GPU - Strange power consumption behaviour and performance drop RTX 3070

[Starcake]

Hey guys,

I've always had this really strange thing that happens in CP2077 for as long as I remember. Usually, my PC is running everything fine, mantaining a good constant FPS with a constant power consumption oscillating between 230-270W when playing CP, then for some reason, suddenly my FPS gets tanked hard and drops to low 30's and every single time this happens, I noticed that the power consumption goes down to 90-110W. Sometimes it restores itself after a few seconds, but sometimes it doesn't and it only goes back to normal power consumption after I open inventory menu and then go back the game, which then makes the game smooth again after a few seconds.

Anyone ever experienced this? This happens when ray tracing is activated. Without ray tracing this has never happened and my system is able to run the game above 90 FPS with all settings on maximum (including psycho screen space reflection with DLSS on Quality). This seems to be random, but certainly happens more in crowded areas. When I monitor my CPU usage (5800X) it never went higher than 70% spikes, maintaining an average of 40-50%, so I'm sure it's not a CPU bottleneck. My memories are also well configured at 3600 with Infinity Clock all properly sync'ed at 1800 with good timings, so it can't be memory issue as well. I run the game on a M.2, so it can't be that as well because this issue only happens in CP2077 and no other game I play.

I'm running my system on a Corsair 750W Gold, so I also don't believe that's the issue. Does this happen to any of you too? If so, have you ever found a proper fix for this? I understand FPS dropping a bit in crowded areas. It's expected. But what happens is actually an obscene fall from grace. It's like my GPU drops the ball and is just taking a break. The temperatures for my system are always very healthy too, so nothing is really overheating.

At this point I don't know what could cause this issue, and that's why I decided to ask and share here.

[Nite69]

use my settings on this thread and see what happens, been working good for me

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1091500/discussions/7/3394049806854068522/

[Starcake]

I don't think I can use it 1080p. Because my monitor is 1440p. The game will end up looking too blurry otherwise

Originally posted by Nite69:

use my settings on this thread and see what happens, been working good for me

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1091500/discussions/7/3394049806854068522/

Thanks for the suggestion, I checked it out, but the problem is that my monitor is 1440p. Using 1080p would make the game far too blurry even setting DLSS sharpness to 1, so the settings you mentioned wouldn't work too well for me, but I'm grateful nonetheless.

I just can't wrap my head around on this power consumption variation. It's no coincidence. Power consumption drops like rock, and so does the performance, even though the GPU clock is at 2100MHz and GPU Memory Clock is at 7800Mhz. Something is really odd.

I'll try it to tweak it more and see what happens.

[Nite69]

Originally posted by Starcake:

I don't think I can use it 1080p. Because my monitor is 1440p. The game will end up looking too blurry otherwise

Originally posted by Nite69:

use my settings on this thread and see what happens, been working good for me

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1091500/discussions/7/3394049806854068522/

Thanks for the suggestion, I checked it out, but the problem is that my monitor is 1440p. Using 1080p would make the game far too blurry even setting DLSS sharpness to 1, so the settings you mentioned wouldn't work too well for me, but I'm grateful nonetheless.

I just can't wrap my head around on this power consumption variation. It's no coincidence. Power consumption drops like rock, and so does the performance, even though the GPU clock is at 2100MHz and GPU Memory Clock is at 7800Mhz. Something is really odd.

I'll try it to tweak it more and see what happens.

2100? That could be your issue right thier ya have it overclocked too much, the RTX 3070 normally runs in the 1800 - 1900 range since its only a 220w card, RTX 3080 would be in the 2000 range since its around 300w

also those settings should work for 2K too it should only be like maybe a 5fps difference between it and 1080p since all your are doing is transfering some of the load from CPU to GPU with the higher resolution

[Starcake]

Originally posted by Nite69:

Originally posted by Starcake:

I don't think I can use it 1080p. Because my monitor is 1440p. The game will end up looking too blurry otherwise


Thanks for the suggestion, I checked it out, but the problem is that my monitor is 1440p. Using 1080p would make the game far too blurry even setting DLSS sharpness to 1, so the settings you mentioned wouldn't work too well for me, but I'm grateful nonetheless.

