GPU power wattage drops resulting in big framerate drops
Hello,
For several months, I've been experiencing an issue where my GPU drops its power limit, resulting in lower frame rates during gameplay. This occurs in more demanding games, especially those with ray tracing or path tracing enabled - the issue happens more often, and the power drops are more severe. I've attached two screenshots from the RTSS in-game monitor showing how it looks when everything works smoothly versus when the power drops (but not usage). Two weeks ago, I upgraded my graphics card from a 3070 Ti to a 5080, but the issue was already happening with the previous card, so it doesn't appear to be related to that or a CPU bottleneck, but maybe I'm wrong. HWInfo monitoring also shows no throttling. Below are my rig specifications:
Motherboard: ASUS TUF GAMING Z690-PLUS DDR4
CPU: Intel Core i7-12700KF 3.6 GHz (up to 5.0 GHz)
GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Gaming Trio OC 16GB GDDR7
Memory: Patriot 32GB (4x8GB) 4400MHz CL19 Viper Steel
Power Supply: Corsair RM 850W 80 Plus Gold
Cooling System: be quiet! Pure Loop 360mm 3x120mm
SSD1/2: Samsung 2TB (2x1TB) M.2 PCIe NVMe 980
SSD3: WD 1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe Blue SN550
HWInfo Logging CSV File during Space Marine 2 gameplay: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QxfeaDXrYKWoJfs3cK0qKDYrBI1YBquw/view
Good:
Bad:
Posted Apr 6, 2026, 1:15 PM UTC