Ping PC builders and or GPU gurus
 

All right I've posted a few times over the years about building a PC sometimes giving, but mostly receiving advice. I built a system earlier this year, April time frame.
Intel i5
16 Gb RAM
I went with an M.2 SSD, just because I thought it would be fun
And I bought the nicest GPU I've ever shelled out for an Nvidia GTX 1650 Super.

That GPU is nothing real special, but WAY better than anything I've ever had before. I don't notice too much because I mostly play Football Manager and City of Heroes. Nothing stressing the card at all.

Then about three months ago I broke out World of Tanks because, well it's been seven years since I played and I think I've solved or at least mitigated the carpal tunnel issue that made me stop playing in the first place.

I've been playing off on on. I'm pretty bad and rusty on top of that. But I watch a few Youtubers, and the graphics they're using are WAY better than what I'm seeing. So I research, and see that my card and CPU should be able to run the game at Maximum settings. So I try that, and I get 5 FPS. According to what I see online I should be well north of 100 FPS.

What I see is really weird, well to me at least. The GPU is barely seeing 10% utilization, the CPU 30%, but I'm only getting 5 FPS. It really doesn't make a lot of sense. It is like the GPU isn't being used, but here's the kicker. I don't have an integrated GPU. None on the CPU or MB.
I'm at a loss. All of my drivers are up to date. I've tried reverting them. Lots of stuff. I've posted on NVIDIA's forums, but have got no help.

Just to complicate things, I launched Diablo 3. The GPU is pretty much pegged the whole time, but I'm seeing 130+ FPS. So it appears to be working for that game but not World of Tanks. I also fired up Elite Dangerous, and that was unplayable at 2 or 3 FPS, whereas on my old PC with my POS video card worked fine with low to medium graphics.

Anybody here dig into a dysfunctional GPU before? Or know of any youtubers or sites where I could go and best learn how to fish myself?

Don't have much for you but just some thoughts ...

Because your PC + 1650 Super is working well on other games but not on World of Tanks & Elite Dangerous. I'm thinking its got to be drivers or the game(s).

You said the drivers are up to date? Are you checking by Windows "Update" or did you actually download latest drivers from Nvidia site? Windows Update really doesn't work for Nvidia drivers from my experience.

I don't play World of Tanks (nor Elite). Are you playing it on Steam? If so, it should be keeping the game updated. If you are playing on another platform, maybe check that its a current version and not one from 7 years ago?

You have already posted to Nvidia forums but maybe try World of Tanks forum or the Steam Discussion Group?

This looked potentially helpful: FPS drop | World of Tanks

Strange. Just judging off of the recommended/minimum specs you can tell that game doesn't utilize the GPU much (much more CPU intensive), so I wouldn't necessarily focus on that. Do you know what your CPU temps look like? Portable version of hwinfo is good for checking temps.

No disrespect intended, but is your video cable from your monitor connected to your video card and not your motherboard? I have seen that happen before

All right the drivers are straight from Nvidia. I am going to unintstall them and reinstall them using a tool called DDU that is supposed to completely wipe all signs of the old drivers so you can start "fresh".

Both World of Tanks and Elite Dangerous have been updated within the last month. So those are current.

I've asked on the WoT forums, and got some good suggestions, but nothing that brought me to a solution.

I will check that out.


CPU temps are pretty low, right now 34 C. I'm using Speccy. I'll bring that up right after I play a game, and confirm that it is still low. I haven't really looked a lot at the CPU stats other than the % usage.





No offense taken. I actually haven't got another GPU. The CPU nor the MB have offer the feature. I do have a virtual adapter, "Citrix Xen Indirect Display Adapter" that is used for Remote/Virtual desktops. That display adapter isn't even listed as an option in Windows when assigning a GPU to an application, so I don't think that could be used. Reinforcing that, when I look at Task Manager's Performance tab, I only ever see the Nvidia card listed while the games are active.

Very shot-in-the-darkish, but check your power plan setting (think it's called performance and energy. Would think that would be more geared toward a laptop, but I've seen a couple of things at the WoT site that would have me at least checking that. Make sure it's set to 'best performance'.

How invested are you in your current Windows and games install? I would probably reinstall Windows soon. Just install drivers and not much else, then put World of Tanks on there and see what happens.

I had to do something like this a while back - something regarding multiple-monitor support when I do have both integrated graphics and a graphics card. But the idea seems similar.

- Windows Settings from the Menu, then System.
- Scroll near the bottom, select Graphics settings.
- Choose an app to set preference. Use Browse to find the executable you're interested in.
- Add it.
- Then you can select that app from the Graphics settings screen and have a little more control over what it uses.

The reinstall is on my list of options. That and upgrade the BIOS on the MB. BOth of those will require a pretty fool proof back up.

Yeah. I thought this might have been the case as well. I only have one GPU, so there isn't any variety in my options. Both Performance and Power Saving are the same card. I've gone and expressly set it in the games where I'm seeing poor performance.

I'll add that a Youtube episode from Jayztwocents recommended going into the Nvidia control panel and forcing the card to a "performance" power profile upped the wattage draw, and did improve things a little bit. I see 9-10 FPS with pretty high level graphics as opposed to 7-8 FPS. When I set the game to minimum graphics, I'm getting 40ish FPS in WoT.

Jay's two cents is pretty good IMO. I will say that there are situations where a certain card just doesn't work well with a specific game. I pretty much hit the jackpot with a card (RX 570) that has issues with many games due to driver issues primarily.

I know that's highly unhelpful, but it's also a thing. I would second the 'reinstall Windows'. I do that periodically just because the strangest things can happen that are super-hard to track down. I had a game that flat-out would not launch in Steam because of something going on in the Windows registry, never did figure out what. My experience is that no matter what I'm keeping an eye on, if I don't reinstall Windows every year or two, performance gradually degrades on my PCs until I do.

Yeah. After more tinkering and losing my MB audio audio jack, to driver update shenanigans, I think that reinstall is likely my best bet at this point.

Also, look at GeForce experience, They can suggest higher settings for some games.

Yeah GeForce experience says I should go balls to the walls Ultra everything, and see 100+ FPS. I get about 4 FPS, with the card hovering at about 20% utilization. I'm out of town this weekend, but I'll be back at it next week.