Hi,
A couple of years ago I bought the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8G GDDR5 GPU, but I never really played intensive games up until recently, so I didn't come across that many issues (apart from weird glitches every now and then, but haven't had them for a while so I haven't thought much of it).
Recently I have started to play bigger and more intensive games, for example Cyberpunk 2077. Now I am aware that this game has issues, however even then, I feel that my GPU is underperforming compared to benchmarks. It always has much lower FPS than what it should have, according to benchmarks with the same GPU and I experience FPS drops quite often. I played Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order recently and whilst the FPS on average was somewhat close to benchmarks, it stuttered extremely often and made it almost unplayable. Basically I have a strong feeling that my GPU is struggling with games in general much more than it should be, and am starting to feel like it may be faulty.
The final hammer was the fact that also recently when I loaded up Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, a few minutes into my session the GPU fans went VERY loud and my monitor suddenly turned off. Now the PC was still running, as I could still hear the sounds of the game and the GPU fans were still spinning like crazy. I had to manually turn off my PC and then turn it back on. This has really got me worried, and I feel that I may need to get a replacement of my GPU, although as it's been a couple of years since I bought it, I doubt I'd be able to get a refund/replacement...but I was still hoping for some input from more technically experienced people than me. Do you also reckon that my GPU is faulty?
I have done some searches and found users with similar issues. For example a user with a RX 480 had the same issue here, and apparently it was due to the thermal paste. However my temperatures have been about 70C, which I believe shouldn't be an issue for my GPU (I think above 85C is where it starts to cause issues). I do experience some colour banding and pixelated/blocky dark areas but I think this is more of an issue with my monitor (or how I've set it up) rather than the GPU.
Here are my specs (all stock, nothing has been overclocked):
OS: Windows 10 Pro version 20H2 (Build: 19042.685)
GPU: Sapphire Pulse RX 580 (8GB) - Using the PCI Express 3.0 slot and latest drivers are installed
CPU: Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-Core 3.5 GHz
Motherboard: Asus PRIME B350-PLUS ATX AM4 (BIOS version 015.050.002.001 and BIOS Date 2017/11/14)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250 GB 2.5" SSD for the OS + Samsung 860 Evo 1 TB 2.5" SSD for the games
PSU: EVGA 600B 600 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX
RAM: Crucial 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2133 CL15 Memory
Monitor: ViewSonic XG2402 24.0" 1920x1080 144 Hz (the GPU is connected via the DisplayPort)
Furthermore, using these stress tests, here are my HW Info logs.
I hope this is enough info, but please let me know if you'd like anything else. Thanks for reading (sorry it was a bit lengthy, but I really need to fix this if I'm going to play intensive games).
