Clarification on side effects of too low vcore

[Theolonous]

Hello. First time poster, long time lurker (~2 or 3 years). I've read a few guides, watched a few youtubes before OC'ing for the first time back in September.

Current rig before I get into anything else:

i5 6600k @4.4ghz, 1.26 vcore, +.001 offset. LLC is 50% . Everything else is set to auto. 32 idle temps, 56 max temps playing any game, in the high 60s in prime
MSI Z170A SLI PLUS ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
NZXT Kraken X61 106.1 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 Memory (XMP enabled)
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 8GB G1 Gaming Video Card
Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (windows and a couple games on it)
Toshiba 2 TB HDD 7200 RPM (25% ish full, all steam games)
MSI GeForce GTX 1070 8GB (stock, no OC)
EVGA SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular

I've heard that my 1.26 vcore seems low for 4.4ghz. I seemed to always shrug it off because i've never had a shut down, blue screen, fail to boot, or restart scenario in the few months I've had this build. Lately I've been curious though if they are right because I've had FPS issues in every game I play. It didn't start right after I did the OC, but more like a month after I did. I've tried reinstalling drivers, making sure to use DDU and all that, done RAM tests and RAM seemed fine. Only thing left I can think about is those comments saying my vcore seemed low to be stable at that 4.4 clock.

Basically what happens in game is 90% of the time I'm playing (say for 2 hours), at least 2 or 3 times randomly through that play session my FPS will go from a max 144 (i'm on 144hz gsync monitor) down to 45-50 for about 8 to 10 seconds. Then it shoots back up to 144 and stays that way for quite a long time, before doing it again. The only thing I've seemed to be able to correlate it with (loosely), is when everyone uses their ultimates (still only sometimes) in Overwatch, or there is a massive amount of stuff happening in BF1 all in one area. But then at the same time, the same situation can happen or even MORE stuff will be happening, and my FPS stays happy at 144... It is almost frustrating that it doesn't do it everytime.

Anyways, after all those words I guess my main question is, I've heard of too low voltage being the case for computer not booting/freezing/blue screens, but is it possible to also see FPS drops like this if the vcore is practically on the brink of getting to a shutdown/restart condition? Like I am running it so close that it is still running the computer and the game, but obviously less efficiently hence the FPS drops. I do notice that when it is at the 45-50 FPS it seems much lower than what that FPS usually feels like, like with micro stutters every few seconds as well as the usually 45-50 FPS feel. I hope that is an adequate description.

Thanks for reading this, any advice/guidance appreciated.

 

[NeonCancerCandy]

the only side effects of low vcore are lower temps and longer cpu life. (assuming your overclock is stable, which it sounds like it is)
your fps issue wouldn't have anything to do with your low vcore.

 

[M@rk]

^This
Did you check the temps on your GPU?
Are you sure your temps are in the 50s while gaming?
Maybe software and applications in the backround make it lag sometimes, It can also be not enough RAM (But i doubt that).
Just to experiment try setting your Vcore higher, Maybe it is somehow unstable and as a result drops your FPS.

Report back when you have answers

 

[Theolonous]

Thanks for the input.

Mark, I run CAM software that came with the NZXT cooler as well as HWmonitor to check temps. GPU is in the mid 60s, CPU in mid 50s everytime. Unless I'm getting really low/off temperature readings? Not sure how likely that is though.

Good point about background software. I have a suspicion when pop-up steam or origin messages come up, like to tell me a friend is online or playing a game, might be the culprit but I can never alt tab fast enough to see if that is the case. I'll have to see if there is someway to disable these. Perhaps the processor is prioritizing these programs for the short amount of time that the popups come up on screen, dropping FPS in my games.

I went into the BIOS and contemplated turning off C-State and EIST on my mobo, but I like the power saving benefits. Could this be a culprit?

Other than that, I raised my vcore to 1.28 (previous 1.26). I was only able to play for about an hour though due to real life responsibilities last night, but I did not see any drastic FPS drops in that hour anyway.

