Nvidia GTX 1070 GPU Pascal downclocks all the time in WOW = bad performance

[muSPK]

My GPU downclocks itself to idle speeds, from 2100 mhz to 1600 mhz during gameplay in WOW. When this happens I take a huge FPS dump.
I have been running the game at max settings. Though it seems the problems occur a little bit less if I play with some lower settings.

This problems occur both when I play by myself, questing around and in raids, but its more likely to happend in crowded areas. So its not that the GPU is getting overloaded or something and clocks down the GPU to idle speeds. The GPU usage normally stays at 30-70% when playing wow and never goes over 75 degrees.
The CPU never goes over 50% (normally around 35-40%) in load on a single core, the other cores are around 0-20% load. And my CPU is overclocked to 4.5 ghz and stays around 40-60 degrees warm during game play.

I tried a lot of different power settings. I tried set power management mode in the Nvidia Control Panel to Maximum Performance, didnt do anything.
I tried to set the windows power plan to high performance, didnt help either.
Someone recommend me to go into the settings of the Xbox app in Windows 10 and turn of game dvr, but that didnt do anything as well.
I have also tried to change draw distance in game to a 7 and put shadow quality settings to high. Didnt fix it either.


My setup:
5820K OC (4,5 ghz)| MSI X99S Gaming 9 AC | EVGA GTX 1070 FTW OC (2100 mhz / 9200 mhz) | Samsung NVMe SM961 1TB | G.Skill Ripjaws DDR4 3000mhz (running at 2666mhz) 8x4GB / 32GB | EVGA SuperNOVA P2 1000W | Asus ROG Swift PG348Q (3440x1440) | 2 x Dell U2714H (2560x1440) | WIN 10 Pro 64-bit (Anniversary Edition)

I am running out of solutions, so if anyone has any advice I could try, it would be very appreciated.
It's starting to look like there is some problem with the new Nvidias 10-series Pascal and wow.

[Aleksej89]

My GPU is weaker than yours and it never lets wow drop below 60 FPS unless i enable some heavy anti-aliasing.
However i do play at 1920*1080 resolution, perhaps your 2560 resolution is sometimes too much for 1070?

Download some of those GPU testing softwares and give your GPU a solid test or two, then compare with others of the same model over internet.
By doing that you will at least determine if the problem is in your GPU/whole system, or just in WoW.

Alo it never hurts to go through all the bios/uefi settings, you never know what kind of crazy option might be enabled there.
Open up your bios and check what each setting does, google what you do not know (use phone or 2nd pc).

[Nevcairiel]

Analyzing per-core CPU usage on Windows is unfortunately not that trivial, because even with a single thread using 100% of one core, Windows will not show it as such, so its still quite possible that you are bottle-necked there.

[DJ117]

I have the same card. Evga 1070 FTW to be specific. I had similar problems in the beginning, but I am not sure what fixed it. There was talk on Nvidia forum that it was drivers not being optimized.

Have you installed the newest bios and graphics driver?

[coprax]

Mine (1060) downclocks all the time, in fact most of the time it's not at the max clockspeed.
That's because the driver automatically adjusts the speed, it just means you are at your locked framerate (60fps or whatever) and/or your cpu is the limiting factor.

This behavior is totally normal and working as intended.

(and yes, a cpu utilization of around 50% means your cpu is maxed out in wow)

[Svisalith]

You're CPU limited at those times and your software is not showing it in a useful way. Downclocking is normal even on significantly weaker cards because the game is quite GPU light and CPU heavy, a powerful graphics card will be underloaded even on high resolutions while the CPU decides performance.

Setting shadows to minimum and the three 1-10 sliders to ~5-7ish will help a lot but you'll still see lower CPU-limited performance in some areas and around lots of people. Legion has generally been heavier on the CPU and less optimized than previous expansions as well, even with the "correct" settings - some stuff really needs to be fixed like some extremely CPU heavy spell effects.

[Deleted]

My friend, I have yet to see my GTX 1070 on Its full clocks in WOW ...
the highest I've seen it is 1633 / 4000
In FF XIV for example there's no problem seeign it clocked 2025/4000
WOW is SPESHUL. What do you expect from an ancient engine that gets a new slap of paint every expansion.
It's like a load of make up on a porn actress.
If you ever see her without her make-up you'll need more than Imagination.

