PC Graphics

[J20Joe]

Hi, I'm having numerous issues with my Rx 6900 xt Sapphire nitro x card. Playing some titles is really challenging, Hell let lose I cannot get over 50 fps due to the card only being utalised by 20% and the power draw being only 80w. Warzone is similar, it ranges between 150w (120 fps) and 250w (240) fps. Resident evil village 250w (400 fps) so why cannot I get some games above 100w to make them playable? Looking at videos on YouTube for HLL people are drawing 280w so why doesn't mine? Benchmarks I get amazing results but the card draws nearly 300w. I've adjusted the power in AMD adrenaline but it doesn't help 

Specs are 

Ryzen 5 5600 x PBO enabled 

Corsair Vengeance RGB pro 2 x 8 3600 XMP.  1000w EVGA psu

 Everything is water-cooled and doesn't go above 50 degrees

Checked all my power plans and that's fine, it is driving me insane. I'm not sure if I can reset the firmware and bios of the card because if I put it in performance mode on the card it crashes A LOT

Thank you

[Skrybe]

Firstly do you have a monitor that supports over 60HZ? Not a lot of point getting 200fps if you're only seeing 60 at most. And do you have vsync on?

Aside from that, HLL is apparently framerate capped at 60fps. You can change it to a higher amount (like your monitors refresh rate). Info here: https://www.reddit.com/r/HellLetLoose/comments/pbbrvi/fix_for_that_annoying_60fps_lock_in_hll/

Or here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/686810/discussions/0/5755024051061599187/

edit: To finish answering the question about why some games seem to use less power. It's because they're (1) less demanding and limited to a certain framerate or (2) they're CPU capped. ie: they demand more from your CPU than it's able to give so your GPU is sitting idle some of the time while it "waits" for the CPU to do it's work. Power draw obviously scales based on GPU use. So if it's mostly idle then it's not drawing much power. Doesn't mean there's a problem with the card. In most cases the first thing to check is the game.

[cpurpe91]

One thing you could do is disable ULPS in Windows registry or MSI Afterburner. Doing so could prevent your GPU from entering Ultra Low Power State. If you do so and still see low power draw it is probably limited within the game. Worth a try.

[J20Joe]

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion, i have already done this but i didn't know what ULPS stands for, so thanks for explaining that haha 

[J20Joe]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply, my monitor is 165hz 1440p, i do not set the frame lock to 165 at the moment purely because i wat to see the improvement to frames compared to the 1080ti i upgraded from, do you think capping the Fps would help?

Thanks for the link for HLL that it interesting.

In terms of cpu, i have a ryzen 5 5600x so i would have thought that would be okay for cpu intensive games, do you think that would bottleneck my GPU?

[Skrybe · Accepted solution]

The problem is (with Hell Let Loose at least) that there is already a framecap in place. So you'll have to change that or you won't see any difference. From what I read setting the cap in HLL to 0 means it'll be unlimited so you should max out power draw and GPU use. That should tell you exactly how many FPS the card will actually do.

Personally I run a 4k 144Hz monitor and set it to 120Hz and cap my framerates at that. I can tell the difference between 60 and 120 but not 120 and 144. Whether you can see (or feel) a difference is down to you so try it capped at different settings and uncapped. Then choose whichever feels best for you. The other thing with the newer more powerful cards is not just pure FPS but to enable higher quality settings. Turning on higher quality anti-aliasing, particle density, shadows and so on will definitely drop the older card well below the newer one in terms of FPS.

You'll need to check on a game by game basis to see whether they're capped by default or not, lots of them are and they usually cap at 60. I've noticed a couple games I play are capped at 60 but for some reason when I check the framerate it's only 50 (with corresponding low GPU % and power draw). Changing the cap to 120 I see 100 FPS, changing it to 200 it fluctuates around the 150 mark. And it's only at that point that the video card is using 100% GPU and full power draw. Ultimately the FPS will depend on how intensive the game is though, Far Cry 5 gives me an average of 114fps, Unreal Tournament averages about 400fps (and peaks around 950fps).

Those numbers I mention are with a Ryzen 5800x and an RX6900XT. I tested Far Cry 5 with a 2700x and the rx6900XT and it averaged 95 FPS. So, the 5600x should be ok for most games. It will at some point be a bottleneck but it's going to be only in very specific games. And there are diminishing returns when it comes to chasing that. ie: You'll need to spend a lot of money to reduce a CPU bottleneck that will likely not be noticeable most of the time.

I don't have HLL or I'd bench it so you could compare.

[J20Joe]

Didn't mean to accept this as a solution.

Do you have any issues with screen flickering and crashing? I've tried everything to solve it but ite constantly crashing, 

Some days it works fine and I can run 3d benchmark over and over and it passes, I worked last night and I've switched it on today and it cannot get past 30 seconds without crashing and restarting 

[Skrybe]

I don't get screen flickering. And I had issues with random lockups in the past that were resolved by turning off fTPM in the BIOS/UEFI. Asus released a later bios that seem to have resolved the issue too so I now have fTPM turned back on. I run an Asus DarkHero mobo so whether the problem exists on your particular motherboard I don't know.

With the previous two drivers (22.6.1 and 22.7.1) I started getting random grey screens - the screen goes grey with blue vertical lines. After about a minute the driver restarts and it works again. Since upgrading to the 22.8.1 drivers I haven't seen one.

Are your crashes only during gaming or gaming benchmarks? Might be worth doing overall trouble shooting not just graphics card. Start with the basics, is all your hardware seated properly (remove and reinstall cards, CPU, heatsink, thermal paste, cables). Are your drivers and bios up to date for all hardware? Make sure you're running at defaults and nothing is overclocked. Run stress tests on each major component (Memtest86, Prime95 or SuperPi, Furmark) and monitor temperatures and power draw.

edit: Oh, and if the low power draw/low frame rate issue is resolved it might actually be better to post a new thread with a different title regarding crashes. Mostly because it's a different issue and people may not look into this thread because of the title.

[sergux]

This happens to me, you depend of new drivers coming or game patches, this is very random. You can get luck and the game perform well or not with the same pc and stuff

[J20Joe]

Hi,

Sorry to hear that but i'm glad its not just me, it is very hit and miss, sometimes i get stuck in a boot loop and i cannot performs simple tasks, then sometimes it works as intended, weird. but disappointing considered how much they are charging for this 

[goodplay]

Up your graphics settings in some of the games with weak graphics engines, the new gen cards are designed to work at higher levels (not like of old where lower game settings may improve fps).

[hrpuffnstuff]

With the older drivers I also saw low gpu usage on several games until they were updated and frame caps were lifted. Afterwards my AIB rx 6900 xt would ride the 300w limit at near 100% usage bringing its best fps and higher temps too.

[lugier]

I have a power consumption defect on my 6900XT LC reference. In several benchmark programs and games after a while of use the FPS starts to drop, in addition to the power consumption fluctuating. I have Stuttering, BSODs and very high coil whine. It's not heating because I set the fan to 100%.

The normal consumption with power limit 0% is 284w, when the defect starts it ranges from 100w to 200w.