Aurora R9, RTX 2070 staying at max frequency even on idle

@GTS81 Yeah good point. I know I did not OC it nor even try. This card makes enough noise at 6900 RPMs, I don't want to add more.

Install MSI Afterburner and see if you have the card on boost lock.

I think it's less of AWCC and more of NVIDIA vBIOS behavior. The GPU can auto boost the frequency as it likes, as long as it doesn't break the temperature, power and voltage limit.

Just saw the picture you posted. Assuming that's the idle picture, you're fine.

Best learn to use Afterburner. The on screen display tool helps you see a lot of important metrics while your game runs.

As an add-on to the info, it seems my card is slower as in The Division 2 my FPS used to be 55-72 FPS but now its like 10-15 FPS less than that.

@GTS81 

What's really bizarre is last night I noticed The Division 2 was running at about 10-20 FPS less. I don't get it.

I don't know how to use MSI Afterburner though. Clearly the memory is at top speed but not the chip itself from what I see now. I'm going to guess AWCC somehow is telling it to OC despite it not displaying that.

@GTS81 

I think you're right and now the card thinks the base or idle clock is 1095 MHz and memory at 7000 MHz judging from what MSI AB is saying. I just checked some images I took when I first got the R9. Base clock was 315 MHz and the memory was 405 MHz.

See both images.

That is a little high.  Right now I'm idling at 139mhz GPU clock / 405 GPU RAM clock.  I boost to ~ 1900mhz for the gpu clock under load. 

Have you tried dropping it from high performance to balanced mode? 

I just hit the "Reset" button in Afterburner for one of my idle 2080 Super. Here's what I see:

GPU Core Clock = 1650 MHz

GPU Memory Clock = 7750 MHz

GPU Core Voltage = 818mV

GPU Core Temperature = 36C

I think you only drop to sub 1GHz if you go to "NVIDIA Settings" control panel in the lower right part of your taskbar, open it, and select "Optimize for Power". If you're at "Optimize for Performance", it stays at a high clock frequency.

@Crimsonium , maybe check the above (NVIDIA Settings) and also the power management mode in AWCC (High Performance vs Balanced vs Power Saving)?

@GTS81 @r72019 

I checked all the thermal and power settings, none of them change it. I checked the Nvidia CP and its set to Optimal. I never changed that till yesterday to get more juice out of this card.

I think its almost like by default, Nvidia power management mode is set to high performance. I'm now thinking its been like this since I installed the Nvidia drivers (445) whereas before I was using the AW pushed 441 drivers version. I'm tempted to go back.\

A friend of mine asked if I cleared the GPU bios or kept the original settings. I was like what? I just installed it.

If you're tempted to roll back your drivers, usually a quick uninstall followed by reinstalling the version you want works. Sometimes it doesn't and you need to go the DDU path. I haven't tried that before so someone else from here may need to help with that.

As for the GPU BIOS, did you get a GPU BIOS update from SupportAssist and installed that update? Some folks on this forum has been talking about that GPU BIOS thingy but I've not been following that conversation.

@GTS81 

I do all the Dell/AW updates that come through so I assume yes. I do the SupportAssist regularly, like at least once or twice a week, even look if there are updates.

I'm not sure about the uninstall now.

What the hell! I booted up the PC this morning and now its at 1125 MHz at idle. I don't get it.

@r72019 

Yeah I tried them all and rebooted. No change, now its sitting at 1095 MHZ. What kind of voodoo magic is going on in there!?!?