Performance suddenly 30% lower?

[JimmiG]

I have the weirdest problem with my videocard.

Several days ago, I noticed that Oblivion was lagging slightly with AA enabled. I though it was just me imagining things. Today I tried playing The Witcher, and it also ran slower than I remembered. FSX was also struggling slightly at my standard settings.

So, to confirm I wasn't just seeing things, I ran 3DMark 06. Performance had indeed decreased - I used to get about 10k 3DMarks, now I was only getting 7k. Looking at the results in detail, CPU test perform about the same, but the performance in all the Game tests has dropped significantly, by between 25% and 50%. The HDR tests took a bigger hit than the first two game tests. So, it's not a CPU/RAM/Mobo problem, but a graphics problem.

I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the driver.

I've only done two things the past week - I installed RivaTuner, and I installed a fanmate and plugged the GPU fan into it via the case_fan connector on the mobo instead of the GPU fan connector on the videocard - is it possible the videocard has underclocked itself because it can't sense the GPU fan?

I *think* there may be a problem with the GPU and VRAM clocks. I tried overclocking with Rivatuner som days ago, but it wouldn't detect the default clocks correctly. I've tried uninstalling Rivatuner but that didn't help. Also, the Gigabyte Gamer HUD (tweaking utility provided with my videocard) popped up a balloon tip saying that "Your videocard is overclocked, click here to restore settings". When I click the "Default" button in the HUD, it set all the clocks to 0 MHz and now it won't allow me to change them at all. 3DMark system info also shows:
Min GPU Memory Clock 0.0 Hz
Min GPU Core Clock 0.0 Hz
Max GPU Memory Clock 0.0 Hz
Max GPU Core Clock 0.0 Hz

Edit: I just installed Ntune and the Nvidia Monitor also shows 0 MHz for all clocks. In the Performance node of the Nvidia control panel, all the sliders are stuck at 0 MHz, and can't be moved.

In spite of the "0 MHz" speeds, performance is still the same - about 30% lower than it should be. Any ideas short of reformatting the harddrive? Is it possible the BIOS somehow got corrupted?

 

[XFXSupport]

It could be a PSU issue, these next gen cards will slow down when not getting enough juice. Are you able to test this video card in another system? What are your idle and load temps for the video card as well?

 

[JimmiG]

It could be a PSU issue, these next gen cards will slow down when not getting enough juice. Are you able to test this video card in another system? What are your idle and load temps for the video card as well?

Well, the card has been working fine for several months. In the beginning I even used a much older, weaker psu with just 20A on the 12V rail. I will however open the case and see if the PCI-E power connector might have dislodged itself.

I reinstalled RivaTuner and ran the Hardware monitoring feature of it while running 3DMark.

It reported a constant 400 MHz core, 500 MHz RAM, and 810 MHz shader. Those are the default 2D speeds of my gigabyte card. When running a 3D app, it's supposed to be 700/920/1715 MHz but the graph didn't show any such increase of clock speeds.

 

[darkpaw]

Have you tried plugging the fan cable back into the board? Your guess about the fan speed detection would be my first thought too.

 

[Nenu]

This is nothing to do with the PSU, I suspect that nothing is faulty.
The 0MHz reports could be indicative of a driver issue very possibly because it cannot sense the fan speed.

You have a choice, plug the fan back in, even if you dont use it (ie place it somewhere safe) or blow another cards BIOS onto yours that doesnt respond to fan speed problems.

 

[JimmiG]

I fiddled with the RivaTuner settings again, rebooted several times and was able to set clock speeds again finally. I then unchecked the overclocking box in RivaTuner. Now the Hardware Monitor shows 700 MHz Core, 1728 Mhz Shader Domain and 918 MHz memory.. Those are close the defaults of this card, or very close to anyway - memory is 2 MHz lower, shader is 13 Mhz faster than default for some reason. My 3DMark score also indicates that performance is back to normal.

Also the clocks lowered themselves automatically after some time at the Windows desktop, meaning the 2D/3D switching also works..

Now, about RivaTuner, because this was apparently a software-only issue from the start...

-Why did it affect my clockspeeds even after I had reinstalled the display driver *and uninstalled* RivaTuner completely?

-Why did it mess up my system globally? Not even NTune and the Gigabyte utility would allow me to change clockspeeds once RivaTuner had decided to lock me at the 2D clock speeds.

-Where are those clockspeeds that RivaTuner sets stored? How can I completely purge my system of RivaTuner's messed up clock settings?