Is the LHR mode on my card getting tripped by FAH?

[CaptainHalon]

Noticed my folding ppd dropped quite a lot. Checked GPU-Z and GPU Clock is at 780, Mem Clock at 1250, and total board power draw at only around 60W. GPU Load still says 100%, though. This is on an RTX 3070.

[toTOW]

It shouldn't be related to the LHR mode. Reduced clocks are usually the consequence of a nVidia driver reset ...

[CaptainHalon]

So I've done some testing: reinstalled latest drivers from Nvidia (497.29), restarted PC, and watched FAH. I do not know what causes the card to randomly jump into the lower power mode with 780/1250 GPU/Mem clocks, but when it does, it stays there. Restarting FAH doesn't help. I've found there are three things that will get the clocks and power usage to jump back up:

1) Reboot PC
2) Reinstall Nvidia drivers with or without reboot
3) Load EVGA X1 app (if I close the app, clocks go back down)

The last one is obviously the easiest. Still, I don't know what's causing the card to behave this way. For now, I've set EVGA X1 to start with PC and I'll just leave it open.

[toTOW]

Check your Windows Event Viewer and look for nVidia driver resets ...

In nVidia control panel, make sure you're set to Prefer maximal performances.

Disable power saving features in Windows Power Settings.

[CaptainHalon]

Could not find any pertinent events in the Windows logs.

I tried changing PCI-E Linkstate Power Management from "moderate" to "off", but no effect. Changing power management in the Nvidia control panel to "prefer maximum performance" also had no effect.

Through some Google searching, I found a couple cases of similar issues. Apparently one was due to a corrupt GPU BIOS flash and remedied by reflashing the GPU BIOS. The other did not have a solution.

I've never tried to flash a graphics card BIOS, so I'd rather not go that route if I don't have to. I think at this point if keeping the EVGA X1 app open prevents the issue, I'll just do that. It is a curiosity, though.

[CaptainHalon]

Update:

Noticed a feature in EVGA X1 called Rebar, but it said it wasn't enabled because my motherboard wasn't supporting it. Checked my motherboard BIOS and it was from Arp 2020, so decided to update to the newest version from Nov 2021. Now Rebar is enabled and my GPU clock speeds seem more stable. Not assuming Rebar and the issue are related per se, but from what I read online, X1 would often update the vbios automatically when Rebar was enabled. This didn't happen on mine because it already had a relatively new vbios (didn't even appear in the official list on TechPowerUp).

So hypothesis: since I didn't get my card brand new, perhaps the previous owner enabled Rebar and updated the vbios. Then I got the card and put it in my less up-to-date system and a problem or bug with backwards compatibility ensued? Another hypothesis is there was a bug in my older motherboard bios that didn't let it work nicely with the 3070. Also, I can't say conclusively yet if the problem is actually gone...will have to let things run a while longer to be sure.

Edit: Problem still there. Meh. Back to using X1 app.

[toTOW]

Does it happen when you're watching videos ?