Very strange experience here. I am writing this after 12 hours of pure frustration.
PC Specification
AMD 5600x CPU - No overclock, liquid cooled.
Radeon VII - Stock settings, Liquid cooled.
ASUS ROG Strix X470-F Gaming
G.SKILL Trident Z Neo (for AMD Ryzen) Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) RGB SDRAM DDR4 3600
Corsair 800w power supply
2TB SSD NVME
2TB SSD PCIE
4TB SSD USB
Back Story
Been playing Apex since day one. For the last 11 months I have been using this same computer to play using GIGABYTE AORUS GeForce RTX 3080 Xtreme WATERFORCE WB 10G (REV 2.0). But it * the bed, manufacturing scam by Gigabyte, used Aluminum metal coating for the water block and fins. * corroded and killed itself, and now its RMA.
Swapping back to my previous card I used in this computer, Radeon VII, and the game is hard throttling the card. Apex Legends will not let the card run over 8333 Mhz when looking horizontally. In the loading screen, and lobby, the card is running 240 FPS at 1800Mhz. Once the game starts the FPS drops from 110 to 80-90 FPS, with the GPU standing around 800Mhz.
If I go into the shooting range, the game runs 180-240 FPS at 1875Mhz roughly. CPU and GPU never increase above 38C. Small room, AC is on, and everything is on a custom water loop. Room is very cold so this helps.
All of the in games setting are set to lowest possible, excluding the Vram because Radeon VII has 16gb of Vram. Increasing the settings to max, will bring the FPS to about 110 max, but the GPU will not work harder than 800 Mhz, while the CPU sitting at 30% utilization.
Strange Behavior
If I look up, or down in any direction, the FPS and GPU Mhz increase almost linearly. If I look at the floor or the sky, regardless of background, like still having buildings or mountains in the background, the FPS will max out at 240 FPS. You can see the stats increasing as I rotate the camera angle. If I walking straight into a wall, where all I can see is the wall an nothing else, but keep the camera at a horizontal viewing plane the FPS is around 80. Staring into a wall with nothing else in view maintains 80 FPS. But looking up or down increase the FPS. The GPU MHZ increases with the FPS. The CPU is not working very hard, and scales with the GPU under all these conditions. When allowing the game to run at 240 FPS for several minutes the system temperatures obviously increase to around 50c for the CPU and 60c for the GPU. GPU Junction temp maxes around 79C, which is normal for a Radeon VII which wont throttle until 105c junction temperate. I have never seen anything like this before, and this is new behavior for this card.
I tested the system with the Radeon VII in Overwatch on Ultra Setting. Game runs perfect, 190- 210FPS, GPU 1880Mhz, running around 75c.
What I have Tried
SAFE Mode DDU driver uninstaller, for Both NVDA and AMD Driver, Twice!
Tried multiple drivers for Radeon going back to 2019, Because I have them saved on my drive.
Updated to latest Driver, multiple times.
SFC /Scan
DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth
Tweaked every possible setting in Adrenaline on and off.
Tested all Window/Full/Borderless screen modes.
Origins "Repair Games"
Windows is up to date. September 13, 2022—KB5017308 (OS Builds 19042.2006, 19043.2006, and 19044.2006)
Other Points
My RTX 3080 died unexpectedly last Monday. At that point, Apex was working normally. No other changes have occurred other than swapping out the GPU with a Radeon VII I had as a spare GPU. The Radeon VII was my main GPU in this same exact computer for 3-4 years, and performed very well and comparable to the RTX 3080, minus the max setting and getting 240FPS.
It makes no sense to me why returning this card into this PC rig suddenly has poor performance and such that the behavior of the game is so bazar. I don't understand why the game works normal in shooting range, but no other game modes. The GPU has the same bazar and repeatable throttling.
If anyone has any idea on what I can do, I am pretty much out of ideas, reinstalling windows in out of the question because this is game specific, and apparently specific to this GPU since I had a different one working normally, and the Radeon works as expected in other games. After submitting this will try my last possible idea, uninstalling the game and reinstalling it.
