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Question

New RX 480 - Low Usage and Performance Issues

Mar 13, 2017 8:49AM PDT

Hello,

I recently purchased an ASUS RX 480 OC to replace a old 660ti. The rest of my system is up to spec for this card (see below) but ive had nothing but performance issues with this card. After an entire weekend of troubleshooting I believe my issues are due to the card not staying at high usage as seen from MSI Afterburner. When I watch benchmark videos or normal gameplay the persons usage stays at 99 to 100% however mine will frequently drop to basically any number whenever it wants. Now I dont exactly see immediate frame drop when the GPU usage drops, but if something happens on my screen like a gunfight or loading parts of the map my FPS will plummet to sometimes 25.

In general I feel my performance is lackluster - near matching my 660ti besides the hard frame drops. CSGO can sometimes go sub 100fps and H1Z1 on same settings as my 660ti can perform worse. If I benchmark on 3D Mark my GPU never drops below 98% usage and the setup scores around 4000 (healthy). Benchmarking on Wildlands I average around 98% GPU usage yet in game dont stay close to that, but the benchmarking results are pretty good.

My PSU is pretty new, my CPU is pretty strong (even tried OC), and 16GB RAM has to be enough. The GPU and CPU temps never go above 70, and my CPU has healthy usage (70-99%). GPU fans work normally. I really need some help figuring out this card and sending it back and purchasing a 1060 if need be.

Things ive tried:

- Reseating the card
- Using different HDMI port
- Overclocking/Underclocking on CPU/GPU
- Disabling power efficiency, setting high performance, maxing power output in Wattman
- Disable ULPS
- Updating motherboard BIOS
- Fresh installing windows/cleaning drives (3 times)
- Tried 10 different sets of drivers, ranging from very old to newest and default Windows ones (used DDU)
- Vsync on and off/different graphical settings
- CPU Core Unparking
- Disabling ReLive and Xbox DVR
- Killing processes of AMD in task manager
- Maxing fan usage and temps to try to stop throttling
- SSD and HDD (both functioning healthy)
- Disabling all background processes

My setup:

ASUS RX 480 OC - Dual fans
i5-4690k @ 4Ghz
16GB DDR3 RAM
Z97 PC Mate Motherboard
EVGA Bronze 600W PSU
NXZT S340 Case with 3 fans
Samsung LED 1080p@60hz monitor
2x 128GB SSD and 1 500GB HDD

Discussion is locked

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Answer
My concern is case temp.
Mar 13, 2017 9:09AM PDT

Post was last edited on March 13, 2017 9:13 AM PDT

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I forgot a BIG THING.
Mar 13, 2017 9:45AM PDT
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.
Mar 13, 2017 1:05PM PDT

I already tried the card without fresh installation of windows when I first used it, and I doubt its my case since the room its in is freezing cold with 3 fans running, but ill try to monitor it.

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Then it's a miss.
Mar 13, 2017 1:27PM PDT

Sometimes the 480 just won't play in a PC (example at toms.)