, barely, but I'm really beginning to see the alure of those SLI setups and the GTX580/HD6970 even for people who aren't gaming on 30" screens or eyefinity.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Just wanted to post an update on this. I had disabled Vsync as my solution to the forced downclocking while gaming and it worked, but the screen tearing was just dreadful, totally annoying.

So I re-enabled Vsync and went looking for something else that would work for my problem.

notty22's post was the key for me. By setting "prefer maximum performance" and then selective "adaptive" as global I can now game with vsync on and have zero issues with the card getting locked at 405MHz.

No idea why this makes a difference, but it works so I hope it helps anyone else with similar symptoms.

thanks notty22 :thumbsup:

(PS - I did not have to do anything with the PCIe)

Thanks for updating the title. I am going to keep this in mind, could prove useful.

 

[Rifter]

Exactly, and hopefully others will benefit from knowing the fix if they suffer similar issues.

On a side note, I think maybe my performance expectations were a little misaligned with reality.

I love that MSI on-screen display server which overlays your fps in the upper right corner of the game in magenta so you can see just how wind your GPU is sucking.

Playing a moderately older game like Dragon Origins (not even a DX11 title) on a rather moderate screen resolution of 1920x1200 with all my eye-candy turned up and I only muster about 30 fps. Sometimes it dogs down around 17 and 18 fps for certain fight scenes. This is with the 460 @ 854MHz.

It's playable, barely, but I'm really beginning to see the alure of those SLI setups and the GTX580/HD6970 even for people who aren't gaming on 30" screens or eyefinity.

Yeah dragon age is poorly coded IMO, like crysis. I got bad FPS on it with my phenom II @ 3.6 with a 4890@1GHz, i got acceptable FPS from my i7@4.2 and single 460@900, havent played it since going SLI so cant comment on SLI performance.

One thing i noticed though is that since the 460 and 4890 are very close in performance but i saw a 20-40% gain from going phenom II to i7 is that this game seems to need a really fast CPU to shine. What CPU are you running?

 

[toyota]

Dragon Age likes really fast clocked quads. http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...rks-75-percent-boost-for-quad-cores/Practice/

 

[Idontcare]

Yeah dragon age is poorly coded IMO, like crysis. I got bad FPS on it with my phenom II @ 3.6 with a 4890@1GHz, i got acceptable FPS from my i7@4.2 and single 460@900, havent played it since going SLI so cant comment on SLI performance.

One thing i noticed though is that since the 460 and 4890 are very close in performance but i saw a 20-40% gain from going phenom II to i7 is that this game seems to need a really fast CPU to shine. What CPU are you running?

Dragon Age likes really fast clocked quads. http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...rks-75-percent-boost-for-quad-cores/Practice/

Dang...yep I'm just using a lowly Q6600 at stock here. The chip will do 3.3GHz without issue though, I just hate listening to the HSF when I do.

So, yeah, looks like I'm prolly CPU limiting my 460 at the moment...although according to afterburner my GPU utilization is 99% (CPU utilization is ~60%) so I was taking that to mean my GPU is simply fully maxed out.

 

[Elganja]

I have sli cyclones and have something similar happen in less demanding games. 1 or both gpu's will attempt to run at 405mhz.
Under
Nvidia control panel
Manage settings
program settings
each individual game
power management mode - prefer maximum performance

This allows me to set global mode to adaptive.

One final thing, under windows 7 Power settings.
Advanced settings
pci-e
link state power management - set to OFF

these settings allow my gpu's to downclock and up clock normally in 2d etc

you need to reboot sometimes after these settings changes or global changes to Nvidia power settings.

never heard about this before... what does this do? My cards seem to downclock and upclock just fine on Adaptive

 

[notty22]

On games like NFS Hot Pursuit and Star Wars the Force U2, these 2 games both cap fps@60 and 30 fps. On my setup ,sli, I forced max IQ AF, AA everything , but using MSI AB, OSD monitoring you can clearly see the cards down clocking resulting in occasional fps drops, slow -mo, movement for split seconds.
The settings in NV control panel fix all that, resulting in the fps pegged at the fps cap / v snyc. The important part is the game engine never lulls to sleep, gpu processing is going to slow down like a rock if your clock speeds go from 800 to 400mhz, even if that allows for the same 60fps. You don't want that to happen during gaming. Let your gpu's downclock outside of gaming, within gaming you don't want that(extra latency) introduced.