I just can't wrap my head around on this power consumption variation. It's no coincidence. Power consumption drops like rock, and so does the performance, even though the GPU clock is at 2100MHz and GPU Memory Clock is at 7800Mhz. Something is really odd.

I'll try it to tweak it more and see what happens.

2100? That could be your issue right thier ya have it overclocked too much, the RTX 3070 normally runs in the 1800 - 1900 range

At first I thought so too as well. So I tested the game with everything on default, including CPU, no PBO, just out of fabric values, and this issue still happens no matter what. I tried even undervolt. The 2100 value is fine on other games I play, including very demanding games such as TW:WH3 and No Man's Sky, Borderlands 3. Play those for hours, zero problems. I'm starting to wonder if my RT cores are defective or something.

I might try slapping my old 1080p monitor and play around with it with the exact same settings I run, except that instead of 1440p, it will be 1080p. Wonder what kind of result it would yeld.

This issue became much more prominent after 1.6. Before that the performance was fine the vast majority of time with this happening only every now and then. But now it's a lot more common.

Did this ever happen to you at all in any case? Especially on that area near Misty's shop?

[Nite69]

Cyberpunk is known to have several demanding areas around the map so yes I too drop to 40's at times but its toleraable framerate for me, I dunno about you, outside misty's shop is one of them yea around the market area

[Starcake]

Originally posted by Nite69:

Cyberpunk is known to have several demanding areas around the map so yes I too drop to 40's at times but its toleraable framerate for me, I dunno about you, outside misty's shop is one of them yea around the market area

Aahhh alright. Thank you very much for sharing that. I was genuinely worried if it was my GPU dying or something like that. I'll just live with it, or maybe just run the game without ray tracing, as this doesn't happen when it's off.

RT is like a forbidden fruit, once you experience it and see it in its full glory, it's hard to go back. =)

Thanks for the pointers and shared experience anyway.

[Nite69]

thats it exactly I like the RT haha, and also I upgraded from a GTX 1070, it barely did 40's across the entire game (RT not supported of course), so I am running the same FPS as my old card in specific areas but with better graphics I guess thats a tradeoff :)

[JAD]

A year later, did you find a fix? I'm butting my head everyday I play and the only solution is to restart the game every time it happens. I can be playing for an hour and maybe even two and suddenly wattage goes down along with the FPS.

[Starcake]

Originally posted by JAD:

A year later, did you find a fix? I'm butting my head everyday I play and the only solution is to restart the game every time it happens. I can be playing for an hour and maybe even two and suddenly wattage goes down along with the FPS.

Oh wow, I forgot I even made this thread, lol but sadly sadly I never found a solution to this issue. It still happens from time to time if I use ray tracing, but it's much, much more rare now. I am thinking it's a combination of the game being more optimized + better drivers.

I just gave up on RT in this game. It's not worth the hassle, and with the addition of DLAA, I prefer to run native DLAA with everything on high, traditional rasterization. Game looks stunning and runs super smooth.

I wish you luck if you plan on trying to find a solution for that.

Stay well!

[JAD]

Originally posted by Starcake:

Originally posted by JAD:

A year later, did you find a fix? I'm butting my head everyday I play and the only solution is to restart the game every time it happens. I can be playing for an hour and maybe even two and suddenly wattage goes down along with the FPS.

Oh wow, I forgot I even made this thread, lol but sadly sadly I never found a solution to this issue. It still happens from time to time if I use ray tracing, but it's much, much more rare now. I am thinking it's a combination of the game being more optimized + better drivers.

I just gave up on RT in this game. It's not worth the hassle, and with the addition of DLAA, I prefer to run native DLAA with everything on high, traditional rasterization. Game looks stunning and runs super smooth.

I wish you luck if you plan on trying to find a solution for that.

Stay well!

Yo thanks for the reply! In my case I only found out about the wattage drops just recently once I started to monitor everything with MSI afterburner. Thanks to that I also fixed thermal throttiling with a repaste on the GPU before it.

I updated the driver just recently to the latest version. At 1st it seemed to had fixed it, but it has come back. I'm trully at a loss and just like you said, disabling ray tracing is the only way to keep playing without restarting the game.

