Are nVidia drivers causing my DPC latency spikes? (GTX 1070)

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce Drivers Section' started by JahRo225, Jun 30, 2016.

  1. JahRo225

    JahRo225 Guest

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    Hello. I haven't fooled with any type of latency issue before upgrading my system, as I've never encountered it. Current specs are:

    Windows 10 Pro
    ASUS Z170-A Motherboard
    i7-6700k
    16 GB G.Skill 3200 MHz RAM
    EVGA GTX 1070 SC
    EVGA 750W Supernova G2 PSU

    What I've noticed is small audio "crackling" sounds while gaming. After researching online, I came across DPC latency and downloaded LatencyMon to monitor my system, and sure enough, I'm having massive spikes. What's even weirder is the spikes seems to correlate directly to how hard the GPU is working, see pics below:

    Idle:
    http://i.imgur.com/FQOP6RT.jpg

    Overwatch, medium settings:
    http://i.imgur.com/rs4BRDw.jpg

    Overwatch, maxed out settings:
    http://i.imgur.com/z67Ps0Q.jpg

    I've tried updating all of my drivers, updating my BIOS, disable HPET and various other tweaks, but the only way that I can REALLY fix this is disabling the GPU in Device manager. Basically, I'm having 0 issues when the nVidia driver is inactive.

    This occurs with both 368.39 and the hotfix, 368.51, drivers. I really need help figuring out if this is a hardware or driver issue, so I can work on fixing it. The card itself runs fantastic and easily maxes out any game I throw at it, but the random little crackles are pissing me off lol.

    Also, I tried my old 750 Ti FTW GPU to see if it fixed anything... while the graphics and FPS aren't as high as my 1070, it seemed to be more stable and had no audio issues.
     
  2. dr_rus

    dr_rus Ancient Guru

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    I'm assuming you're using the on-board sound? Try updating it's drivers and / or changing the default output format to something higher / lower.

    You can also try putting the card in a different PCI-E slot of your MB.

    There's nothing strange with latency going up under load. This latency isn't actually an indication of any problem either.
     
  3. JahRo225

    JahRo225 Guest

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    I tried onboard sound, a USB headset with it's own external sound card, and a dedicated sound card. Always disabled the other drivers when one in particular was used, and all were the most recent.

    Also tried changing PCI-E slots with the GPU, but the audio crackling and latency spikes were still present.
     
  4. VAlbomb

    VAlbomb Guest

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    I had the audio crackling, it eventually went away with Windows Updates or a Windows format couldn't really tell you which one did it.
     

  5. JahRo225

    JahRo225 Guest

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    Already tried clean installing W10, and Windows update :(
     
  6. dr_rus

    dr_rus Ancient Guru

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    Did you try changing the output format?

    [​IMG]
     
  7. vase

    vase Guest

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    1.) try http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads...=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

    most problems with the realtek chips (which are basically the HighDef Audio chips on all our mobos) can be solved with the original base driver package

    2.) if it doesnt help. do you by any chance have the possibility to quickly put a separate windows 7/8.1 partition (depending what you had before) up and try if the problem is w10 caused?
     
  8. Agent-A01

    Agent-A01 Ancient Guru

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  9. vase

    vase Guest

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  10. Pyrage

    Pyrage Master Guru

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    Try to install just the nvidia driver + physx. Like this:
    [​IMG]

    Go to the nvidia driver folder and delete all files until the folder is like that.

    Maybe its something regarding the gpu audio driver, specially if you use hdmi. Or maybe Geforce experience causing issues.
     
  11. sideband

    sideband Guest

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    Same problem 1070gtx+Z170/6700k+Win7 64bit.

    Temporary solution - change power plan to high perfomance.
     
  12. JahRo225

    JahRo225 Guest

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    I've done everything suggested so far, unfortunately :( though I've completely disabled my onboard audio. Using a usb headset with its own soundcard (I've tried without too lol). I posted on the nVidia forums too, it seems there are others with this issue too, which gives me some peace of mind that it's not my hardware, but more of a driver issue.. Hopefully someone can figure something out quick, ir nVidia can replicate it and release a hotfix
     
  13. cookieboyeli

    cookieboyeli Master Guru

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    The DPC latency spikes you're experiencing don't come entirely from a single source. A basic explanation is that DPC latency is what happens when your CPU gets a lot of interrupts by programs. Some are problematic and bad enough to be considered a malfunction. Others are normal and tiny with little to no measurable impact, but together they can build up or cause bad conflicts together.

