I own an EVGA 1070 FTW, and have always had great FPS performance with it, in all my sim platforms.

 

I have always (after reading many forums, and technical opinions/papers) used Adaptive, as my nVidia power setting for the card.

 

This morning, due to some other opinions on Avsim, that Prefer Max Power is the way to go, and despite the fact that thermal drop-back and roll-off of produced freq's in the card can be had when reaching the cards protective thermal ceilings, I decided to try a little experiment out.

 

I switched my Global power setting to Prefer Max Power, and took this setting through XP10, XP11 beta 11, FSX DX10 (Steve's Fixer latest), and P3D 3.4

 

As already stated on many of my threads, I run all my sims, at max slider, or tick-box settings, to get what I need visually as acceptable sim'ing for my visual expectations. I demand quite the performance from my card, in doing so.

 

At the same FBO KFNT in XP11/B11,  whereby, with using the setting of Adaptive, I had 19-22 first off on the tarmac, in the space of a minute, I saw my FPS drop and flutter, down to 14-17!!!

 

I then took off, on my normal 'test' circuit, and saw an average of 7 FPS in degradation.

 

wow...

 

I then shut down, and fired up P3D, and saw about the same loss of FPS, in having switched to Prefer Max Power, over my normal Adaptive.

 

I was right...and what I read, was right...that running modern cards with the Prefer Max Power, is in fact robbing you, (as least in my experience) not gaining you, FPS, in that your card is throttling back as it runs hotter trying to maintain full freq's, than at Adaptive, with on-demand freq production. The bottom line, is that Max Power is a placebo effect. You in fact, probably are not getting the max fps, due to thermal throttle down over the course of the sim session.

 

I then set my Global, back to Adaptive mode, and on the next running of both XP and P3D, I was once more back to the max FPS that I have seen...and certainly gained back my 7 fps, or higher, than what was being produced, with my card set to Prefer Max Power.

 

As always, reader, it is up to you, and what convinces you, in settings to glean the best FPS performance from your individual card.  I will stay with Adaptive, from hence forth, for I have absolutely seen the results of running Prefer Max Power, rather than Adaptive...where your card will cycle higher, or lower (for cooler running) on demand, throughout your sim session, and what it is being asked to render, live upon the monitor.

 

BTW, and in closing, I did NOT see any stuttering in animation, as some have suggested by using Adaptive, rather than Prefer Max Power. None whatsoever.  All I saw, was a loss of graphic card performance and output, in FPS generation.

 

Just thought to post....

 

Ses

Same for me!

My GTX1070 performs better with the "adaptive" setting. Better fps, less micro stutters and a generally more stable and fluid performance. 

Same for me!

My GTX1070 performs better with the "adaptive" setting. Better fps, less micro stutters and a generally more stable and fluid performance. 

Yep   

+1

I always run on adaptive power setting too, I can confirm that the prefer max power setting looses fps after running the sim for some time. I don't have good cooling in my system so I get that effect after only half an hour of simming or playing.

Thanks, will check mine.

I am running a gtx 1080 and have never even come close to it's thermal limit. I just tried all three settings (addaptive, optimal, pre max performance) and got the exact fps reading with all three so I will stick with pre max performance as recommended on the Guru3d forums. 

Max performance doesn't event come close to thermal limits of my GPU as well.

I hardly reach more than 85% peak GPU usage in XP10 and 11 (and around 20-30% less in average in P3D).

But still, "adaptive" seems to make a steadier usage of the GPU, with noticeably steadier and better fps, in P3D and XP.

But sure enough, every system (and driver) is different.

Wow.

 

Sesquashtoo, where have you been all my life?

 

I have a GTX1080 and could never get locked 30FPS at Fly Tampa YSSY with the FSLabs A320 on the ground and it was never butter smooth. Most other places, yes, all other aircraft, yes.

 

I have just tried this and bang. Butter smooth all the way taxiing to RWY34R from D57. Never has happened before.

 

And, my card is running 15 degrees lower in crappy weather!

 

A virtual beer my friend!

I am sure Nvidia added this option to degrade frame rates.

Wow.

 

Sesquashtoo, where have you been all my life?

 

I have a GTX1080 and could never get locked 30FPS at Fly Tampa YSSY with the FSLabs A320 on the ground and it was never butter smooth. Most other places, yes, all other aircraft, yes.

 

I have just tried this and bang. Butter smooth all the way taxiing to RWY34R from D57. Never has happened before.

 

And, my card is running 15 degrees lower in crappy weather!

 

A virtual beer my friend!

Glad to have helped!  

 

Cheers,

I've had this exact problem before and saw it in DCS and other games too. It has to do with Windows power management, which can also affect your CPU (if you have speedstep enabled). The inverse of the desired result is happening, so while you want full power the system instead downclocks. You can observe this by watching the C states of the CPU and GPU.

 

If memory serves the system thinks that the game is a background app when it is actually in focus. There was a similar problem like this reported over on the LM forums before and here several times too. Can't remember the fix.

I think that this issue over which setting to use depends on a number of factors. The 10xx series of GPUs are generally accepted to run hotter than the earlier 9xx series. Consequently, they are more likely to hit the thermal limit at which they will start throttling. This will happen even quicker if the case is not removing warm air efficiently. With most modern GPUs the fan profile can be customised to adjust the amount of cooling applied to the card. As an attempt to make the cards quieter and use less power, the fans are often set, by default, to start running at higher temperatures and not reach maximum speed early enough in the profile to prevent throttling.

 

Assuming that the card does not reach its thermal limit, there is no reason that "prefer maximum performance" would give any less performance than "adaptive" - they both use the maximum potential of the card (not all of the time, of course, in the case of "adaptive”). With the "adaptive" setting, although it may not always be noticeable, the fact that the clock speed is going up and down in response to the graphics load has the potential to affect the fluidity of the screen image. Perhaps this is not as much of an issue with higher-end cards.

 

I have a GTX 970 and even at 100% continuous usage the temperature has never risen above 75C, which is well below the temperature at which the card will start to throttle. As a result, "prefer maximum performance" should deliver just that. Remember that "prefer maximum performance" does not apply all the time. This explanation is from another site:

 

Maximum Performance

Clocks will not be lowered when in games, this will of course increase power consumption and heat. It will lower in idle.

 

I can confirm that when I stop gaming (with "prefer maximum performance" set), the clock speed on my card drops back to minimum power setting. The bottom line seems to be that several factors affect how the different settings may work on your system and there is no "magic bullet" setting that will work for everyone.

I did start a discussion about this over at the Guru3D forums and it is turning out to be very interesting.

 

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=5396276#post5396276

I did start a discussion about this over at the Guru3D forums and it is turning out to be very interesting.

Thanks for the link. It's interesting but also contains some incorrect information. For example, the comment that "prefer maximum performance" does not clock down when returning to the desktop is wrong. If I set this as the global setting in the NVIDIA Control Panel, I get maximum clock speeds in games and minimum at the desktop. The only difference I can see over adaptive is that the clock speed never changes from maximum when the game is running. Yes it uses slightly more power and yes it runs slightly hotter but if the temperature is well controlled it's not a problem.

i will try it today in the evening.

 

I have a watercooled GTX1080 G1 Gaming WB so i never hit the thermal Limit

 

my Card is clocking constantly on 2062 Mhz without OC and has 41 Degrees. 

 

But i never tried adaptive because i also thougt pref max Performance is the way to go.