[HELP!]Serious issues with my computers performance.

Discussion in 'General Hardware' started by ViWaHe, Mar 7, 2015.

  1. ViWaHe

    ViWaHe Guest

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    Hey you guys.

    So in the past year or so I've spent a sum around 1 000€ to build and upgrade a PC for gaming. The specs are as follows:
    AMD FX-8350 Stock @ 4.0GHZ w/ aftermarket cooling (CM 212 EVO)
    8GB DDR3 @ 1600MHZ (2x 4GB in Dual Ch.)
    2 x R9280X (1080/1550MHZ) in CrossFireX w/ 2x3GB of GDDR5 VRAM
    A 120GB SSD FOR THE OS (WIN 8.1)
    A 3TB WD GC HDD 5,400RPM for software and games.
    A 1000W modular Corsair PSU 80+ GOLD
    (If more details needed -> ask)

    My question is: although my rig has all this power and performance capacity, why do most games, even the more dated ones run like utter shaite? Examples of performance in different games (all on 1080p, with all possible settings maxed/Ultra preset):

    Fallout:NV Ultra High Settings ~45-65 FPS
    TES V: Skyrim High Settings ~50-60 FPS
    DayZ: Lowest settings available ~30 FPS
    Hitman: Absolution Higher settings ~20-40FPS
    CIV V High settings 50-60 FPS
    CIV: Beyond Earth ~50 FPS
    Saints Row IV Ultra settings ~50-60 FPS
    State of Decay Max Settings ~40-50 FPS
    Sniper Elite v2 Ultra/Maxed settings ~40 FPS

    ... and the list goes on. By what I've read online, from most benchmarks, a 7970/280X-crossfire system with the 8350 @ Stock speeds should get a steady 100-120 FPS on most of these games (even the newer ones). Still I'm getting barely half of that?

    I've tried everything I can think of, but noting has worked in improving the gaming performance of my computer set-up. This is really starting to annoy me.

    I followed all the steps in AMDMatt's CrossfireX-guide and from what Rivatuner and MSI Afterburner are telling me, my GPU usage is generally maxing at around 40-50% per GPU when playing any of these games. Which basically tells me something is blocking my computer from getting all the juice out of the setup.

    Please share any inside as to how I might go about to improve my computers performance output, to unlock its true potential.

    Any and all help is gratefully accepted. Thanks in advance to anyone willing to help me.
     
    Last edited: Mar 7, 2015
  2. Extraordinary

    Extraordinary Guest

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    What FPS do you get in each of those games with CF disabled compared to the above FPS?
     
  3. CalculuS

    CalculuS Ancient Guru

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    Fallout new vegas is dual-threaded and myself included have had some **** performance there.
     
  4. ViWaHe

    ViWaHe Guest

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    Basically across the board 5-20 FPS less in each game.
     

  5. ViWaHe

    ViWaHe Guest

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    Suprisingly New Vegas is one of the games which is just bordering on playable. Horrible FPS drops and stutter 'dou.
     
  6. Extraordinary

    Extraordinary Guest

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    Run some benchmarks with Single GPU and CF, check the difference between them

    In experience, CF is mainly only much good in the odd few games and benchmarks

    Run 3DM11 with Single vs CF to see if it's just bad scaling
     
  7. Agent-A01

    Agent-A01 Ancient Guru

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    Quite a few games are running badly because of your CPU. Bad architecture for games like skyrim, new vegas etc
     
  8. ViWaHe

    ViWaHe Guest

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    I'll up the scores as soon as I'm done.
     
  9. ViWaHe

    ViWaHe Guest

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    Okay. Can you give me examples of games that would run optimally with the FX-8350's arch? This puzzles me, since some people online running the 8350 in their setup haven't run into any issues with games.
     
