I had similiar problems with HD7850. In some games it was just lazy and almost jumping to 2d clocks despite low framerate. Turned out it wasn't a CPU bottleneck as now after changing campus I have no issues whatsoever.
Changing campus?? and what could that have to do ? Please explain. I had this issue yesterday trying to play Rage again.... max 70% GPU use and low 30-40fps, but I believe it has to do with the texture streaming and popping which i couldn't fix in any way :S
nVidia campus. As you can see I'am on GTX560. No idea what was causing me those severe gpu usage issues with HD7850. I have tried many different drivers, game patches and game tweaks/hacks, settings with no luck. On top of that, it was stuttering like crazy.
Maybe the VGA was faulty? Well, in that case the OP can always RMA. The new cpu/mobo won't hurt his gaming, though. It will make the experience more enjoyable.
Could you post the Benchmark score result of valley with default max settings @1080p so i can compare to mine and see if there is the correct performance difference? And yes, valley and Heaven are very GPU-intensive benchmarks (not like 3DMark which has cpu-intensive tasks too)
Try AvP 2010, that game is not bottlenecked by CPU at all. