Hello.

I was chasing a sub par performance issue for a while, thinking it was power plan related, and thought that I had fixed it, but then it returned. Finally I was able to reproduce it consistently and the trigger is turning Precision X1 on and off. This is the case on older versions and 1.1.1.4

Here is a benchmark with Precision not running:
Graphics score 9,370
w.3dmark.com/spy/16960441

Here is a benchmark with Precision running:
Graphics score 8,748
w.3dmark.com/spy/16960255

So around 7 percent drop. Games have shown decreases up to this also.

It's annoying having to close it and not be able to use custom fan curves (MSI Afterburner doesn't give this issue but obviously there is the fan issue on that).

Can anyone give any ideas as to why this might be happening?

I've tried DDU, removing all nVidia drivers, GeForce Experience, X1 and Afterburner totally, and currently don't have Afterburner or GeForce Experience installed.

My system uses an MSI MEG X570 Unify and a 3900x.

Any advice appreciated. Thanks!

Thanks, I've been using AB and X1 for a while. Temps around or below 60 degrees with 70 percent fan speed. so no issue there, I don't think.

I was curious if anyone else had encountered this odd behaviour.

I'll play with GPU-Z and see if I can reveal anything through that.

It's certainly odd behaviour. The strangest thing is that clocks and utilisation seem to be basically the same (average clock on my slower PX1 run in the original post was actually showing as higher). Ideas as to what could be the cause are way out of my knowledge.

I don't really want to defend PX1, because it's a frustrating, unreliable and buggy piece of software which casts a rather big shadow on an otherwise good video card (my 3080) but. 
I can't really reproduce your findings. There is no performance decrease for me when running PX1, like at all. I have identical scores in benchmarking software to the decimal point. 
Maybe it's something else ? I have seen people on this forum reporting high resource usage from PX1, like 3-7% usage of the CPU. I don't know, maybe it's that ? For some reason, on your machine PX1 eats more resources than it should, but still, a 7% drop is pretty huge to just blame it on a few additional CPU cycles "reserved" by PX1. 
 
One more consideration though. Because for me the PX1 OSD function is completely broken, it doesn't work in anything, I have completely disable it. I don't even have hardware monitoring turned on, everything is off. I only use it for custom fan curves and undervolting, and instead I rely on HWinfo and RTSS for OSD and monitoring. 
Maybe try disabling those functions - OSD, HWM - and see if there's any improvement. 

Squidmaster7

padibuz
I don't really want to defend PX1, because it's a frustrating, unreliable and buggy piece of software which casts a rather big shadow on an otherwise good video card (my 3080) but. 
I can't really reproduce your findings. There is no performance decrease for me when running PX1, like at all. I have identical scores in benchmarking software to the decimal point. 
Maybe it's something else ? I have seen people on this forum reporting high resource usage from PX1, like 3-7% usage of the CPU. I don't know, maybe it's that ? For some reason, on your machine PX1 eats more resources than it should, but still, a 7% drop is pretty huge to just blame it on a few additional CPU cycles "reserved" by PX1. 
 
One more consideration though. Because for me the PX1 OSD function is completely broken, it doesn't work in anything, I have completely disable it. I don't even have hardware monitoring turned on, everything is off. I only use it for custom fan curves and undervolting, and instead I rely on HWinfo and RTSS for OSD and monitoring. 
Maybe try disabling those functions - OSD, HWM - and see if there's any improvement. 

How are you able to utilize both RTSS for OSD and Precision 1x at the same time without using Afterburner? I thought Afterburner has to be used at the same time as RTSS so you can choose the OSD items and since Afterburner and Precision 1x cause conflicts this results in less than desired behavior. I absolutely would love to only use Afterburner for everything (and I do) but Precision 1x is the only way to use all 3 fans on my 3080 and this is something that Afterburner will never be able to get around since its only using NVAPI. 

HwInfo can talk to RTSS, as it has official integration from both the MSI guy and the HwInfo developers.
Run both programs, go to sensors, configure in hwinfo and you pick any of the 3 million sensor this app can read to display on the rtss osd.


This way you can use px1 for whatever you need it to do without giving up on rtss, because afterburner is no longer necessary.

Lastly, on the topic of fan control. All my fans spin when using afterburner, latest beta (beta4) but they spin wrong. The percentage is completely off. However, tachometer is NOT wrong. It shows the true speed the fans rotate at.
Knowing this I was able to determine that on my XC3 Ultra 60% fan speed in px1 equals with exactly 72% in afterburner, or more precisely, 1972rpm. Based on that you can make custom fan curves work.
What doesn't work though is 0rpm mode.

Good luck experimenting!

padibuz
I don't really want to defend PX1, because it's a frustrating, unreliable and buggy piece of software which casts a rather big shadow on an otherwise good video card (my 3080) but. 
I can't really reproduce your findings. There is no performance decrease for me when running PX1, like at all. I have identical scores in benchmarking software to the decimal point. 
Maybe it's something else ? I have seen people on this forum reporting high resource usage from PX1, like 3-7% usage of the CPU. I don't know, maybe it's that ? For some reason, on your machine PX1 eats more resources than it should, but still, a 7% drop is pretty huge to just blame it on a few additional CPU cycles "reserved" by PX1. 
 
One more consideration though. Because for me the PX1 OSD function is completely broken, it doesn't work in anything, I have completely disable it. I don't even have hardware monitoring turned on, everything is off. I only use it for custom fan curves and undervolting, and instead I rely on HWinfo and RTSS for OSD and monitoring. 
Maybe try disabling those functions - OSD, HWM - and see if there's any improvement. 

Thanks for your reply and for trying to reproduce it. Totally understandable that you can't as it makes no sense! And yeah I'm fairly sure a 3900x should be able to run PX1 in the background.

I did start using HWinfo with RTSS, which is great, although HWinfo can mess up the fan control on my Corsair Commander PRO sometimes.

I had been running PX1 with monitoring and osd off when I did the comparison runs (all monitoring off, in fact).

As it happens I ended up buying a 3090 FE (I blame lockdown boredom), so I'll likely sell the 3080.