RX 580 Seriously Underperforming

RJ16184 · 26 Dec 2017 at 12:09

Tearing my hair out over this problem with my new Ryzen RX 580 Graphics card. It is seriously underperforming, hitting around 30-40 FPS where it should be hitting 60+. Metro Last Light dipping below 20 just walking around. Monitor running at 1080p. Fresh install of windows, latest BIOS (Got a performance bump of maybe 10 FPS by doing this, it was previously hitting around 20-30 FPS). Latest AMD drivers. 450W PSU. Ryzen 5 1500X.
Any tips? The rest of the PC is a couple months old, been running fine. Things i've noticed is a high pitch squeal coming from the card when under load, sometimes, changes with whats displayed on the screen. (Checked it is seated properly) and there is a fair old bit of screen tearing. Temperatures seem normal pretty stable, idling around room temperature, getting in to the 60's under load.
Thank you!

Pulseammo · 26 Dec 2017 at 12:34

The squealing noise is called "coil whine" it usually occurs at high FPS on game menus etc more readily than at lower fps. Generally 60fps keeps it tame on most cards but as you've noticed some get it at basically any FPS when running in 3d mode. Coil whine doesn't affect FPS performance though.

Have you tried running a benchmark to see what FPS you get? 3D Mark "Demo" is available on steam, that'd give you access to the firestrike benchmark. Or you could download one of the unigine benchmarks, unigine valley is quite popular: https://benchmark.unigine.com/valley

If you run a known benchmark like that we can see if you have a problem in multiple games or if this is specifically a last light issue.

DarkHorizon472 · 26 Dec 2017 at 12:41

When fps drops go straight into task manager and see what is using cpu, it could be something else running in the background taking up cpu.

Also in game check Gpu / cpu, temps and usage. You may have a cpu bottleneck etc. which would limit fps.

RJ16184 · 26 Dec 2017 at 12:44

It benchmarked fine on Ungines Heaven, about 2250 on ultra with AA set to x2. The issue is, that just isn't being reflected in the games i'm trying, metro, total war: atilla, total war: Rome II
CPU temp is fine too, will check CPU load but I should expect the Ryzen 5 1500X not to bottleneck this much.

Squid Vicious · 26 Dec 2017 at 14:02

Out of interest, is this a new issue with this card? I.e. did you previously see the Fps you mention and perf has now degraded?

Armageus · 26 Dec 2017 at 14:07

RJ16184 said:
450W PSU.

What make/model PSU - could be marginal, and causing the GPU to throttle etc

RJ16184 · 26 Dec 2017 at 14:12

Squid Vicious said:
Out of interest, is this a new issue with this card? I.e. did you previously see the Fps you mention and perf has now degraded?

brand new card yeah. sorry should have mentioned

Armageus said:
What make/model PSU - could be marginal, and causing the GPU to throttle etc

Corsair CP-9020049-UK VS Series ATX/EPS 80 Plus Power Supply Unit, 450w

Freddie1980 · 26 Dec 2017 at 17:15

Is your card hitting it's advertised clocks whilst gaming? If not increase the power limit.

muon · 26 Dec 2017 at 18:41

Get on screen display software and monitor CPU usage and GPU clocks whilst this is happening. Will tell you the problem pretty quickly.

pastymuncher · 26 Dec 2017 at 19:01

RJ16184 said:
Corsair CP-9020049-UK VS Series ATX/EPS 80 Plus Power Supply Unit, 450w

That is most certainly contributing to the coil whine. It is the lowest series of Corsairs range and is pretty rubbish. It has poor quality internals and that model isn't even 80+ certified. It has a single 12v rail of 408w so if you are overclocking the cpu and gpu then I guess you may be getting towards the limits of that psu. Fire up some monitoring software first before pinning everything on the psu being at fault. Something like Afterburner and select the onscreen display to monitor cpu and gpu clocks and temps so that you can see if everything is working as it should. Then again if the psu is not able to supply enough power that would probably stop the clocks from boosting anyway.

RJ16184 · 26 Dec 2017 at 19:29

Right, so just a few more things to say, I've DDU's the drivers and reinstalled, didn't solve anything that's one thing off the list though. The CPU is performing fine, tested it on geekbench and looked at its clock speed and utilisation also all fine. I used HWMonitor to look at the draw from the CPU and GPU and the GPU was pulling 150w under heavy load and the CPU under 65w

Kaapstad · 26 Dec 2017 at 20:03

RJ16184 said:
It benchmarked fine on Ungines Heaven, about 2250 on ultra with AA set to x2. The issue is, that just isn't being reflected in the games i'm trying, metro, total war: atilla, total war: Rome II
CPU temp is fine too, will check CPU load but I should expect the Ryzen 5 1500X not to bottleneck this much.

Those games you mentioned are notorious for flattening GPUs. Metro is total rubbish to use for benching as it does not run that well on anything.

Run Heaven 4 at 1080p using the settings in the bench thread so we can see how you card is performing against similar cards.

RJ16184 · 26 Dec 2017 at 20:04

OK so the clock is hitting the advertised 1350Mhz with memory clock 2000Mhz. Afterburner is reporting that it is drawing 140w, however, later, when it dropped to 20FPS, it was drawing around 70w with the same clock.

RJ16184 · 26 Dec 2017 at 20:14

In game, the GPU usage is dropping to like 0% and dropping off going back to drawing hardly anything, the gpu just seems to give up

Overlag · 26 Dec 2017 at 20:34

RJ16184 said:
In game, the GPU usage is dropping to like 0% and dropping off going back to drawing hardly anything, the gpu just seems to give up

its CPU limited then, i had (have?) the same issue, I had fps issues in games with my RX480, so upgraded to vega56... In some places my FPS is EXACTLY the same, because the game is only using one core

DarkHorizon472 · 26 Dec 2017 at 20:43

What was CPU load like in game ?

Was anything running in the background taking up CPU when FPS dropped ?

shankly1985 · 26 Dec 2017 at 21:07

What settings you running on Metro? SSAA and PhysX should both be switched off.

RJ16184 · 26 Dec 2017 at 21:51

pastymuncher said:
That is most certainly contributing to the coil whine. It is the lowest series of Corsairs range and is pretty rubbish. It has poor quality internals and that model isn't even 80+ certified. It has a single 12v rail of 408w so if you are overclocking the cpu and gpu then I guess you may be getting towards the limits of that psu. Fire up some monitoring software first before pinning everything on the psu being at fault. Something like Afterburner and select the onscreen display to monitor cpu and gpu clocks and temps so that you can see if everything is working as it should. Then again if the psu is not able to supply enough power that would probably stop the clocks from boosting anyway.

got a video of it all here https://youtu.be/ZKJvzeXS8mw

if that helps

RJ16184 · 26 Dec 2017 at 21:57

shankly1985 said:
What settings you running on Metro? SSAA and PhysX should both be switched off.

Not turned PhysX off, but the high settings, not v.high, no tessellation, SSAA off it still hits hardly any FPS

z10m · 26 Dec 2017 at 22:04

Had the same problem with metro running on RX480. Turned out to be physx. Once I disabled that the game was running smooth.