GTX 260/280 Clock Throttling While in 3D Apps. An Explanation.

[pbm]

This "Feature" does not work well at all in my system.
ASUS p5q Deluxe 4 Gigs RAM
CPU e8400@3.84
BFG GTX 280 OC
OS Vista X64 (All updates up to date)

Playing Neverwinter Nights 2: storm of zehir it will drop down to low power 3D mode after about 5 minutes regardless of what part of the game I am in. When it drops the game pauses for a second then the frame rates drop by half. Going from nice and smooth to extra choppy. Once it has dropped to Low Power 3d Mode the only way I can get it back to normal clocks is to reboot the computer. Going into other games after it has dropped to low power mode will not bring it back up. Fallout 3 is practically a slide show in low power mode. So far Neverwinter Nights is the only game it is dropping back into low power 3d mode. Since I am playing this at 1920x1200 everything maxed with 4xAA I dont think low power is the way to be going here.

Short Version of My experience with this "feature"
1. Seems to be way to aggressive on when to do the Low Power 3d Mode.
2. Transistion from High Power to Low power is not seemless. Game very noticeably pauses during the switch and then frame rates are half what they were.
2.Has never once come back from a Low Power mode switch back to Performance Mode with out a reboot.
3. Never had a GPU throttle problem of any kind prior to the 180 series.
4. Same problems with 180.48 and 180.70

Put in another vote for user control here. This should at the very least be an option in the Global settings to shut this "feature" off and even better would be to also have the setting available on a per game bases.

For now I am sticking with the 180.48 driver but I am having to use Rivatuner to force the 3d Performance all the time when I am going to play Neverwinter.

[nekrosoft13]

Originally Posted by Sycario

I run WoW at 8xAA 16xAF and the card downclocks. The framerate drops to around 40 and I get tons of texture flashing. This seems more like a bug to me. If it is a feature I want to be able to disable it. I also had the card downclock while playing FEAR and the framerate dropped into the 20s.

that is not caused by the card, I had this problem, and it is caused by certain USB HID devices, most often by Logitech keyboards or mouse (G15 quite often), some Saitek and few other brands.

[Lizzrd79]

Originally Posted by nekrosoft13

that is not caused by the card, I had this problem, and it is caused by certain USB HID devices, most often by Logitech keyboards or mouse (G15 quite often), some Saitek and few other brands.

Hi. What is the solution to the problems caused by Logitech G15 keyboards? I am using a G15 keyboard and a G5 mouse. I love them both. When I play WOW on my system (Q9550 2.83ghz. 8gb RAM, Vista x64, GTX 280 - 180.48 drivers) I get excellent frame rates (well over 100 fps most of the time)...but the game stutters quite often causing brief but frequent spurts of choppiness during gameplay...however, the FPS remains high even when the game stutters. I have tried many different in-game settings and I have tried every Vista x64 driver that I could find for the GTX 280 and nothing has solved the problem so far. Most of my games run better than ever...but the game that I play the most, WOW, actually "plays" worse, even though I am getting higher FPS than I did with my former computer. I don't get it. If anybody has any ideas as to what might be causing the problem, I would love to hear them. Thanks so much.

[BCKator]

Originally Posted by Llamalama

This works for the 8800GTX?

This is not supported directly on 8800gtx but I do basically the same thing via RT (RivaTuner) by having my OC profile kick in when the card goes to 3D mode and then an underclocked mode kick in when it transitions out of 3D mode. I monitor the clocks and while it sometimes detects 3D mode while browsing, I've never seen it do the wrong thing wrt not being in OC mode while gaming. So, I think its a great idea that the 200s do this out of the box, but.... that assumes they are doing it right. I've not, played Wow or some of the other games that people are reporting problems with.

[Undread]

Just happened upon this thread because I was googling and trying to figure out what the issue was. I own a GTX 260 Core 216 and I've been playing Fallout 3 for a few days now and when I started playing tonight I noticed my frames were much lower than normal, couldn't figure out what was causing it finally I saw in GPU-Z that the clock rates weren't completely right.

That's when I discovered the new Low-Power 3D mode. It seems something bugged out and no matter what I did or how many times I exited and relaunched fallout it wouldn't go into full 3D mode. Once I restarted the computer it was fine and jumped straight to full 3D mode as soon as the level loaded.

It seems there are still some bugs to work out concerning when it chooses to go into low power mode. In the meantime is there any workaround other than restarting my comp?

[noko]

There really needs to be an option to dissable this feature. I do 3d work in a DX windowed environment. GPU is constantly switching speeds with pauses or shutters. In this case I would like to be able to generate a custom profile to limit downclock, period before downclock and/or maintain max power for this program trueSpace. Basically I see periods of sluggishness, stutters followed by normal needed speeds when I move viewpoint to starting an animation. The 100mhz speed has to go in this case and is killing me.

[BLOODUK]

I'm getting clock throttling on my GTX260 in steam games this was playing halflife 2 source Deathmatch and it happens to other steam mods aswell

http://e.imagehost.org/0448/Clipboard02.jpg

[BLOODUK]

Hope this helps

1. IN RIVATUNER CLICK ON THE POWER USER TAB
2. CLICK ON + RIVATUNER \ NVIDIA \ OVERCLOCKING
3. CHECK EnablePerfLevelForcing , VALUE = 1
4. MAIN TAB , DRIVER SETTINGS , OVERCLOCKING
5. IN DROP DOWN BOX = FORCE CONSTANT PERFORMANCE LEVEL!
6. APPLY AND IT WILL ASK YOU TO REBOOT , DO SO!

Fixed with rivatuner

[noko]

Thanks for the workaround! Wish there was a profile so that certain programs can do this automatically but yet have this feature overall. Will try it out.

I hope a more intergrated fix from Nvidia comes about. For trueSpace I would like a 400 to 576mhz throttling, not 100mhz to 576mhz. 100mhz for a DX environment is terrible. Profile setting on this one is needed!

[EciDemon]

Originally Posted by noko

Thanks for the workaround! Wish there was a profile so that certain programs can do this automatically but yet have this feature overall. Will try it out.

I hope a more intergrated fix from Nvidia comes about. For trueSpace I would like a 400 to 576mhz throttling, not 100mhz to 576mhz. 100mhz for a DX environment is terrible. Profile setting on this one is needed!

With rivatuner you can make profiles and link those to events, like hardware acceleration change. Thus you can have an auto oc profile activate when a game starts and switch to a powersave profile when not gaming.

[iron99]

Originally Posted by BLOODUK

Hope this helps

1. IN RIVATUNER CLICK ON THE POWER USER TAB
2. CLICK ON + RIVATUNER \ NVIDIA \ OVERCLOCKING
3. CHECK EnablePerfLevelForcing , VALUE = 1
4. MAIN TAB , DRIVER SETTINGS , OVERCLOCKING
5. IN DROP DOWN BOX = FORCE CONSTANT PERFORMANCE LEVEL!
6. APPLY AND IT WILL ASK YOU TO REBOOT , DO SO!

Fixed with rivatuner

Thanks for sharing . Excellent tweak that fix my down clocking proplems in GPL.

BUT, with this tweak my card doesn't seems to down clock in desktop to 2D speeds....

[EciDemon]

It won't downclock since you force performance 3d mode to always be active. You have to create different clock profiles and link those with the hardware monitor so it changes up on hardware acceleration on or off