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Hey guys, help me locate this insidious issue that has plagued me for the past weeks. This is the computer I started with: H61M-DGS i3 2100 GTX 560ti 8GB 1333 Corsair RAM (7-7-7-20 timings) Windows 8.1 Corsair CX500 PSU I tried running GTA 5 but it was unplayable at any setting after the initial intro (~20 FPS in scenes.) I decided that it was my GPU that sucked so I should upgrade. So I did, and got an R9 280x. Booted the game up and it still had horrible FPS, but I assumed it was my outdated CPU (which I found weird as I expected lower FPS but not still dramatically unplayable.) So I got a new CPU: i5 3570. Reinstalled Windows, and then the game finally was playable in those scenes. But then I continued to see low FPS drops in random zones. Game would run at ~60 FPS for most of the time but at certain times would dip down to 20's / 30's. Just really weird slowdowns in the city or inside buildings and etc.. Reinstalled drivers, updated BIOS, did a bunch of stuff. I tried Far Cry 4, and saw the same effects (in the beginning town FPS would dip into low 20's.) It was playable, but I wasn't getting the full effect of what that GPU and CPU should offer me (i.e people talking about 50-60 average FPS where I struggled with random 30's and etc.) I went online and did some research and found some software to look at various variables. My temperatures for GPU / CPU were fine, not very high. What was interesting was in those low FPS zones my GPU usage would take a huge dive: to around 50%. My CPU would hover at about 80-90, but that's not maxing out and all the cores had different loads. So I assumed it was a problem with my motherboard, as it was old and aging. So I got a new motherboard: ASUS P8B75-M/CSM. Not much of an upgrade but has a dedicated x16 PCIE and 6GB SATA 3 for my SSD. Installed, and saw absolutely no difference. I got a new stick of DDR3 XMP RAM, thinking non XMP Ram might be causing it. No difference. Installed Windows 10, reformatted to Windows 8: no differences. This is the computer I have now: ASUS P8B75-M/CSM i5 3570 R9 280x 8GB 1600 RAM Windows 8 Corsair CX500 PSU I have basically built a new computer and am still plagued with this lovely low FPS drop issue. Different settings don't help, Far Cry 4 / GTA 5 (even Wolfenstein The New Order! And all games fully updated!) still struggles in those zones with absolutely minimum settings. I have no idea what to do now. Should I get a new PSU? Maybe this new CPU is still being a bottleneck? My current plan of action: make sure the drat card is seated right (saw this online somewhere), turn off all temp prevention settings for CPU incase its being downclocked. I'm also going to check if during those scenarios the CPU is being underclocked heavily, as MSI afterburner doesn't really show the data for that other than CPU usage + temps. Help me out with this guys, I've spent a lot of money to get a great computer and it's still not as great as it could be. (also I really regret how I went about upgrading because had I known I would get a new MOBO I would have gotten an LGA 1150 + Haswell CPU. God forbid I plan out these things...) TheShrike fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Apr 23, 2015 |
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Apr 23, 2015 22:34
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Are you using a matched pair of memory modules? What SSD do you have?
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Apr 24, 2015 00:21
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Alereon posted:Are you using a matched pair of memory modules? What SSD do you have? Yes. And I also bought a 1 stick of DDR 3 Vengeance 8GB Ram and used just it > same result. 840 EVO 120gb.
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Apr 24, 2015 00:26
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I have 2 840 EVO's and I'm pretty sure they give me all sorts of weird slowdowns and make my mouse/keyboard input drop out when there is heavy load on either of them (I'm in a somewhat similar boat as you since I just replaced my PSU and it's the last piece of hardware I've replaced where I can pretty safely point at the EVOs as being problematic). I just noticed yesterday that Samsung last year released software specifically for fixing 840 read performance. Actual download link here: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/downloads/software/Samsung_Performance_Restoration_V11.zip My CPU is a little better than yours, my video card is a little worse and I get similar slowdown in GTA, and have been chalking it up to times where the game is loading from disk. Pontificating Ass fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Apr 24, 2015 |
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Apr 24, 2015 00:50
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Sintax posted:I have 2 840 EVO's and I'm pretty sure they give me all sorts of weird slowdowns and make my mouse/keyboard input drop out when there is heavy load on either of them (I'm in a somewhat similar boat as you since I just replaced my PSU and it's the last piece of hardware I've replaced where I can pretty safely point at the EVOs as being problematic). I just noticed yesterday that Samsung last year released software specifically for fixing 840 read performance. Interesting... but the thing is Far Cry 4 is installed on my HDD. Now Windows + GTA + Wolf. are installed on the SSD, so that may have something to do with it. Thanks for the new lead! I'll look into that. (Might even install Windows on my HDD but that's gonna be a bitch because all my games and stuff are on there and I'll have to deal with partitions and etc.) EDIT: But furthermore, the SSD is only involved in loading the data, so once it's been loaded into RAM/VRAM shouldn't the FPS drop stop? It's continuous in certain regions, and only gets better when leaving them. TheShrike fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Apr 24, 2015 |
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Apr 24, 2015 00:54
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Also I'm an idiot and it's actually a Sandisk lol. No idea why I thought it was an 840. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006EKJCWM/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
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Apr 24, 2015 01:08
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The only other thing that strikes me the part where 'in low FPS zones the GPU usage takes a dive to around 50%' - do your GPU clock speeds drop during the lag time?