Ignore the windows 7 power settings, those are more related to sleep states.

 

[Vesku]

I'll give that max performance under individual games and adaptive for global a try.

 

[Idontcare]

On games like NFS Hot Pursuit and Star Wars the Force U2, these 2 games both cap fps@60 and 30 fps. On my setup ,sli, I forced max IQ AF, AA everything , but using MSI AB, OSD monitoring you can clearly see the cards down clocking resulting in occasional fps drops, slow -mo, movement for split seconds.
The settings in NV control panel fix all that, resulting in the fps pegged at the fps cap / v snyc. The important part is the game engine never lulls to sleep, gpu processing is going to slow down like a rock if your clock speeds go from 800 to 400mhz, even if that allows for the same 60fps. You don't want that to happen during gaming. Let your gpu's downclock outside of gaming, within gaming you don't want that(extra latency) introduced.

Ignore the windows 7 power settings, those are more related to sleep states.

Yep. Flawless reasoning, especially when you've been the victim of the downside of what can happen when things go wrong.

And I can confirm for fact that if you follow notty's advice that your card will still do the idle thing, stepping its clockspeed down to 405Mhz and then 51Mhz, when you are on the desktop and not doing anything GPU intensive.

This setting change merely ensure the GPU does not downclock (and then get itself stuck at the lower clockspeed) while you are in a game.

Its FTW.

 

[BoFox]

Just wanted to post an update on this. I had disabled Vsync as my solution to the forced downclocking while gaming and it worked, but the screen tearing was just dreadful, totally annoying.

So I re-enabled Vsync and went looking for something else that would work for my problem.

notty22's post was the key for me. By setting "prefer maximum performance" and then selective "adaptive" as global I can now game with vsync on and have zero issues with the card getting locked at 405MHz.

No idea why this makes a difference, but it works so I hope it helps anyone else with similar symptoms.

thanks notty22 :thumbsup:

(PS - I did not have to do anything with the PCIe)

It still happens with "Prefer Maximum Performance". Sometimes, especially if it happens twice, after I change the clocks back to 840MHz, and then it goes down to 405MHz again, I had to restart the computer in order to be able to get it above 405MHz again.

It seems that NV's newer drivers lock it at 405MHz after it throttles 2 times in a row. Sometimes it could throttle 2 times in a split-second, therefore locking it in the P3 state.

SOLUTION:

I went to Nvidia Inspector and edited the P3 clocks. The voltage will be the same as P0 (the gaming mode), so don't worry about it. Just overclock the P3 from 405MHz to whatever you want, and there! P8 is still at 405MHz, with lower voltage and super low memory clock, but it's the P3 state that's the problem here, with the new drivers locking it at P3 whenever the card draws a lot of power. If something happens in a game like a monster jumping at me out of the closet, suddenly drawing a lot of GPU power, it stutters and downclocks to 405MHz, right there at that instant! I could run Furmark all night long or Unigine Heaven with max tessellation, at much much higher clocks--what I use to play games should have absolutely no problems. OCCT ran error-free for hours and hours at a FAR higher clock.

Nvidia needs to fix this issue. I'm thinking that the P3 mode is a new mode or something like that, or that it's not properly managed by the new drivers that over-reacts to a certain power draw in Amperes, or temperature of a certain component that is not measured by GPU-Z. (Or that it's just super sensitive to any shader errors, or memory errors--the GDDR5 on the 460 isn't error-correcting, unlike the higher-end cards.