NVIDIA powermode microstutter explained - Are you running 3D mode?

[RasmusP]

Hey guys, and girls!
Every now and then I stumble upon people with micro stutter problems or people who need to find out if their GPU or CPU are the limiting factor.
A great tool to find out is "openhardwaremonitor"!
You can not really find out your limiting factor by looking into the CPU. You can however very easily find out by monitoring your GPU! If your GPU isn't at full load (90% or higher), it is your CPU! Only case where that's not true is if your GPU is not running in 3D mode!
So:

I always say "log your GPU load and clock!". This is mainly regarding nvidia cards but AMDs have similar things which I can't properly explain due to not having one.
So I will make this nvidia only.

Pre-words: I will use the word "mode" for the frequency ranges AND for the 3 settings you can select!

With the modern nvidia cards some really nice energy saving modes got implemented. But they are not flawless!
A game running in too low frequencies will stutter in most cases!

It all started for me with stuttering videos when I moved from a 560 ti to a 970. After a lot of digging I found out that my 970 was running at very low clock speeds. When I forced it to run in higher frequencies, the stuttering was gone.
With the latest generation (10xx) this is a real problem as these cards are overpowered for a lot of games we still play!

Now to the modes in detail:
When you open your nvidia settings you will find a line called "power management" or similar, depending on your language setting. You will see 3 settings which translate to:
- Optimal Performance
- Adaptive
- Prefer Maximum Performance

Now what do these settings means?
My GTX 1070 has 3 "frequency ranges", which means 3 modes:
- 139 MHz to ~300 MHz (idling, youtube etc.)
- ~700 MHz to ~1100 MHz (heavy 2D applications or easy 3D)
- 1582 MHz to open end (heavy 3D, "gaming mode")

These frequency modes are depending on the "load" of the GPU, the default setting mode is "Optimal Performance".
In this mode the graphics card will freely move between the 3 frequency ranges without any borders so you will see clock speeds like 538 MHz or 1746 MHz.
It all depends on the current load of the GPU so if you have a game/program/video or whatever it will cause a certain load and the GPU will try to keep the load "in the middle" and adjust the frequency accordingly.
To show the effects of each energy mode I changed the fps limit while running a stress test.
It looks like this:

- "Optimal Performance": very fluctuating frequencies. As long as the load is "high enough", the clock speed is fixed at the maximum though and you won't get stuttering!

- "Adaptive": Came before "optimal performance" and tries to do basically the same but has fewer steps. I couldn't really make it visible but in theory the steps are bigger, not as fluently changing. On my 970 this really made the clock speeds jump from one mode to another, like fixed borders!

- "Prefer Maximum Performance": With this setting the clock speeds are fixed in "3D mode", which means 1582+ MHz. As you can see no matter how small the load goes, the frequency will stay up high! I barely see other frequencies than 1582 MHz or the highest. Which is 1923 MHz for my MSI GTX 1070 Gaming X. This energy mode will counter microstuttering in games like Automobilista!

Now back to "is the GPU or CPU the limiting factor":
Sometimes the frequency modes are a little bugged and will cause fps drops you would not get with "prefer maximum performance"!
To really pin down the problem you always need to check the load combined with the clock speed. The load alone is useless with modern cards!

Conlusion:
If your GPU is at 90% or higher AND running at the maximum frequency, the limit is your graphics card!
If your GPU is below 90% AND running at the maximum frequency, the limit is your CPU!

Further things:

The maximum frequency depends on the current temperature, overclock and power usage. Depending on the benchmark/game you use, the frequency will change!
The "Furry Donut" stress test for example goes straight into the power limit, draining the most energy and causes the frequency to drop below 1800 MHz!
When you run a different benchmark, which will top out at over 2000 MHz but lock the fan at low speed you will see that depending on the temperature limit you set (I use MSI Afterburner), the GPU will throttle down at some point!

So in short, maximum clock speed depends on:
- load
- power usage
- temperature
- overclocking

And is controlled by the core voltage!

If you want to overclock your GPU, read the next post

 

[RasmusP]

So how to overclock your 10XX nvidia graphics card:

As stated before the core clock depends on:
- load
- power usage
- temperature
- overclocking

And is controlled by the core voltage!

Now we can't disable the automatic frequency adjustments the card does on it's own but we can overwrite the frequencies each voltage creates.

In other words: We don't just use the "slider" to raise the overall clock speed but instead we use the new feature of the MSI Afterburner to shape the curve!
hit ctrl+f and you'll see a curve like this:

- Default:

- And my stable overclock without raising the voltage:

Afterburner settings look like this:

Now why does the curve looks like this? Here's how the curve would look like if we'd just use the slider instead and set it to the same "+136":

As you can see all frequencies are raised now but from my experience the cards get unstable if you overclock the lower voltages. It doesn't make sense anyway as you don't need more power in the lower ranges. If you will need more power, the card will jump to the maximum frequency anyway!
Another problem is, that the higher voltages are now at around 2100 MHz, which is highly unstable for me! The card will throttle down when a certain temperature is reached but until then you have an unstable card!

So my curve raises only the maximum frequency the card will settle to while gaming but also restricts the card to go higher when the "auto frequency adjustment" would do it normally!

Note: the memory clock gives a nice boost but it depends on your card design if you should raise it. Watch or read some reviews about the cooling and decide for yourself! It doesn't have any curves nor changes it in any way. You set it and it stays there!

