I've been having some performance issues in gta v with my 980. so i decieded to run gpu-z while playing and i noticed it said my core clock was 539.8 mhz. am i reading this wrong? that doesnt sound right to me, shouldnt it be 1279mhz? i have the asus strix 980 as well.
Core clocks go up and down for instance my gpu will down clock to 500mhz and 300mhz on the vram when sitting in the menus and then go back up when the game is running.
Use MSI afterburners OSD to display your core clocks in game instead of alt tab'ing to see what gpu-z is doing.
like so 
http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/msi-afterburner-beta-download.html
i'm using a second monitor to display gpu-z, is that an issue? and i have it set to run in backround. i can see the memory usage go up so the application is not frozen.
no, it is not an issue having GPU-Z running
that was a dumb question my b, im just thinking maybe a second monitor running could affect the core clock? no idea why its stuck at 539.8 MHz core clock
possibly ive had strage gpu usage before useing a second monitor try unpluging the second monitor rebooting and test it
the effect of additional monitors is negligible
thermal throttling perhaps?
Make sure your temp limit isn't set too low in Afterburner, or PrecisionX, or whatever you use.
temps are fine. clean installation of newest drivers fixed the issue, and performance issue is fixed as well. thanks for the reply's though everyone
however i am noticed memory clock stays at 1752 MHz, shouldn't that be around 7k?
1752 MHz x4 = 7008 (7Ghz)