[Majestic]

So, what is most likely happening here is that you're running out of VRAM, and the powerdrop you see is the system halting for the copy from SSD to VRAM taking place. Since it cannot permanently store all the data it needs, it has to transfer more data back and forth, hence you see a drop in performance whilst everything seemingly isn't maxed out. It also means the system is "waiting" for that to finish, hence the drop in load and subsequently in power.

RT increases VRAM usage significantly, hence this is why it only occurs when you use it. You can test my theory by running an extremely aggressive DLSS setting (ultra performance or something) and lowering the texture settings to its lowest. Then try running with every other setting as it was. You will likely not get the framedrops. Because you lowered VRAM usage from the texture settings, and additionally by lowering the internal render resolution to lower the vram usage even more.

3070 was not gifted with sufficient VRAM to prolong its life (i wonder if it's deliberate :thinking:), it will become a bigger problem down the line with new titles easily using 10-12GB on modest settings. The new Forza game uses up to 16GB in 4K now.

EDIT: Just looked with Afterburner. At UW 1440p, with raytracing maxed, im seeing 11.2GB of VRAM usage on my 6800XT 16GB. I'm pretty confident in my assessment that this is your issue.

[Starcake]

Originally posted by Majestic:

So, what is most likely happening here is that you're running out of VRAM, and the powerdrop you see is the system halting for the copy from SSD to VRAM taking place. Since it cannot permanently store all the data it needs, it has to transfer more data back and forth, hence you see a drop in performance whilst everything seemingly isn't maxed out. It also means the system is "waiting" for that to finish, hence the drop in load and subsequently in power.

RT increases VRAM usage significantly, hence this is why it only occurs when you use it. You can test my theory by running an extremely aggressive DLSS setting (ultra performance or something) and lowering the texture settings to its lowest. Then try running with every other setting as it was. You will likely not get the framedrops. Because you lowered VRAM usage from the texture settings, and additionally by lowering the internal render resolution to lower the vram usage even more.

3070 was not gifted with sufficient VRAM to prolong its life (i wonder if it's deliberate :thinking:), it will become a bigger problem down the line with new titles easily using 10-12GB on modest settings. The new Forza game uses up to 16GB in 4K now.

EDIT: Just looked with Afterburner. At UW 1440p, with raytracing maxed, im seeing 11.2GB of VRAM usage on my 6800XT 16GB. I'm pretty confident in my assessment that this is your issue.

Thank you, brother. I had a suspicion about that as well, and I am inclined to believe you're absolutely right. Sadly, Nvidia cut the 3070/3070Ti's balls by giving it only 8, not even having the decency to give it 12 at minimum. So yeah it's mostly likely happening what you said, because I tested with lowered texture quality and ultra performance and the game runs incredibly smooth even with Pathtracing (and looks like arse too, lol).

Shame on Nvidia for intentionally castrating their own cards. The 3070 would be one of the best cards ever made if it had the proper amount of VRAM to support its alledgely RT capabilities.

Best way to run CP2077 on a 3070 @1440p is everything on High with DLAA (not DLSS) and sharpness set at .25. Looks really, really beautiful. RT be damned at this point.

Thanks for posting and sharing!

[Majestic]

Originally posted by Starcake:

Thank you, brother. I had a suspicion about that as well, and I am inclined to believe you're absolutely right. Sadly, Nvidia cut the 3070/3070Ti's balls by giving it only 8, not even having the decency to give it 12 at minimum. So yeah it's mostly likely happening what you said, because I tested with lowered texture quality and ultra performance and the game runs incredibly smooth even with Pathtracing (and looks like arse too, lol).

Shame on Nvidia for intentionally castrating their own cards. The 3070 would be one of the best cards ever made if it had the proper amount of VRAM to support its alledgely RT capabilities.

Best way to run CP2077 on a 3070 @1440p is everything on High with DLAA (not DLSS) and sharpness set at .25. Looks really, really beautiful. RT be damned at this point.

Thanks for posting and sharing!

Yeah ultra performance you're rending at like.. 720p? x'D
So yeah, it'll look horrendous, but it's just to prove the point, not to actually play with.