    To lower DPC latency, approach it as a GENERAL PC problem. Do everything you can to lower it, usually you will find the culprit is one or two pieces of software causing massive spikes, and a ton of little things that end up raising the base a lot higher than it needs to be as well as sort of "multiplying" how big the spikes are.

    With your hardware you should be able to sit under 30uS easily 95% of the time, with the occasional spike to 40uS. Although sometimes Nvidia drivers just spike to 500-550uS no matter what, but the spikes shouldn't cause the typical high DPC latency problems you'd otherwise encounter. The spikes will only be occasional too and overall CPU time for the Nvidia kernel should remain lower than DirectX.

    I have a half complete "guide" here on lowering it:
    http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=406260

    For NVCP driver settings I recommend some changes from what I posted before, use adaptive v-sync, disable triple buffering, and set power management mode to optimized. It's OK to install PhysX, but I still recommend you don't unless games you play SPECIFICALLY use it. (Most don't).

    Most people won't do everything in the guide because they are either lazy, uninterested, or don't think it will help. Some general cleaning does not really help DPC latency, but it is so quick to do and does in theory help read/write throughput which may decrease the impact of hard pagefaults. Every little bit helps.

    Some things you should try now that aren't on the guide are switching the Power Profile to High Performance with all your normal settings since there are hidden changes that have to do with how the CPU sleeps and saves power between the balanced vs high performance profiles.

    Then change CPU idle to 100%, if you want to drop a few watts put that at 75%, in my testing that saves 2-3w while not causing a problem with DPC latency, however that's only the case for an optimized system. A non-optimized system will still see larger spikes with an idle below 100% because of excess interrupts.

    To really get an idea of the current state of your machine's DPC latency, you'll have to close EVERYTHING ELSE running in the background, then maximize the the LatencyMon window and DO NOT move your mouse during testing. You can try experimenting with having a single tab open to google in a Chromium/Firefox based browser in the background during testing, this will get you closer to what your system should be behaving like while under load without adding too many variables.

    What are results like now? That is your new baseline for comparison, screenshot with alt+printscreen and use MSPAINT to save the image instead of Win+PrtSc as that can cause a spike from CPU load.

    Speaking of which? With everything closed how are you idling? Your task manager should look like this while idling:
    [​IMG]
    (The old 1-2% CPU usage at the back of the chart is from a program, I was too lazy to keep waiting until it ran off the end).

    Make sure your MB bios is the latest before continuing. Do not ever use any utilities, drivers, or software from the manufacturer website. They are all horribly outdated/buggy/stupid and are are no more "approved" for your hardware then the newer versions of drivers available.

    Now go into your BIOS and ENABLE all C states except C7. C6 should be the highest supported.
    Enable EIST too. These settings combined with the Power Profile above will ensure the lowest power usage without causing a negative impact on DPC latency.

    You should enable most power saving features in your bios like ASPM and select Asus optimized settings for them if available. They work fantastically. It's good to set your Link State management to maximum power saving in Power Profiles too. In all my testing I cannot find a negative impact, only wattage savings and thus lower heat generation during idle.

    Another thing not mentioned in my guide are issues on ASUS motherboards with the SMbus drivers AKA AMDA00 Interface (I think?). If there is a process running in the background for it you've got the wrong one installed.

    Make sure you have the latest dated (not "most optimal") SMbus drivers from Intel when you use Snappy Driver Installer as I mention in my guide.