But if you really feel that's the frequencies are your problem, go into Nvidia Control panel - > Manage 3D setings -> and switch you POWER handling of the card.

[Deleted]

Same happens to gtx970. You can set energy saving to performance to get 100% clock, but you won't get the "boost" clock during normal play. You have to "force" p0 in some software or flash your BIOS to get it to run at full clocks in applications.

I never found a decent solution for 100% clock (+boost) in games and keep downclock in windows. It is really vexing. I settled for running with performance setting as a specific setting for every game I run. It's so stupid how it works. If you run an older game that really isnt that demanding/badly optimized the card will throttle to like 500MHz on core and give you 30 fps @ 5% load.

This "green" energy saving bullsh*t has to stop. Who cares about that shit when you have a performance PC for gaming? I sure as hell don't.

[Deleted]

Well as per my observation, on an open field in Thunder Totem, here are the readings.
Not like this is news, I used to keep MSI afterburner on for the 1st month and just turned it off recently because nothing can surprise me anymore with the WOW DX9 Maked Up DX11 Engine.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B89...ew?usp=sharing

Yup WOW engine, such great, many optimized , very new.
Doesn't matter what you throw at it it will run like it runs.

I had Nvidia Overpriced Edition of 1080 , same results, basically. I can OC the CPU to 4.6 or leave it at 4.0 ( Turbo Off for SCIENCE ! ) and the results are nearly the same , few FPS +/-

[Deng]

It's downclocked because you are still CPU limited.
Windows' own Task Manager is not way to go when checking for the cpu utilisation.
It's easy to see when you download software like Argus Monitor and analyze 15 mins playthrough on the CPU cores and GPU load charts.
Only one of the CPU cores is really working hard and its utilisation nears 100% most of the time even if you are overclocked to 4500+.
Hence the GPU has next to nothing to do there.

[Deleted]

And Mr. Auron above me is the living proof how bad WOW engine is, but we have to work with what we have.
Not like they will change it anyhow.

Since legion launched the Engine has been stretched so far I'm waiting for it to implode on itself, I have never seen so many bugs , issues, evades, like in Legion.
Mobs portin on you through the whole suramar to beat on you stun you only to port back to their space, or evading while killing you , or mobs resetting when they are moved 5 inches to the right so you have to kill it on the left side. I hope they give it a fancy Shmancy DX12 Upgrade so we will watch it from the front rows how this ancient slab won't be able to handle it.

ANybody with Water and some 5 GHz Intel willing to try it ?
The Aniversary Dual Core Pentiums could OC like mad, anybody volunteering ? I'd love to see the Load chart. 75% Load on Dual core because 25% on Core 2 is Music set to 64 Channels - HIGH *grin*

[Arukie]

I'm on a 1080. Can't get more than 45FPS in Suramar.

That's strange. I got the same card and Im at 100FPS+ on 1440p in Suramar. Enviroment details and distance set to 7. Shadow to lowest. What CPU are you using? Im using a 6600k.

[Deleted]

Game is poorly fucking optimized. Especially for Pascal chips. Its been proven in a 15+ page thread on official Technical Support forums. Changing settings in WoW does nothing.


I'm on a 1080. Can't get more than 45FPS in Suramar.

Turn environment details down, you're welcome.

- - - Updated - - -

That's strange. I got the same card and Im at 100FPS+ on 1440p in Suramar. Enviroment details and distance set to 7. Shadow to lowest. What CPU are you using? Im using a 6600k.

It's because he probaly has environment details at at very high along with shadows. Think i'm running details at 7 now and Ultra high shadows and still rocking at 100fps. That's with a 1080 card too

If people have a card like 1080 and don't want it to downclock because WoW is CPU heavy, may i suggest you turn your render scale up? It helped me and i haven't experienced any downclocks ever since i set it to 150% since it keeps my GPU at a 70-80% load

[Mavicz]

That's strange. I got the same card and Im at 100FPS+ on 1440p in Suramar. Enviroment details and distance set to 7. Shadow to lowest. What CPU are you using? Im using a 6600k.

Same proc with a 1070 running 4k. Never drop below 100fps. Shadows are medium, and Water is medium. Everything else is maxed out.

