Poor frame rate and GPU utilization

Hello all!

Have a bit of a problem going on. I'm the recent owner of a Sager NP-9377. Was super excited but it's giving me some grief and I'm pulling my hair out trying to figure out what's going wrong.

Specs are
980m SLI
Intel i7-4910MQ 2.9ghz
32g ram
Terabyte SSD

The issue I'm having across several games is I'm seeing periodic choppyness in games where one frame takes longer to render than the others in a sequence. Average frame rate is good, not 60fps but 40ish. Enough that it should be playing smoothly. I've had this issue consistently across Skyrim, Bioshock (the first one), Metro Last Light, and Crysis. Haven't tested any other games yet.

I'm really paying attention to it in Crysis since the choppyness and the fast paced combat doesn't go well. I'm seeing good frame rates in the 60-80fps range looking at the floor, then lagging down to the 30-40 range when looking around outdoors in some more complex scenery. GPU usage is consistently 30-35% in SLI mode and between 50 and 60% in single GPU mode. Running in single GPU mode yields no degradation in frame rate from running in SLI and the choppyness remains. CPU usage is ~25% and ram is at 13%. It's as if something is bottlenecking graphics performance but I can't seem to identify what

I've checked drivers, found an update for the graphics cards and found no change after installation. Choppyness, poor frame rate, and poor GPU utilization remain.

I have verified that the windows power plan is set to performance and that the computer is plugged in and seeing power.

I love this rig but this issue is absolutely driving me up the wall haha

 

As I'm reading about this, there's something called Clevo Control Center to control energy profiles? However I can't seem to access or find it on my computer. I seem to recall seeing it pop up once and closing out of it but I can't find out how to bring it back up, nor can I find the download for the software on Sager's or Clevo's site

 

Crysis 1 does this. Crysis 2 and 3 will not. You could try running Crysis 1 on one GPU and see if it helps. Skyrim does this. If you are using skyrim with mods like ENB, please go to NCP and manage 3D settings and force the game's power management to "prefer maximum performance" and then force SLI to "AFR 2".

Metro Last Light and Bioshock 1 I do not own, but your FPS should be extremely high in Bioshock. Metro... if your settings are too high (using SSAA) and your framerate is dipping, you could be experiencing microstutter around the 35fps range. I don't know about Metro LL personally though. I suggest making sure SSAA is off so you're not running the game at 4K and then seeing it with high FPS it does that still.

Lastly, I would suggest trying a more recent, demanding and popular game like Battlefield 4 or Crysis 2/3 and compare performance with others who might have it. BF4 and Crysis 3 are often tested on this forum because they're the best looking, most demanding games.

Please note: some games might simply have bad optimization in SLI, or simply bad optimization on the whole (like Final Fantasy 13 giving me 30fps at a resounding 40% GPU util for no reason).

 

The sager control center is accessed through, FN + Esc. Also in the lower right of the screen where the utilities are as I call them just click the arrow up and its called " Hotkey", can be opened there,

Id checked through NVIDIA control center, GE Force Experience and also the sager control center. Something is holding it back, could be a power setting option. You should be destroying these games. Try turning some of the options down.

I have just a 970m but the withers 2 "ubersampling" option crippled my game from 60 fps down to 20-25. Basically renders it at 4k then drops it to fit into 1080p, Hardly even noticeable but just crippled my machine.

Also try in GE Force Experience to let it optimize your game or look at its suggestions. It's done well for me for getting the best playability. It basically has a lot of profiles saved for games in its index and if the game is in its library it will give suggestions for settings. It also has the option to click " Optimize Game" which will basically enter the launcher of that game and change the settings for you

I'm assuming your machine came with GE Force Experience as mine did.

 

1 - Ubersampling breaks Witcher 2 for no reason. Rendering Witcher 2 at 4K does not hit as hard as ubersampling does if you use a downsampling technique.

2 - No. GeForce Experience does NOT pick the best options. At all. Ever. It picks heavily nVidia-based AA techniques in any game that owns them, favours fullscreen over any other window option and generally gets things... wrong. I've had it tell me to turn UP settings in Titanfall when I was getting under 60fps, and I've had it tell me to turn DOWN settings in games I was getting over 120fps in. It's just a baseline thing for someone who knows nothing about setting up settings to enjoy the game nice enough for their hardware. It should not be used by someone who thinks or experiments a bit.

3 - Drivers install GFE, so yes. All nVidia users have this UNLESS they manually uninstall it.

 

I don't know if you know this but what Nvidia driver you have installed ?

I am asking that because Prema tells this:
"the 347.09 should be avoided by Maxwell user. Apart from no OC it has also no SLI support"
"This driver was made intentionally by NVIDIA to tackle throttling on stock clocks with the new Maxwell cards on certain systems, call it a public beta"

offcourse some games have problems with sli too but you can try the 344.00 for now and have a little more performance !

 

Control center was the ticket! It was on power save mode. Popped it over to performance and GPU usage went to full, frame rate went up, and all micro stuttering is gone. Woo! Thanks

Although I do think it weird that the control center shortcut isn't notated on the keyboard / I couldn't find it in any of the program files / start menu entries / searches. I feel somewhat like a derp now but glad it works