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A little more than a week ago, I acquired an ASUS Strix GTX970 4GB OC. I've been noticing alot of sporadic stuttering whilst playing games and I'm kind of puzzled to what it could be. Very frustrating.
I've monitored my system with HWiNFO64 and saw no abnormalities in CPU, GPU and RAM usage. Nor did I see any in CPU and GPU temperature. A friend of mine said I should look for abnormalities in temperature as he suspected that throttling would be the issue. I've also run Furmark but did not observe any faults either.
What I am noticing while booting up or playing games, is that the VRAM usage indicator on ASUS's GPU Tweak 2 goes no further than 6% an most of the times just idles at 0%, which is why I suspect the GPU to not function correctly. Could there be something I've missed?
Could it be the the powersupply that I recently purchased? I felt the need to purchase a new powersupply as my old one only delivered only 25A on the 12V rail. The minimum seemed to have been 28A and it said 38A was recommended on the card's box. I had no money to buy me a really good one, so temporarily went for a Corsair CX600M. I know that the chance of the powersupply being the culprit is very slim, but I thought I should state the potentially necessary.
I'll state the specifications of my system below to give you guys more clarity on this matter and help you answer my (very) vague question:
- Antec GX300 case
- ASUS P8H67 Motherboard
- Intel i5 2400 processor
- ASUS Strix GTX970 4GB OC
- Mushkin 240GB SSD
- Samsung 500GB 5400rpm HDD
- Corsair CX600M PSU
The system was recently clean-installed with Windows 7 Ultimate edition. Games tested include GTA V, MS Flight Simulator X and CS:GO.
EDIT
As suggested by Psycogeek, I have checked the current Link Width in the Main Board section of CPU-Z and saw something that might be remarkable:
The card installed into the lower PCI-E slot of the motherboard. Could this slot be defective? Should I try the other slot?
Fariz Fakkel
Posted 2015-08-26T22:26:05.207
Reputation: 83
1As a troubleshooting step, try under-clocking the video card's core and memory and see if it becomes more stable. – user5071535 – 2015-08-26T22:48:25.797
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This could just be an issue intrinsic to the GTX 970 GPU core itself. Is video memory usage going past 3.5 GB? If so, replacing the card, even with a GTX 970 from another brand, will not help—you'll need to either reduce the texture quality, resolution, or other graphics settings, or get the more expensive GTX 980 instead. http://www.pcgamer.com/why-nvidias-gtx-970-slows-down-using-more-than-35gb-vram/
– bwDraco – 2015-08-26T23:35:34.7571you could also check your link quantity , if a init negotiation goes poorly even on an x16 link slot and all, it might not be up to par, using GPU-Z or even CPU-Z which also shows the link state in the mainboard section. – Psycogeek – 2015-08-27T00:45:28.183
@user5071535 I'll figure out how to do that when I get hone from work and see if the systrm's more stable then. – Fariz Fakkel – 2015-08-27T07:09:52.877
@DragonLord VRAM usage remains low. Very low. Won't even use more than 6% of the maximum as stated above. – Fariz Fakkel – 2015-08-27T07:12:10.450
@Psycogeek Nice idea. I'll try check out the link quantity when I get home. Any specific moments I need to check this at? I might want to check out what is defined by "link quantity" to give myself a clear image of what it affects. – Fariz Fakkel – 2015-08-27T07:16:44.540
From what i can tell link width does not change, if it does not get negotiated proper at init, then it stays that way. So as far as i know you would just check it at any time. If it was failing after that while transferring data, because it errored ??? i have no idea what it does. – Psycogeek – 2015-08-27T08:06:16.957
@user5071535 I slightly underclocked the card to 1153MHz. The card did rise 100MB or so in memory usage. Other than that, no real drastic changes. – Fariz Fakkel – 2015-08-27T17:09:19.180
@Psycogeek Please check out the edit. – Fariz Fakkel – 2015-08-27T17:18:24.823
@FarizFakkel, As per your edit, yes you should try another slot. A x2 link may be a red flag since most pcie slots are either x1, x4, x8, or x16. Can you add your motherboard model to your question? – user5071535 – 2015-08-27T17:24:48.933
@user5071535 Already done that. I know my question falls into the TL:DR category, but please look for the summary of components in the question. You'll find the model of the motherboard there. – Fariz Fakkel – 2015-08-27T17:27:05.250
5@FarizFakkel, Oops, my bad! Looks like you're using slot "PCIe x16_2", which is supposed to provide a x4 link, so that slot is definitely suspect. If you have similar issues on slot "PCIe x16_1", then it's probably the video card. You could try cleaning the slot contacts if that's the case. Note also that your motherboard manual recommends slot PCIe x16_1 if you're using a single video card. – user5071535 – 2015-08-27T17:36:48.127
2@user5071535 No worries man. It's alright. You've helped enough as is. Everything runs smoothly now that the card is inserted into the correct slot. CPU-Z also indicated the correct Link Width. I don't want to make any excuses, but since the print on the mobo stated "16x PCIe 2.0" above the card, I assumed that the card would run as it should've. Still, I can't help feeling stupid for my error. I'll make sure to refer to the motherboard manual in the future.
In case you answer the question, make sure enough credit/(comment-) upvotes go to Psycogeek for the great lead in the "investigation". – Fariz Fakkel – 2015-08-27T19:47:52.347
3Good to hear all's well, I'll let @Psycogeek answer since it was his hunch. – user5071535 – 2015-08-27T19:55:34.323
1@FarizFakkel could you write an answer to this as it could be useful to future visitors. I will if you do not but I do not wish to steal the rep you may gain from you as it is not my original answer. – Ctrl-alt-dlt – 2015-12-22T16:10:25.600
3I think it would be fair enough to write the answer myself. I will do this later. – Fariz Fakkel – 2015-12-23T12:58:54.770
@FarizFakkel Later? ;-) – Tamara Wijsman – 2016-06-23T09:59:02.947
Much later xD
Anyone feel like doing it? I honestly can't be bothered. Free rep! – Fariz Fakkel – 2016-06-25T10:01:48.463