    Install your Intel Chipset Driver, a new one just released! http://station-drivers.com/index.ph...y&func=select&id=406&orderby=2&page=2&lang=en

    Also, make sure you've got your SSD's on the Intel SATA AHCI ports and not the Asmedia AHCI SATA ports.
    Double check that you have the latest drivers for your USB and AHCI controllers as well. (Intel AND Asmedia in your case). You always want the latest dated one, not the one with the largest version number.
    Manually getting the right drivers for the Chipset, ACHI and USB controllers can be a bit confusing but I highly recommend it as SDI doesn't always have the absolute latest that has released right away and doesn't make it easy to understand what boxes you want to check.
    http://www.win-raid.com/t29f25-Recommended-AHCI-RAID-and-NVMe-Drivers.html
    http://www.win-raid.com/t834f25-USB-Drivers-original-and-modded.html

    After you've run Device Remover from my guide, DDU'd in safe mode, and clean installed the latest driver with clean with only the bare minimum +/- PhySX selected. You should go into device manager and disable EVERYTHING that has to do with Audio that your system isn't using. Check under both Sound sections and system devices. Nvidia installs a High Definition Audio Controller, I think it's for HDMI/DP audio? I use the USB based Objective2 AMP and ODAC Rev.b plus a Blue Yeti mic. I don't need anything enabled that doesn't have to do with these devices. Disabling them shows a marked improvement to DPC latency! :)

    Additionally, make sure you select Disable all enhancements under Sound for all devices and disable any remaining devices that aren't directly inputting or outputting audio! (This should actually remove their respective entries from device manager).

    Finally, please be VERY SELECTIVE with what programs and services you allow to run on startup! It's up to you whether you have Steam, Skype or whatever else run on startup, but I highly recommend against everything except MSI AB and the RTSS OSD. Scheduled tasks are also startup items. You can manage these using CCleaner. Optimize start menu cache and MSI AB can stay. Get rid of everything else. (I cannot say whether you should disable the Intel Storage Startup entry from it's driver yet, more testing required). If you decide to keep google update services/task entries, do note that they will run 24/7. You could instead simply enable them to run, then reboot and open chrome so it can do it's auto-update and turn the services back off again so they aren't always running.

    As they say, less is more. :)

    For Services, look over the non-microsoft services set to run on boot in MSCONFIG and enable ONLY WHAT YOU NEED. Steam and Nvidia Driver Display service need to stay enabled even if you don't run Steam on boot. For Origin, the origin client service is unnecessary, and punk buster can be either on or off and you can start it manually. Your choice.

    how are things looking now? MUCH MUCH better I'd imagine. This has most liekly solved the problem with spikes entirely and reduced your average DPC to sub 30uS, or even into the single digits 95% of the time like my system. (I stay below 10uS a lot of the time).

    If you are still getting higher numbers than you'd like, check out the drivers tap in LatencyMon, DirectX usually has the most CPU time, if something else is beating it by a large margin you probably still have a problem. If you've decided to keep any Audio or Mouse/KB software think it over again and please reconsider. Nothing from Razer, Logitech, Corsair or otherwise should be installed as most products are capable of keeping settings in firmware and these programs have a negative effect EVEN WHEN INSTALLED BUT NOT RUNNING as they "mess with the drivers" (I don't understand exactly how, but for instance if Razer Synapse is installed you will get acceleration and drift with some Razer mice). Some features require software and to that I say, get a brand which does not need software running to use it's features!

    My personal preferences are Zowie and Ducky. No software = no software problems. ;)
     
    Last edited: Jul 1, 2016
  14. JahRo225

    JahRo225 Guest

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    Wow, thanks for the informative post. I will try and do what you suggested tomorrow when I have some free time. Appreciate it!
     

  15. bugsixx

    bugsixx Guest

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  16. HeavyHemi

    HeavyHemi Guest

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  17. JahRo225

    JahRo225 Guest

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    Here's my latency with my old 750 Ti FTW on 368.38, while playing.

    http://imgur.com/em74k0J

    Something I noticed is that the 750 Ti and 1070's latest drivers are both 368.39... My 750 Ti is stable with 0 latency problems on 368.39, but my 1070 has ridiculous spikes and audio crackles on the same version. Does that mean I have a faulty card?


    edit: seems the spikes still occur, but are less severe... maybe because the graphics aren't as high as my 1070?
     
    Last edited: Jul 3, 2016
  18. Agent-A01

    Agent-A01 Ancient Guru

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    Plain generic ones from realtkl like the ones on their website.
    They send these to OEM and oems customize to their specific needs.
     
  19. JahRo225

    JahRo225 Guest

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    Fixed the sound crackling. Turned off my RAM's 3200 MHz XMP profile and went down to 2133. DPC seems way more stable and haven't had sound issues yet. Gonna have to mess with the RAM in the BIOS to see if I can fix the issues at 3200 MHz
     

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