970 Downclocking in games

[Syribo]

My friend got an MSI 970 4G Gaming recently and is having a weird problem. When he starts up the computer and opens a game, the card is fine. Clocks are fine, everything is fine. But then if he exits it and goes back to open it at some other point, the card seems to be downclocking itself.. or not getting itself out of some kind of "idle" mode. The core just becomes stuck at about 405mhz, the mem at about 810mhz. The only way he can rectify the problem is by completely restarting the computer, and then it's fine until the next time.

He's using the most recent driver update, it happens at stock clocks/voltages. He uses Afterburner to monitor it. Games will drop down to about 20fps when this happens, or just become a complete stuttering mess.

 

[auntjemima]

How are the temps? Maybe the card is throttling itself.

 

[Syribo]

How are the temps? Maybe the card is throttling itself.

Temps are good, they're in the 50's while in-game under load. Doesn't seem to be throttling in games either. It plays completely fine, but when exiting a game and going back into it again, it just never seems to go back up from the "idle" clocks. I Googled it and saw some other people having the same kind of issue either with exiting and opening games, or even just minimizing and maximizing it. But I have yet to find anything to help..

It's weird because my exact same 970 never did that for me.. not even once. And he has the same exact model hm..