GTX 580 99% use?

[Dicko 3]

HI all, Just upgraded to a 2600K and GTX 580. Just noticed that the GPU was running at 99% in FSX. Is this normal? Thanks in advance Andrew

[bburkley 0]

What kind of resolution and antialiasing are you running? I think mine hits somewhere around 60%, never that high. I'll check it out though...

[SpiritFlyer 987]

HI all, Just upgraded to a 2600K and GTX 580. Just noticed that the GPU was running at 99% in FSX. Is this normal? Thanks in advance Andrew

Hi Andrew, My 580GTX will often run at 99% while MSI Afterburner is overclocking it to 950Mhz and the CPU pumping out at 5.0Ghz. These combinations, along with the other matched high speed components (Ram and Drives) and a modified FSX, really produces a fast, smooth and detailed rendering. By the way, it might be a good idea to really dial up the fan speed to keep the card cool. Congrats on the new system! Kind regards,

[KL Oo 695]

As a side note, after I first built my 2500k/580 rig I was playing around with the overclocking. Got 4.7 stable for the CPU and was happy with that so started overclocking the 580. What I found was that I could push it a long way up, from memory up to a core clock of 925 or so without any problems in FSX, however running Furmark or other graphics stress testing programs would crash it. In addition, most other modern games would crash it as well. Had to scale it right back in order to avoid the crashes. So from my experience, FSX will allow for a pretty high overclock on the graphics card, and on my system at least it made a good difference in terms of smooth flight and a few FPS. Unfortunately I use the PC for other games as well and adjusting the overclock on the gfx card all the time was a pain in the arse. \ Just my 2cAB

[Rocky_53 1,566]

Hi Andrew, My 580GTX will often run at 99% while MSI Afterburner is overclocking it to 950Mhz and the CPU pumping out at 5.0Ghz. These combinations, along with the other matched high speed components (Ram and Drives) and a modified FSX, really produces a fast, smooth and detailed rendering. By the way, it might be a good idea to really dial up the fan speed to keep the card cool. Congrats on the new system! Kind regards,

Hi Stephen, I hope you don't mind me hijacking the thread, although not that much I guess. But as we're on the subject of OC GPUs, I have been puzzled as to why I have never seen the slightest benefit from OC my GTX470. I've tried several times, taken it to the limit using Furmark etc, but have never seen any increase in performance or smoothness. I'm perplexed and hoping someone could offer a friendly explanation. Cheers...

[JimmiG 244]

Well, you wouldn't want it to only use 50% of the GPU.. Then you might as well have bought a video card that was half as fast..

[earthdog 842]

My 580 normally works around 70% in FSX.. It goes to 99% if i enable ENBSeries...

[SpiritFlyer 987]

I just started up FSX and did a brief circuit of FTX's new freeware airport in the PNW. Even at full maxed out settings there is great effortless performance there, but I did get the card to briefly reach 97% when I quickly circled the Royal Duke from the outside. If I am over a really challenging area, the numbers can really rise high, and stay there. Here is a snip of the MSI Afterburner graphs: Kind regards,

[SpiritFlyer 987]

Hi Stephen, I hope you don't mind me hijacking the thread, although not that much I guess. But as we're on the subject of OC GPUs, I have been puzzled as to why I have never seen the slightest benefit from OC my GTX470. I've tried several times, taken it to the limit using Furmark etc, but have never seen any increase in performance or smoothness. I'm perplexed and hoping someone could offer a friendly explanation. Cheers...

