Low DirectX 9 score Nvidia RTX 4080

[HHH03]

My RTX 4080 doesn’t do well with the DirectX 9 test compared to other Passmark scores of the same card. I get consistent scores of 270-280. When the test first launches, the fps is around 630 then immediately drops to less than 300. The GPU operates around 52-63% max load and the CPU is around 7-10%. All my 3D test scores are lower except for GPU compute where my score is much higher than average… around 27,500.
All busses are PCIe 4.0 and the CPU is a 12 core 4.0 GHz base clock, 4.5 GHz single core boost and 4.2 GHz all core boost.
Suggestions anyone?

[David (PassMark)]

If it starts fast then slows down, it might be thermal throttling.

[HHH03]

I considered that too, it’s running very cool… 40° C. The GPU compute score is the only test which performs very well… everything else seems to be struggling. I did notice my CPU doesn’t use SMT on these graphic tests… perhaps this is by design… or doesn’t make much difference?