I dont know how much system memory you have? 16GB? Another post someone has a 3070 too but he has less issues since he has a lot of system memory. I won't tell you to buy something, as I cannot guarantee it will fix it, but should you feel inclined to spend a little money to maybe fix it, you can maybe upgrade it to 32GB. That gives windows and the game a bigger pool is semi-fast memory that could alleviate some of the issues. Because now it's most likely swapping to SSD instead, and that brings the performance to a crawl. I tested it a few minutes and I saw up to 26-27GB of required memory (12.5GB VRAM, 14GB system). So if you only have 8GB VRAM, you need >20GB of system memory, otherwise it will revert down to the next memory heuristic -> SSD.

I can't use DLAA on my AMD GPU. I use FSR quality to give me more fps, as I think super fluid fps adds more immersion/realism than RT does. It also overwrites the ingame TAA solution, which is atrocious. Try swinging a sword and you'll notice how much ghosting there is. I sort of like the RT reflections, but it costs me 30-40fps. Which is unacceptable.

As for Nvidia's planned obscolescence.. sadly they are continuing that trend. They gave the 4070 and 4070TI a 'measily' 12GB. Considering the price, i dont think that statement is harsh. Seeing as the $500 7800XT has 16GB. And the 7900XT vs. 4070TI its even worse, there its 12GB vs 20GB. This is just so that people have to replace their GPU faster. It's a good thing that reviewers like hardware unboxed make a big deal out of it. I think now it is more known to gamers than it was a year ago. That said, the 4070 is still outselling AMD GPU's... so in a year or two from now, someone with a 4070 will be creating the same topic not knowing what is going on.

[JAD]

Originally posted by Majestic:

So, what is most likely happening here is that you're running out of VRAM, and the powerdrop you see is the system halting for the copy from SSD to VRAM taking place. Since it cannot permanently store all the data it needs, it has to transfer more data back and forth, hence you see a drop in performance whilst everything seemingly isn't maxed out. It also means the system is "waiting" for that to finish, hence the drop in load and subsequently in power.

RT increases VRAM usage significantly, hence this is why it only occurs when you use it. You can test my theory by running an extremely aggressive DLSS setting (ultra performance or something) and lowering the texture settings to its lowest. Then try running with every other setting as it was. You will likely not get the framedrops. Because you lowered VRAM usage from the texture settings, and additionally by lowering the internal render resolution to lower the vram usage even more.

3070 was not gifted with sufficient VRAM to prolong its life (i wonder if it's deliberate :thinking:), it will become a bigger problem down the line with new titles easily using 10-12GB on modest settings. The new Forza game uses up to 16GB in 4K now.

EDIT: Just looked with Afterburner. At UW 1440p, with raytracing maxed, im seeing 11.2GB of VRAM usage on my 6800XT 16GB. I'm pretty confident in my assessment that this is your issue.

Nice try, but it isn't the VRAM, or RAM

https://i.imgur.com/Vd4ROiH.png

I've been testing your theory the last couple of hours. I have 8GB of VRAM and "luckly" VRAM never exceeded 7GB and when it did I noticed some small dips in wattage and FPS, but it went back to normal fast. Now I was taking care of an airdrop and right after killing everyone and looting it, I started to go around the corpses to loot some more. That's when the wattage dropped without a reason. VRAM was around the same as you can see in the screenshot, so no real reason for it to go down.

I have 64GB of DDR4 memory and the game is installed in a NVMe PCIE 4.0 drive, system is installed in an SSD. As you see, wattage is around 150 in the screenshot, causing severe FPS loss. Game should be running at around 50 FPS in Dogtown with ray tracing enabled at 1080p DLSS-balanced (it looks almost the same as quality with huge FPS boost) but as you see in the screenshot, the wattage drop is causing the game to run at 30 XD

So again, there's no real reason for wattage to drop like this on the GPU.

This all just makes me sad 'cause it seems it's just the stupid game and nothing we do is ever going to fix this mess.

I agree on everything else though about NVIDIA's bs, which in fact, is probably the main reason this DLC has these issues.

[Starcake]

You know, this does make me wonder if CDPR is aware of this bug. Wonder if somoene ever reported this, or if they even look into this session and stumbled upon this.

But yeah, it's been an issue since 1.0 version of the game. Certainly diminished quite significantly, but still very present and common. And it's very frustrating indeed. The only 2 things I can relate is that when the power usage drops, the game's performance gets tanked HARD.

It's lik the GPU decides to go AFK for a bio break.