[Deleted]

Same proc with a 1070 running 4k. Never drop below 100fps. Shadows are medium, and Water is medium. Everything else is maxed out.

Yup SHADOWS ! , Guys read what's ULTRA shadows. SOFT shadows, is a hog , expecially on a engine like WOW has. Soft shadows have always been resource hogs, but with a "leaky pipe" its even more so.

You can push everything to 10 n drop shadows and smile at sudden performance bump.

[Vash The Stampede]

Someone in another post updated their GPU's firmware and it fixed their issue. I think they had a 1080. You might want to look into a BIOS/Firmware update.

[muSPK]

Same happens to gtx970. You can set energy saving to performance to get 100% clock, but you won't get the "boost" clock during normal play. You have to "force" p0 in some software or flash your BIOS to get it to run at full clocks in applications.

I never found a decent solution for 100% clock (+boost) in games and keep downclock in windows. It is really vexing. I settled for running with performance setting as a specific setting for every game I run. It's so stupid how it works. If you run an older game that really isnt that demanding/badly optimized the card will throttle to like 500MHz on core and give you 30 fps @ 5% load.

This "green" energy saving bullsh*t has to stop. Who cares about that shit when you have a performance PC for gaming? I sure as hell don't.

When I "force" the graphic card to run at max speeds in EVGA PrecisionX OC tool I still get FPS drops, so I dont think that is a solution unfortunately.
The game ran better on my GTX 980 Ti, with the same hardware setup up, but the Pre Patch wasnt released yet at that point, so it could be that Legion is bad optimized or that the support for Nvidia Pascal chips are not fully supported yet in the game.

- - - Updated - - -

I had Nvidia Overpriced Edition of 1080 , same results, basically. I can OC the CPU to 4.6 or leave it at 4.0 ( Turbo Off for SCIENCE ! ) and the results are nearly the same , few FPS +/-

Same results here, I have tried to remove the overclock of my CPU to see if that was causing any issue, and I notice that the game was still performing almost the same on 3,6ghz as of 4.5. Maybe gained a few more FPS on the overclock.

- - - Updated - - -

It's downclocked because you are still CPU limited.
Windows' own Task Manager is not way to go when checking for the cpu utilisation.
It's easy to see when you download software like Argus Monitor and analyze 15 mins playthrough on the CPU cores and GPU load charts.
Only one of the CPU cores is really working hard and its utilisation nears 100% most of the time even if you are overclocked to 4500+.
Hence the GPU has next to nothing to do there.

Why do you assume I am using Windows own task manager, I never mentioned that. I am using Core Temp for years and it has never failed me to show CPU core loads and heat on every core. Its really usefull tool when u're testing your system stability with Prime95. So yes the load when I play wow is around 40% so I cant see that my CPU is bottlenecking.

[Deng]

Why do you assume I am using Windows own task manager, I never mentioned that. I am using Core Temp for years and it has never failed me to show CPU core loads and heat on every core. Its really usefull tool when u're testing your system stability with Prime95. So yes the load when I play wow is around 40% so I cant see that my CPU is bottlenecking.

CoreTemp doesn't have a performance chart that shows the load over time, try different tools and it will be obvious.
Also as far as I remember it doesn't show the load on the hyperthreaded virtual cores - so when it shows 40% load on core 3 it can be interpreted as for example - 80% on virtual core 6 and 0 on virtual core 7. If that's the case - disable HT in bios and you'll see the load difference with CoreTemp (real core utilisation).
Argus (it's paid software) also has the GPU load chart over time.
1070 simply does nothing with downclocked speeds and GPU load averaging on 40-50%.

Having very similar configuration as you have I can tell you that one CPU core is most of the time at 100% load with 4.5GHz and others are at 0-30 when in Suramar for example.
WoW was always CPU intensive and with Legion there's simply no CPU on the market that will give you constant 60fps with all the sliders turned to 10.

[Lathais]

You have an i7, running at over 40% on a single core. That means a single virtual core is prett much maxed out. Your GPU is downclocking because it is waiting for draw calls from your CPU which is pretty much maxed out. It's how WoW works and this is completely normal.

[Musta Kyy]

Im fairly sure what actually happens is:
CPU intensive moment in WoW -> fps goes down and is limited by CPU -> GPU doesn't need to work that much so it downclocks to save power and lower temperatures.