  10. IceVip

    IceVip Master Guru

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    I'd second this as i have had an 8320 and a r9 280x for over a year now.
    This famous combo "8350+7970" is probably the biggest lie ever. When you
    google why those two perform like utter s**t when you combine them
    people never say the word bottleneck, which is right, there is none. But the
    parts man, they just cant communicate to each other at all, i had a friend
    who brought his gtx 770 over to my place, i tested it with the cpu and boy
    was i enjoying myself, the difference was huge. But oddly enough people
    still say that 8350+7970 is the way to go if u wanna go cheap. There are
    some games that actually do run fine on such a rig like Thief, BF4(mantle only)
    Crysis 3. But the rest of the games... such a shame this lie is all over the place.
     

  11. ViWaHe

    ViWaHe Guest

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    GPU:
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    CROSSFIRE:
    Graphics score: 16 948
    Physics score: 7584
    Combine score: 2682


    SINGLE 280X:
    Graphics 8573
    Physics 7735
    Combined 2675
     
  12. Extraordinary

    Extraordinary Guest

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    Looks like it's working fine, just bad CF support/scaling in games IMO

    Get your CPU OC'd though, you'll get another 600MHz+ out of that easy
     
    Last edited: Mar 7, 2015
  13. Darkest

    Darkest Guest

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    A 7970 and 770 are pretty close performance wise, you're not going to see a massive difference between them in a properly working system, at least not outside of games biased toward one vendor or the other. You are literally the only person I have ever seen mention this so called "lie" on any of the forums I frequent.
     
  14. ViWaHe

    ViWaHe Guest

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    I am really lost with this issue of mine. I've spent over 500€ in total on the 280X's and can barely run these games at 30-50FPS. Really depressing...
     
  15. Extraordinary

    Extraordinary Guest

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    Sell them and buy a single decent GPU is my advice
     

  16. ViWaHe

    ViWaHe Guest

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    But I'd rather get to the bottom of this issue here.

    The 280x / 7970 isn't lacking in power. It can run modern games. The benchmarks regularly show it reaching FPSes of 100-120/140 in games from 2012-2014.

    What gives here is the question?
     
  17. anxious_f0x

    anxious_f0x Ancient Guru

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    I could never really maintain 60fps in Skyrim with my old 7970's in crossfire and that was with an i7 920 at 3.8Ghz, my GTX480's that I had before them were at 120fps most of the time with very few dips in performance, Skyrim just doesn't like AMD cards it seems.

    As for the other games you play as everyone else has mentioned it's probably a CPU bottleneck, get that 8350 overclocked.
     
  18. Extraordinary

    Extraordinary Guest

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    Told you, CF barely works in anything other than benchmarks, and you've just seen perfect scaling and that everything is working fine in 3DMark11
     
  19. IceVip

    IceVip Master Guru

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    Because lies are hidden deep. When you write FX 8350 HD 7970(or r9 280x)
    in google you see people saying how good the combo is and how good it works.
    But in reality its actually pretty bad, because this cpu can't work with amd cards
    that are more powerful than a hd 7870/r9 270x. I've had 270x 280x and now 290x.
    Every single test I've ever made proved to myself that this cpu cannot work with
    powerful amd cards, it can only work with powerful nvidia ones, an example is
    dota 2, my dota 2 runs at 100-130 fps on a r9 290x, with the cpu clocked
    at 4.6 Ghz. And back in 2014 when i tried dota 2 with a GTX 770 the fps was
    hovering from 180 to 220, and tbh if i try other games I'm sure ill be getting
    the absolute same result. So yeah, lies.

    P.S Dota 2 example FYI: none of the cores were hitting 99%, none of them
    were even close, its not a bottleneck that the amd combos have, its some
    weird optimization/communication issue.
     
    Last edited: Mar 7, 2015
  20. AsiJu

    AsiJu Ancient Guru

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    I know this isn't really helping you, but IceVip could be onto something there.
    Some hardware combos just refuse to work properly, without any apparent or logical cause.

    If you can, try running your system with an NVIDIA GPU (borrow from a friend etc.).
    That should give some indication as to what's happening.
     

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