Here's a short video without sound I did some time ago, I'll quote the slider explanations etc from the description:

1. Core Voltage: if you raise this, the Card will receive more Voltage and will Overclock ITSELF a little bit higher. If your GPU get's unstable: raise this, but lower the Core Clock Offset a little. Otherwise the GPU will OC even HIGHER than you set it to!
(Update: it seems like this is fixed now! My voltage doesn't change anymore when I adjust this and the frequency also doesn't jump around)

2. Power Limit: some Games (or FurMark) are very intensive but not necessarily heavy on the overall GPU Load. You should always have a good PSU so just put that Slider on MAX. The only thing it does is throttling down your Core Clock IF the Power Limit is hit!

3. Temp. Limit: same as Power Limit. It just throttles the Clocks if the GPU is hitting the defined Temperature. My MSI Gaming X is not reaching temps. above 75°C, but I put it on 85°C just to make sure I HAVE a limit! From my knowledge everything below 90°C is totally fine for GPUs!

4. Core Clock: now the real talk begins. The GPU BIOS has an algorithm with Voltage, Temp. Power, Load and Core Clock. For every Voltage there is a defined Clock (see above "Core Voltage").
You just simply put that Core Clock higher (if you want to get more details press CTRL+F and adjust the Curve).
At some Point the Driver will Crash or you will get Artifacts. If you still want higher you have to raise the Voltage (beware you will get a higher Clock Boost too!). Play around 'till you have a stable and nice Core Clock!

5. Mem Clock: Same as Core Clock (for the GTX 1070 even higher fps boost than Core Clock!!!). Play around.

6. Fan Speed: I leave it on 'auto'. MSI hast a nice Fan so no need to customize it. But if your Card is throttling due to Temperature you can raise the Fan Speed and test if it's getting better or when the fan is too loud but temps are looking fine, limit the fan speed!

 

[JoelGL]

What version of MSI are you using?

 

[RasmusP]

What version of MSI are you using?

4.4.2
I should probably update at some point... No big changes though afaik

 

[JoelGL]

4.4.2
I should probably update at some point... No big changes though afaik

Ok, so is that a theme? Because I'm using 4.5 but my UI is just the plain default black/green.

 

[RasmusP]

Ok, so is that a theme? Because I'm using 4.5 but my UI is just the plain default black/green.

Yep

 

[Terry Rock]

Good article...
Sometimes good gaming is not about the fastest components but about the best matched components.
Some guys go all out and buy the most expensive hardware... then in their excitement and haste to put a computer together, completely overlook things like controller speed match-ups.

 

[Patrick van der Meulen]

Nice topic to read since I bought and build in a GTX 1080 last Thursday. The powermodes weren’t clear for me. Though with the help of mr. Google I set the (coming from team Red) not so user friendly software to have the most out of it.

On my Ryzen 5 1600X @ 4 GHz and 8 Gigs of ram on a B350 chipset board I reach a GPU load of 98%. Not that shabby I guess . But right out the box, the performance was garbage. Really a very big drawback of nVidia’s lack of optimizing software right out the box.

I guess for someone who isn’t a nerd and isn’t into the technical side of computing, it can be very disappointing for having a card which performance seems not up to your expectations. While with some tweaking and fiddling with the settings it is turning in to a beast.

 

[RasmusP]

Nice topic to read since I bought and build in a GTX 1080 last Thursday. The powermodes weren’t clear for me. Though with the help of mr. Google I set the (coming from team Red) not so user friendly software to have the most out of it.

On my Ryzen 5 1600X @ 4 GHz and 8 Gigs of ram on a B350 chipset board I reach a GPU load of 98%. Not that shabby I guess . But right out the box, the performance was garbage. Really a very big drawback of nVidia’s lack of optimizing software right out the box.

I guess for someone who isn’t a nerd and isn’t into the technical side of computing, it can be very disappointing for having a card which performance seems not up to your expectations. While with some tweaking and fiddling with the settings it is turning in to a beast.

98% is perfectly in the GPU limit yeah!
I use vsync at 60 fps and only use the GPU load to see how much headroom I have for graphic settings or in rF2 for rain etc. Need some 144 Hz Monitor so badly

Regarding the powermodes: I wrote that I first stumbled upon them when I had stuttering video playback with my GTX 970. The second time I came across it was when a driver update set it to "optimal" and Automobilista ran with 400 MHz instead of 1500+

How is the 1600x btw? Any game where you reach the CPU limit (less than 98% GPU load)? For me it's almost every game...

 

[Patrick van der Meulen]

98% is perfectly in the GPU limit yeah!
I use vsync at 60 fps and only use the GPU load to see how much headroom I have for graphic settings or in rF2 for rain etc. Need some 144 Hz Monitor so badly

Regarding the powermodes: I wrote that I first stumbled upon them when I had stuttering video playback with my GTX 970. The second time I came across it was when a driver update set it to "optimal" and Automobilista ran with 400 MHz instead of 1500+

How is the 1600x btw? Any game where you reach the CPU limit (less than 98% GPU load)? For me it's almost every game...

I don’t hit the CPU limit, and the GPU is running always at 98%. And the Ryzen is great. I think the 5 series hit a perfect price/performance ratio. Of course one could run a system on a Threadripper or i9 and a tripple GTX 1080Ti sli setup. But since most of us don’t have a limitless bankaccount...

I personally always seek the happy medium between price/performance ratio. Not in the last place to keep the Mrs happy .

I use my system to drive my tripple 1080p 60Hz setup. I run at adaptive sync which works wonderfully. And just below the ultra settings (and only shadows on medium) and not to high AA but still decent enough, it maintains 60Hz pretty much all the time when driving PCars 2 and RF2 in night combined with rain with +30 AI. Which is my main reason to go from my old RX 470 (which barely could run PC2 in clear weather in the first place) to a GTX 1080. If I would only run in clear weather, I can turn pretty much everything to the max and still running a healthy framerate above the 60 fps.

But I like endurance and real circumstances. So everything is set for bad weather circumstances. And even then the eye candy is sweeeeet!