GTX 960 Automatic Fan Control Not Working - GPU Throttling

  • IDK, 5 or so years old. But it wasn’t used much for 2 or 3 years.
  • EVGA
  • Win10
  • Ryzen 5 3600 (stock speed) 32GB RAM
  • Windows installation is about 3 months old, and is malware and bloatware free.
  • zero problems with a GTX 1060
  • No issues with VRAM. It’s a 4GB card, and Eve doesn’t use that much (I once actually tested GPU memory usage and found that Eve uses between 84 and 300MB depending on client settings at 1080p when sitting on station undock. I would expect large fleet fights to use more, but I’d be surprised if I ever have any problems with VRAM, especially considering how I usually stay on potato mode).
  • lol, and I’m sure people will give me ■■■■ for not mentioning it earlier, but I didn’t feel like getting into an argument about whether or not you can run 2 different graphics cards, or whether or not that’s the source of my problem. But I suppose I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it. I run a 960 and a 1060. Anyway, I’ve seen people mention that running 2 different graphics cards is bad juju, but I’ve been running these two cards without issue for about 6 months now (first on an intel platform, and now on an AMD. I also ran the 1060 with an AMD card on the intel platform for about 2 years before that). Moreover, there are many other people who also dispute that running 2 different cards is bad juju. It may cause problems in some cases, but it is not an inherently bad solution. Moreover, my problem started yesterday.
  • Speaking of which, I had not made any hardware changes, setting changes, driver updates, software updates, or anything prior to the problem starting (I manually update everything except for my anti-virus because I don’t want a bunch of updater processes constantly running in the background).
  • GPU temp has stayed between 26 and 41 degrees celcius now that I have the fan manually turned on.
    Yeah, I installed the vendor tools in order to manually set the fan speed. Does look like I can set my own fan speed curve like you mentioned through, so I might try giving that a shot.

I think that should answer all your questions, now for an update.

  • After I manually set the fan speed, I ended up experiencing more frame rate drops, and noticed max utilization and a throttled clock speed again. This was in spite of my GPU temp being about 30 degrees celcius at the time. I read somewhere that some people can have problems with their clock speed “sticking”, and to change their GPU power management mode from “adaptive” to “prefer maximum performance.” So, I’m going to give that a shot this evening.
  • I’m also going to re-test my PSU. It tested well within specs when I upgraded my system about 3 months back, but it’s also 8 years old, and has seen extensive use.
  • Speaking of which, I actually checked 2 different PSU calculators before my upgrade. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but my PSU had over a hundred watts over the recommended wattage. So, that shouldn’t be an issue.

And if you’re wondering why I run 2 different graphics cards, it’s because I got both of my secondary cards for free when friends/family upgraded. So, I decided to use them to drive different displays, and then break up the workload as much as possible. For example, I multibox Eve, so I’ll split the clients between the 2 cards. Or, I’ll run a game on one card/display (with settings cranked up as much as I can), and have video playback/web browser/discord/maps/whatever split across two other displays on the other card. Now, I will probably upgrade to a beefier card within the next year, but this has given me extra gpu muscle without spending any more money.

Anyway, thanks for the replies everyone.

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