I think your comment about background applications may be the culprit. It would explain why this happens so randomly, and for about the same amount of time one of those messages pops up on the screen.

I'll report back.

 

[M@rk]

Thanks for the input.

Mark, I run CAM software that came with the NZXT cooler as well as HWmonitor to check temps. GPU is in the mid 60s, CPU in mid 50s everytime. Unless I'm getting really low/off temperature readings? Not sure how likely that is though.

Good point about background software. I have a suspicion when pop-up steam or origin messages come up, like to tell me a friend is online or playing a game, might be the culprit but I can never alt tab fast enough to see if that is the case. I'll have to see if there is someway to disable these. Perhaps the processor is prioritizing these programs for the short amount of time that the popups come up on screen, dropping FPS in my games.

I went into the BIOS and contemplated turning off C-State and EIST on my mobo, but I like the power saving benefits. Could this be a culprit?

Other than that, I raised my vcore to 1.28 (previous 1.26). I was only able to play for about an hour though due to real life responsibilities last night, but I did not see any drastic FPS drops in that hour anyway.

I think your comment about background applications may be the culprit. It would explain why this happens so randomly, and for about the same amount of time one of those messages pops up on the screen.

I'll report back.

You can turn the notifications off, rightclick on the game (in steam library), Preporties, General, Enable the steam overlay while ingame tick it off. That should turn the notifications off if im correct.

 

[Pepi93]

Not sure if the 6700k behaves the same way as your cpu but I'm running 4.5ghz @ 1.22V with C-States enabled

Sounds like the game is either poorly optimized by developer or your settings need tweaking in the game ini files.

 

[Theolonous]

OK so, two things I did: turned off the steam overlay, and I also did a total wipe of video drivers with DDU and reinstalled back to a previous version of nvidia drivers before the most current ones (375.3 or something instead of 375.50)

MUCH better performance. I didn't see any random severe spikes in about a 3-4 hours of total time played today I saw drops in heavy heavy activity areas, but nothing like the severe FPS dropoffs I had before.

For fun though since my temps were so low as i mentioned before while playing, I bumped up to 4.6 ghz today and increased vcore to 1.3 from 1.26 to keep her stable in Prime and cinebench. Getting in the mid 60s when gaming now, but I'm happy with it. Thanks for your help and suggestions, hope some other OC newbies here at least learned to check other things before you start questioning the OC when it comes to FPS.

 

[M@rk]

OK so, two things I did: turned off the steam overlay, and I also did a total wipe of video drivers with DDU and reinstalled back to a previous version of nvidia drivers before the most current ones (375.3 or something instead of 375.50)

MUCH better performance. I didn't see any random severe spikes in about a 3-4 hours of total time played today I saw drops in heavy heavy activity areas, but nothing like the severe FPS dropoffs I had before.

For fun though since my temps were so low as i mentioned before while playing, I bumped up to 4.6 ghz today and increased vcore to 1.3 from 1.26 to keep her stable in Prime and cinebench. Getting in the mid 60s when gaming now, but I'm happy with it. Thanks for your help and suggestions, hope some other OC newbies here at least learned to check other things before you start questioning the OC when it comes to FPS.

Happy its all right now
I totally forgot the drivers may cause stuff like that.

 

[Pepi93]

Just curious if you tried to just turn off overlay first, then test before reverting to previous drivers?

 

[Theolonous]

Good question. to clarify, I did overlay first, as its less messy than messing with drivers. It helped , FPS dropped but not as severely. Instead of the 45-50 range it dropped to about 80 or 90. The other 40-50 fps make-up came from totally wiping drivers with DDU and installing the second-to-most recent drivers. I'm not sure if re-installing to the most frequent after DDU would have been just as optimal, but I figure its in a "don't fix it if it 'aint broke" condition right now. Once both were done, that is when I stayed with 120-144fps (given realistic in game graphics settings at 1440p for a 1070, of course)