Is my ASUS GTX 670 defective and on its way out?

[/\drian]

Hey guys, new to the forums here and thought this would be a good place to get some help diagnosing my performance issues.

I've had an Asus GTX 670 DCII (Non TOP) for 2 months now ever since I upgraded all the major hardware in my rig. Here are my specs now:

CPU: I7 3770K Stock
GPU: As mentioned, stock clocks.
MOBO: Asus P8Z77 V-Pro
RAM: 16GB Corsair Vengeance 1666
OS: Win 7 64
Power: Corsair 850 TX
HD/SSD: WD Caviar Black 500 GB/Intel 520 180GB
Displays: 24" 1920 X 1080 as my main and 22" 1680 X 1050 as second in dual-display setup.

I'll cut straight to the point now. How is it possible that my Unigine Heaven Benchmark scores at max settings are 15-20% lower than -every single- other GTX 670 benchmark i've seen, the majority of those systems having weaker hardware than mine.

See here http://postimage.org/image/dxsscz8qx/

The average total score i've been seeing on the net is about 1150-1200. My friend has the exact same GPU as me, but a weaker I5 2500K. Our rigs are otherwise identical. His scores are higher. It gets better though. Before I built my new rig setup, I built my girlfriend's PC right before. It's essentially a clone of mine with the exceptions being that both her monitors in dual display are the same as my 24" main. She also runs an I7 2600K on a P8Z68 V-Pro, and an EVGA FTW 670. Essentially very similar rigs, YET her lowest FPS were twice as high as mine, and her highest FPS was 30 more than mine.

Her benchmark score was around 1100.

In addition to this, my gaming performance at full 1080 has been pathetic. Skyrim will dip below 30 FPS with 3 mudcrabs on the screen or if i'm INDOORS and there are fog effects. Crysis maintains at 30 FPS or lower with only the ingame settings maxed and no control panel tweaking. GUILD WARS 2 LAGS!? Metro 2033 had a blue hue invading the menu screen and in game, making it unplayable. When I tweaked the settings a little in the options, there were black and yellow artifacts trailing from all objects on screen. It was like an 8-bit game on LSD.

Do you think I can contact Asus customer support and have them replace my GPU?

 

[ninjacore]

I would recommend contacting Asus. What are your GPU temps during load? I'm not sure if Nvidia cards have the feature or not, but it almost sounds like your card is throttling down when overheated. Have you bumped up your voltage to it at all? That's the typical cause of "artifacting".

Definitely contact Asus customer support and let us know your voltage and temps.


EDIT:

Also, here are my Heaven scores with the build in my sig (similar to yours)...
Sapphire 7950 3GB
FPS = 41.5
Min = 20.8
Max = 100
Score = 1047

I think the test settings were all the same except that I had 4xAA.

The scores seem fairly similar, though that low FPS on your end is pretty low and again, looks like an indication of throttling.

It is indeed strange, however, that you have friends with the same build getting much better results.

Bottom line, contact Asus.

 

[Rotary]

seems a driver issue, try to do a fresh install of your OS and just install the drivers to see if that corrects it

 

[/\drian]

Update: Downloaded GPU-Z. I believe it has helped me narrow it down to my GPU being at fault, considering these are my current readings with -nothing- running on my desktop besides MSN, Chrome, and Steam:





Yep! Take a look at that nonsense! Still reads that too, but occasionally jumps back down to a 915 core clock and 0% GPU load before repeating the insanity that you see now.

 

[Rotary]

you should remove the heat sink and re apply some good past to see if that helps

 

[ninjacore]

How long ago did you buy it? If it was recent, you might not want to mess with it and just have them replace it. The DCII cooling system is pretty awesome from my experience, so for it to work so poorly, it has to be a big problem.

 

[/\drian]

You guys are not going to believe what the cause of this is, it's terrifying. I've been researching the issue all day, and just so happened to stumble across someone that was having similar issues. Basically they identified a correlation between their high temps and load at idle, to a process in their task manager called "bitcoin".

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...-malware-that-uses-your-gpu-to-mine-bitcoins/

In short: A virus on my PC has been using my GPU's raw computational power to generate currency for the author via an unclear unit of online currency called "Bitcoins". The Malware that has been running on my PC for weeks now is one of this "Bitcoin Miners". "High end systems can generate $150 a month". Given my rig specs, for the past few weeks that i've been having these issues, who knows how much my system has been exploited.

As soon as I ended the BitCoin application process, my GPU temp instantly dropped 40+ Degrees from 67, and CPU load went from 97% to 0. I listened as my GPU quieted down. I ran the Heaven Benchmark again, compare the results now to my first post...



It's still on my system, I have to get rid of it. What is the best antivirus software known to man? A friend recommended something called Hijackthis...

 

[ninjacore]

Awesome that you figured it out. I use SuperAntiSpyware, but I've never really dealt with anything that crazy before. If it's feasible, I would just do a fresh install of Windows. "I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. 'Only way to be sure.' "

 

[/\drian]

Awesome that you figured it out. I use SuperAntiSpyware, but I've never really dealt with anything that crazy before. If it's feasible, I would just do a fresh install of Windows. "I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. 'Only way to be sure.' "

Well placed quote borrowed from Aliens. I think i'll stick around these forums.

 

[Rotary]

this is why i said to reinstall your OS

How did you find it in your pc?

 

[ninjacore]

Well placed quote borrowed from Aliens. I think i'll stick around these forums.

Glad we could be of assistance. It's never good to lose to your girlfriend. Well at least not in benchmarks.