Help with underperforming GTX 1080

[Valariel]

Hello all.

I'm new to the forum and was hoping to get some help. I just recently upgraded from an Nvidia GTX 1050Ti to a GTX 1080 (Zotac) to improve my game performance and frankly, it doesn't seem to be working anywhere near as well as it should. I have been getting benchmark scores between 1050-1600 on various runs with the Heaven benchmark (see below). I play World of Warcraft and Empyrion: Galactic Survival and have been getting pretty noticeable lag and highly variable framerates on both (about the same as before the upgrade). I've seen framerates in the range of 5-150FPS with high and seemingly random variation and a lot of unpleasant skipping.

I've tried several things like wiping and reinstalling/updating drivers, changing PCI slots, disabling onboard graphics and get minimal if any improvements. Nvidia control panel is also set to "prefer maximum performance" instead of saving power. I'm trying to figure out if my processor or something else may be bottlenecking the card. If anyone could offer any suggestions, they'd be much appreciated.

Most recent Heaven benchmark results
FPS: 51.9
Score: 1307
Min FPS: 7.3
Max FPS: 87

System: Windows 10 64bit
CPU: Intel i5-4670 @ 3.40GHz (3392MHz)x4
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 23.21.13.8859 (4095MB)x1
(The card has 8GB memory - not sure why it said 4GB there?)

Settings:
Render: Direct3D11
Mode:1920x1080 8xAA fullscreen
Preset: Custom
Quality: Ultra
Tessellation: Extreme

Other computer specs:
RAM:
16GB (8GBx2) DDR3 1600MHZ MEMORY
Motherboard:
GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-D3H INTEL Z87 CORSSFIREX/SLI SATA 6 USB 3.0
Power Supply:
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX V2 POWER SUPPLY

 

[Campy]

That's definitely far below expected performance in Heaven, most people seem to be getting around 2800-3200 score. Your CPU is not the best but it doesn't explain a score that low. 2500+ score seems reasonable for your setup.

If you want to determine a bottleneck you should use some sort of software that shows GPU and CPU utilization while you run the benchmark. However, considering the lack of performance you're experiencing I think there's something actually wrong.

Have you tried other benchmarks? How are your temps during gaming load/benchmarking? Have you had your graphics card in the top PCI-E slot(closest to CPU)?

 

[Valariel]

Hey. Thanks for the reply.

The card is in the top PCI slot nearest the cpu (I tried moving it to a different one, had no effect, moved it back). When running the Heaven benchmark, my cpu usage was mostly steady around 14-15% occasionally jumping up to 20-29ish. Im not sure how to see %gpu usage, but the gpu was pretty constantly at a gpu clock of 1898 mHz and a memory clock of 5005 mHz. The temp started at 47C when I started the benchmark and never went above 58C.

I tried another benchmark called VRMARK. It was a free demo but won't let me compare to others without paying. Got a score of 4,933 with an average frame rate of 107.53 fps. Sounds better, but actual games still lagging. I also just tried updating my BIOS and it didn't seem to have an effect. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[HutchinsonJC]

Power Options?

Heat throttle? What kind of case do you have? A lot of those GPUs that aren't Founders Edition aren't maneuvering heat the same way as a vapor chamber would and a lot of people may not realize this straight away when they make the upgrade.

Edit: That is to say... a Vapor Chamber is blowing the heat straight out the back of the case and a lot of these other GPUs using other cooling options are blowing the heat right into the case, with an expectation that your case fans will accommodate the exhausting of that heat.

 

[Valariel]

Hello Hutchinson. I tried cranking the power to 110% using the Firestorm software (From Zotac), but that didn't seem to have any effect on Benchmark performance. The card never really gets that hot (i've never seen it get over 60C), so I'm not sure if it's not getting enough power or something else might be wrong with it. In other words, it certainly isn't overheating.

This is the case I have. It has five fans in it including the large side fan. I don't think it is an overheating problem
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...zKzFP0KtZn3d-sBix8hoCgcsQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

[Campy]

Download GPU-Z to help monitor gpu utilization and clock. Check the PCI-E link speed listed as "bus interface" in GPU-Z, you may have to click the question mark next to it and run the render test to make it clock up to it's true speed.

Make sure you've connected all power connectors to the graphics card and that they're seated properly.

Try uninstalling drivers, doing an additional wipe with DDU and then installing the newest driver again after a restart.

If that doesn't work you could to something more drastic like reinstalling windows, and though it's a long shot to think that will fix anything the next step would be to look for faulty hardware.

In the case of faulty hardware it could be anything from the graphics card itself, the motherboard, or even the power supply, although it's a bit odd that there is seemingly no system instability if any of those parts are faulty.
I would usually try replacing the graphics card first, but if you've seen as low as 5fps in games with both the 1050Ti and 1080 I think that would be indicative of a fault elsewhere, because not even the 1050Ti should be going that low in my experience. Correct me if I'm wrong about your fps in the games though, that's how I read your first post when having a second look now.