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Apr 24, 2015 01:18
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Sintax posted:The only other thing that strikes me the part where 'in low FPS zones the GPU usage takes a dive to around 50%' - do your GPU clock speeds drop during the lag time? I've reached a breakthrough. I used HWinfo to delve a bit more deeper into the GPU variables, and paid attention to the Current In and Power In variables of the GPU. When I was getting about 60FPS, the current in was ~15A. When FPS dropped? 4A. What is going on...?! Same goes for Wattage in, when 60FPS situations usage is high and wattage is 170-200, but in low FPS situations it goes to around 80-100 Watts Is this PSU erratic behavior? It's directly related to power variables.
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Apr 24, 2015 01:39
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I think that's a symptom of the load dropping on the GPU, not the cause. Do confirm both power cables are tightly plugged in though. The Corsair CX500 is a lower-end power supply and kind of undersized for your videocard, but it is still decent and should work fine. The biggest concern with lower-end power supplies is build quality and lifespan, but your symptoms don't really seem to be a power issue, that would be more like crashes and shutdowns.
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Apr 24, 2015 02:09
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Well I am totally stumped then...
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Apr 24, 2015 05:10
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Have you done a fresh installation of Windows? I'd suggest installing the SanDisk SSD Toolkit, making sure you have the latest SSD firmware installed, updating your motherboard BIOS, then formatting and reinstalling Windows.
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Apr 24, 2015 17:59
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Alereon posted:Have you done a fresh installation of Windows? I'd suggest installing the SanDisk SSD Toolkit, making sure you have the latest SSD firmware installed, updating your motherboard BIOS, then formatting and reinstalling Windows. Done all of that, multiple times in fact. SSD fully updated to new firmware, installed toolkit, BIOS version at newest, and now on Windows 8.1 after a reformat.
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Apr 24, 2015 19:45
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Since the PSU is probably not the root of the issue, and I just updated my GPU BIOS to no avail, I'm using a new HDD and installing Windows on it and testing it. This basically leaves no old strings attached, so I'll see if the SSD was the problem. Will update with results.
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Apr 24, 2015 21:48
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Update: the new HDD and Windows 8.1 did not fix the issue.
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Apr 25, 2015 20:44
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You've replaced everything but the PSU at this point right? Logic dictates that it might be the culprit. As has been mentioned usually a bad/failing PSU will cause shutdowns, BSODs etc. but I've seen an overburdened PSU cause jitter (which could show up as odd FPS issues in a game) before the more obvious and bigger failures began.
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Apr 25, 2015 23:02
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I'd also suggest trying another PSU - 38A on 12V shouldn't be too bad, but I don't really have a high opinion of the CX series since they were made with low-grade Samxon caps and they were older group-regulated designs. At about 4-years old it may be hitting the end of its useful lifespan. It's at least worth trying a better unit and see if it fixes the problem.
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Apr 26, 2015 03:51
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I really don't think it's the power supply because it doesn't seem likely that it would cause a predictable and recurring performance issue with two different videocards from different brands with very different power draws. This really seems like a software issue to me, to confirm, the ONLY things installed after Windows were the Intel Chipset Drivers and the latest AMD Catalyst Beta drivers WITHOUT Raptr? Absolutely no antivirus software or other bundled shitware? If you're out of ideas there's nothing really wrong with replacing the power supply and it would be a good move for longevity, I just don't think it's going to fix this issue. The Corsair CX-series got something of an undeserved bad reputation, they weren't great but were an EXCELLENT value for lower-draw systems compared to competitors, as long as you didn't go below 500W. Because capacity is used to differentiate price, there is a point in nearly every model lineup where quality starts to suffer badly, this used to be around 500W but these days it's 650-750W depending on model. This is why you can't just add up the power draw of your components and think "oh I'll be fine with a 450W power supply."
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Apr 26, 2015 18:58
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Have you gone through the BIOS settings to make sure it isn't trying to do something "helpful" with the PCI-E slots? I have an older ASUS mobo which has a lot of options for overclocking, and it has some kind of PCI-E "optimization" setting which I have to manually turn off. I'd make sure that every setting for the motherboard is set to as basic as possible, particularly regarding video and power use.