Hi Howard, Good to see you again. It has been some time since we exchanged notes in the ORBX forums. I don't know specifically why your 470 GTX is OC neutral. When I had a i7-930 OCed to 4.3Ghz and a 470 GTX it did respond to GPU overclocking, as did the 480 GTX that followed it. The only thing that comes to mind is that there must be a bottleneck with either your RAM or the CPU output that just does not sufficiently feed the GPU enough to take advantage of an overclock. Performance always drops to the lowest common denominator. Likely the 470GTX is working as hard as it can with the amount of data it is recieving. Also remember that taking a GPU to the limit on FURMARK or OCCT or any other such GPU crucifyer is forbidden now by both AMD and Nvidia. In fact, the 580GTX will throttle itself to avoid the worse of the programs when under load. There can be real damage to any card and most benchmark testers do not use these programs anymore. Here is a quote when talking about testing the 580GTX which also goes for the 400 series too. There are many such references from bench testers: http://alienbabeltech.com/main/gtx-580 "In order to stay below the 300 W power limit imposed by the PCIe specification, NVIDIA has added a power draw limitation system to their card. When either Furmark or OCCT are detected, sensors measure the incoming current and voltage to calculate the total power draw. If the power draw exceeds a certain predetermined limit, the GTX 580 will automatically downclock to avoid damage to hardware component. After the power draw drops back to safe limits, the GPU returns to normal clocks much the same as in thermal management. Because of this, we will no longer use Furmark for showing power draw and will return to using games to illustrate real world situations. Currently, this power management only switches on when Furmark or OCCT are detected and it should not limit overclocking unless Nvidia extends this management to regular PC games." Here it is directly from Nvidia: "Furmark is an application designed to stress the GPU by maximizing power draw well beyond any real world application or game. In some cases, this could lead to slowdown of the graphics card due to hitting over-temperature or over-current protection mechanisms. These protection mechanisms are designed to ensure the safe operation of the graphics card. Using Furmark or other applications to disable these protection mechanisms can result in permanent damage to the graphics card and void the manufacturer's warranty." http://forums.nvidia...howtopic=194254 Kind regards,

[Rocky_53 1,566]

Hi Howard, Good to see you again. It has been some time since we exchanged notes in the ORBX forums. I don't know specifically why your 470 GTX is OC neutral. When I had a i7-930 OCed to 4.3Ghz and a 470 GTX it did respond to GPU overclocking, as did the 480 GTX that followed it. The only thing that comes to mind is that there must be a bottleneck with either your RAM or the CPU output that just does not sufficiently feed the GPU enough to take advantage of an overclock. Performance always drops to the lowest common denominator. Likely the 470GTX is working as hard as it can with the amount of data it is recieving. Also remember that taking a GPU to the limit on FURMARK or OCCT or any other such GPU crucifyer is forbidden now by both AMD and Nvidia. In fact, the 580GTX will throttle itself to avoid the worse of the programs when under load. There can be real damage to any card and most benchmark testers do not use these programs anymore. Here is a quote when talking about testing the 580GTX which also goes for the 400 series too. There are many such references from bench testers: http://alienbabeltech.com/main/gtx-580 "In order to stay below the 300 W power limit imposed by the PCIe specification, NVIDIA has added a power draw limitation system to their card. When either Furmark or OCCT are detected, sensors measure the incoming current and voltage to calculate the total power draw. If the power draw exceeds a certain predetermined limit, the GTX 580 will automatically downclock to avoid damage to hardware component. After the power draw drops back to safe limits, the GPU returns to normal clocks much the same as in thermal management. Because of this, we will no longer use Furmark for showing power draw and will return to using games to illustrate real world situations. Currently, this power management only switches on when Furmark or OCCT are detected and it should not limit overclocking unless Nvidia extends this management to regular PC games." Here it is directly from Nvidia: "Furmark is an application designed to stress the GPU by maximizing power draw well beyond any real world application or game. In some cases, this could lead to slowdown of the graphics card due to hitting over-temperature or over-current protection mechanisms. These protection mechanisms are designed to ensure the safe operation of the graphics card. Using Furmark or other applications to disable these protection mechanisms can result in permanent damage to the graphics card and void the manufacturer's warranty." http://forums.nvidia...howtopic=194254 Kind regards,

Thanks a bunch Stephen, interesting info. Mmm, bottleneck, I guess I will have to continue with the search. I see we very rarely see you over at Orbx, or Alain, which is a shame as it's always good to have guys who know what they're talking about!. It's a great forum though, very friendly. But since getting my hands on the PMDG I spend quite a lot more time over here, so we will cross paths more often no doubt. Thanks again for the info

[jjjallen 37]

I concur with Stephen as using OCCT to test you GPU is like taking a bowtorch to it. On the other hand the 460 did OC well but was deficient in shaders so the 580 is really the best GPU for FSX IMO. Cheers and don't forget to try the latest WHQL nVidia driver today: http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=2776 jja

[Dicko 3]

Thanks for all of your responses!