Constant FPS drop in all games

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce' started by lhc00, Oct 21, 2012.

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  1. lhc00

    lhc00 Guest

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    I have a GT540m with the latest WHQL drivers, but recently, whenever I play any game that uses a great amount of the GPU I've experimented some FPS drops.
    Then I downloaded the Nvidia Inspector to check it out and this is what I found:
    [​IMG]

    It looks like the card slows down once in a while. I appreciate if someone knows how could I fix that.
     
  2. Mufflore

    Mufflore Ancient Guru

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    Check CPU use, video card memory occupancy and if your hard drive has excess activity when the problem occurs.
     
  3. MerkageTurk

    MerkageTurk Banned

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    SSD? or faster HDD
     
  4. lhc00

    lhc00 Guest

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    750 gb 5400 rpm sata
     

  5. DrDoU

    DrDoU Guest

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    Ugh! 5400rpm drive is so slow.What kind of games are you playing?What resolution?Has this just started after a driver update? And soforth.
     
  6. lhc00

    lhc00 Guest

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    This fps drops happen with all games that use the graphics card including league of legends, street fighter 4 and so on, I'm playing at 1360x768 resolution.

    This happened before I had my drivers updated, i used the 301.42, then, this problem started and I tried to update the driver to 306.97 but nothing changed. I just run a disk defrag here too but nothing got changed.
     
  7. Mufflore

    Mufflore Ancient Guru

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    Check CPU use, video card memory occupancy and if your hard drive has excess activity when the problem occurs.
     
  8. lhc00

    lhc00 Guest

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    sorry, I searched, but I don't know how to check the video card memory occupancy, but I checked the CPU and the Hard Drive while gaming, the Drive is just fine, but the graph of the CPU is really similar to the graph of the GPU(with lots of ups and downs for the "Maximum Frequency" in blue), but the number of "fps drops" is exactly the same of the valleys of the graph of GPU usage.

    [​IMG]
     
  9. DrDoU

    DrDoU Guest

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    How much frame buffer does the machine have?
     
  10. Mufflore

    Mufflore Ancient Guru

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    Use MSI Afterburner to get the memory occupancy.

    Can you give me the individual CPU cores graph?
    It only takes one core to stall a game.

    But it does look like turbo boost is kicking in and out.
    Try disabling this and manually set your CPUs max speed.
     

  11. DrDoU

    DrDoU Guest

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    Possible data buffer in hard drive going bad.
     
  12. lhc00

    lhc00 Guest

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    There you are:
    [​IMG]

    and

    [​IMG]

    About the turbo boost thing, I need to use the bios to change the CPU max speed?
     
  13. Mufflore

    Mufflore Ancient Guru

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    Your CPU 'might' be a little too slow, its on the edge of when it starts to affect GPU use.
    But lack of CPU power isnt the issue here by the looks of it.
    However, clocking it higher might stop turbo boost from switching so often?

    Yes, you need to change settings in the BIOS.
    Disable turbo boost and set the CPU multiplier to its maximum turbo boost speed for your CPU (2.9GHz I think after a quick web search).
    (Speedstep should still change the multiplier to save power when idle)
    Test for stability afterwards with Prime95 Blend mode, for as long as you can, 1/2 hr if short on time.
    Dont let CPU temp exceed 72C, make sure air can cycle around and underneath the laptop.
     
    Last edited: Oct 22, 2012
  14. smashly

    smashly Master Guru

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    Wouldn't surprise me if your laptop is throttling under load.

    What you can do is in windows power management set the max power limit to 99%
    This will stop the turbo mode, but it will also probably smooth the fps dips as well as reduce heat.

    If your laptop is anything like my Dell N5110 (i5 2310/ GT525) then you'll probably find the cooling system in the laptop is shared between the CPU and GPU.
    Once you put either the CPU or GPU under load one heats the other.
    When both GPU and CPU are under high load at the same time, throttling occurs for a sec or 2.

    Sometimes it may not even be heat, but merely the power to the laptop or the power circuitry in the laptop hits it's peak power draw and throttling occurs.

    In most cases the laptop manufacturer will deny there is a problem even when they have long threads in their own forums reporting the problem by users.
    Blame will be laid on OS/Drivers/Bad air flow caused by the user.
    When in a majority of the time it's just the manufacturer has sold a laptop that can't run at it's full advertised potential without throttling.
     
    Last edited: Oct 22, 2012
  15. Mufflore

    Mufflore Ancient Guru

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    Good point.

    Op, blow a fan at the laptop and see if it can help.
     

  16. SLI-756

    SLI-756 Guest

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    That is some heavy usage right there, looks like you're doing a CPU benchmark, OC CPU in bios if possible, there's perhaps a guide online for your laptop.
     
  17. Solace50

    Solace50 Member Guru

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    ? if the cards downclocking itself its usually related to the driver or some form of power savings/stability/heat. 99% its the drivers, cpu speed, whatever else is not relevant to the gpu clocks fluctuating. its handled by the game/drivers of which would only downclock to normal 3dperf speeds if not under load for the boost if on kepler. try using nvinspector to force certain clock speeds.
     
  18. lhc00

    lhc00 Guest

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    I changed the max power settings to 99% the CPU still follow the same pattern of graph(just don't go in turbo mode).
    I formated my laptop to factory settings(Samsung RF511-SD2), and the problem still is there, could be the cooler dirty and the Game is pushing up the laptop while the temperature is pushing down?
    I noticed that the idle temperature got 6°C highter than usual(before this problem starts).
     
  19. Dragondale13

    Dragondale13 Ancient Guru

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    Not sure how you should go about checking it yourself but it sounds to me like your power adapter "might" be failing.
     
  20. Zoz

    Zoz Guest

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    -Life has very few guarantees. There is no universal law dictating your GPU will be pegged at 100% usage during gaming, even when your frame rate is < 60. Your graphs could be perfectly normal, and simply represent your system's natural performance at a given instant in time. Find someone with a similar rig as yours and compare notes with him.

    With that being said..

    -Make sure "Prefer Maximum Performance" is enabled in the nVidia control panel, as it can be glitchy and incorrectly kick down to 2d speeds during gaming, for reasons I do not know.

    -Download both MSI Afterburner and HWinfo32 and visually verify that neither your CPU nor GPU are downclocking at *any* time during play. If they are, that would possibly explain your graphs.
     

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