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Apr 26, 2015 20:53
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Well got a new PSU (Thermaltake 650W Smart 80+) and tried it, but it didn't change anything. At this point I've replaced everything basically, and have played around with BIOS settings but nothing seems to be an issue. I'm starting to think it's a software problem somewhere, and I actually think it's related to my CPU one way or another. I was messing around with Serious Sam 3 today trying to figure out the low FPS problem (would dip down to 30's in scenes), and actually managed to fix the problem by setting the CPU Performance setting in the menu to "Lowest." Then the GPU usage "unlocked" to about 80+ and gave straight 60 FPS. (Funny thing is if I set it to lowest and then went in and customized the settings to maximum it would still work at great FPS... maybe some weird software glitch.) So now all I can think is that maybe my CPU is bottle-necking the GPU to some extreme degree for weird reasons? Unlike Serious Sam, other games don't really have settings I can mess around like that. And lowering graphical detail to lowest in games makes little difference. And yes, after reformatting I installed the bare necessities.
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Apr 26, 2015 21:04
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Tried reinstalling Windows 7 Professional after a reformat, but nothing is different. This is super weird to me... I've tried 4 different os versions now to no avail.
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Apr 28, 2015 21:49
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Anyone have more ideas? I'm pretty sure it's the CPU for some reason. I've already upgraded once from i3 2100 to i5 3570, with pretty significant results. If I upgrade again, it should also improve. But the weird thing is that according to most benchmarks and people reporting, the i5 3570 should be more than enough to handle. And the i3 2100, while weak, should have been a lot stronger back when I had (not to the point of crippling GTA 5 or other games.) What could possibly be the reason for my CPU underperforming? It's not overheating, the clocks don't go down in heavy situations, there is no visible sign of anything being wrong. In benchmark scenarios it does perfectly, and so does the GPU. If I combine them (i.e furmark + prime95) I see the same effect of drastic GPU underusage.
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Apr 30, 2015 22:41
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Kontradaz posted:Anyone have more ideas? Have you ever had the motherboard and everything running on a nonconductive surface (out of the case?) I doubt that's the issue though. Kontradaz posted:I'm pretty sure it's the CPU for some reason. I've already upgraded once from i3 2100 to i5 3570, with pretty significant results. If I upgrade again, it should also improve. But the weird thing is that according to most benchmarks and people reporting, the i5 3570 should be more than enough to handle. And the i3 2100, while weak, should have been a lot stronger back when I had (not to the point of crippling GTA 5 or other games.) Usually when a CPU has issues the computer won't even POST. And rarely it'll cause BSODs and other errors. I can't recall a CPU causing performance issues really. Kontradaz posted:What could possibly be the reason for my CPU underperforming? It's not overheating, the clocks don't go down in heavy situations, there is no visible sign of anything being wrong. In benchmark scenarios it does perfectly, and so does the GPU. If I combine them (i.e furmark + prime95) I see the same effect of drastic GPU underusage. Being underclocked somehow. I suppose you could post a screenshot of realtemp to see what the settings are. http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/
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Apr 30, 2015 23:29
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Zogo posted:Have you ever had the motherboard and everything running on a nonconductive surface (out of the case?) I doubt that's the issue though. Never had it out of the case, but I also replaced the motherboard with a new one for no change. And I'm pretty sure CPU's can bottleneck GPU's, but not to the large extent that I am currently experiencing - that's what I mean by CPU issues. And if it was being underclocked, wouldn't I be able to see the clocks being lower than what I should have? That's not really the case. I guess I can post a pic of that when I get back to the computer. There's definitely something fundamentally wrong with my setup, whether in the hardware or software. With the i3 2100, certain games (i.e GTA 5) were unplayable in the same exact places where my i5 struggles now (but is playable.) It's some weird poo poo honestly. TheShrike fucked around with this message at 00:17 on May 1, 2015 |
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Apr 30, 2015 23:39
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 During Prime95 testing, so temps are not the problem as far as I can see. Bottom is highest temps during game, but clock was same as Prime95 while in game (took pic out of it) 
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May 1, 2015 03:19
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Kontradaz posted:And if it was being underclocked, wouldn't I be able to see the clocks being lower than what I should have? That's not really the case. I guess I can post a pic of that when I get back to the computer. Yes, I just wanted to be sure it wasn't underclocked somehow and it seems to be at 3.6GHz.
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May 1, 2015 04:43
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| # ? Jun 6, 2024 03:24 |
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This may have been a dumb decision, but financially speaking it comes out to about the same. After playing a bit more I've basically come to the conclusion of a CPU bottleneck. These slowdowns are correlated to high CPU usage, and in most of the games having this problem it doesn't drop the FPS too much (FC4 is the only terrible FPS game.) So I'll be returning my CPU / MOBO and replace it with a new combo: 4690K + ASUS M Plus z97. Hopefully by OC'ing the CPU to 4.6ish, I should get about an extra GHZ of clock rate and this will hopefully alleviate the slowdowns related to CPU usage. Logically speaking it should: I upgraded from an i3 2100 to i5 3570 and alot of slowdowns were removed, now going to 4690K @ 4.5/4.6 should continue that progress. Will update once installed / tested.
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May 8, 2015 21:37
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