Help me get to the bottom of this!

Hi guys! My R2 is a little over a month old now and have been enjoying it beyond belief!

One question I have is with some FPS issues. Whille gaming, my FPS (for example) for Crysis runs at around 27-29 on mostly high settings (aa off, vsync off) but then every often it drops down to 1 for a couple seconds then goes back up to normal. It's not much of a big deal but I just wanted to try to get to the bottom of this. Is it a RAM issue (I have 6 gigs (see signature for system specs)) or GPU?

Any help or insight would be much appreciated! I currently have the 266.35 drivers for my SLI and the FPS was dropping before these drivers were installed.

Thanks in advance!

 

Look around the forum for throttling, I don't know much about hardware but i'm certain thats what's happening.

 

Use HWinfo32 and take note of your maximum GPU temperatures while your fps are dropping. If they're hitting the high 90s to low 100s C, you are indeed throttling.

 

Yeah I'd assume it's throttling as well. You should go ahead and take some readings or screen cap them for us to see.

 

I actually have CPUID and GPU-Z and neither the CPU or GPU is even close to that:

CPUs on idle are around 42-45 and gaming are 58-62

GPUs on idle are 38-42 and gaming are 60-64.

That's why I am confused...

 

Since you're using GPU-Z, tell it to record the 'MAX' of all of the readings by clicking in the little boxes under the 'SENSOR' tab. Small green words will appear. Click twice to have them all record the max.

Now, you've got the power settings in Windows set to 'High Performance', CCC settings to 'Performance'? There's got to be something that is throttling back. Do your GPU clocks stay at max 3D settings the entire time you're gaming?

And lastly, is this just in Crysis, or in every game you play?

 

Ok I did that for the GPU-Z.

Sorry for the noobish questions but I assume the CCC settings is the alienware command center? If so, then yes I do have it set on maximize performance.

In the NVIDIA control panel, it is set for Maximize 3D performance under SLI configuration. The PhysX settings, I have the processor set as GeForce GTX 285M (2) and I do not have the Dedicated to PhysX button checked...When I go into the manage 3D settings tab, there's a bunch of things listed there from AA stuff to Texture Filtering...etc. Do any of those things need to be manually entered to make a game run better?

"Do your GPU clocks stay at max 3D settings the entire time you're gaming?"
How would I find that out if there were or were not?

And it is usually in every game I play. I really have only played Crysis for an extended period of time but Crysis Warhead does the same and sometimes even Mass Effect.

Thanks for you help.

 

CCC is the Catalyst Control Center, which is how it appears in your programs start menu...

 

@ TurbodTalon & beelsr He has nVidia cards

 

Yup, my bad!

To see if your clocks are always staying at max 3D, do what I mentioned earlier with GPU-Z. Although the program looks like it just monitors in real-time, it has other monitoring options. Just click in the little window and you'll see these tiny green letters appear. Min, Max, Average, etc.

 

Gee, you expect me to read the signature too?

 

Yea I gotcha.

The max temp was 67 on GPU1 and 68 on GPU2 after playing Crysis for 2+ hours....

 

Those temps look fine!

 

So what do you think the problem is then? A bad video card?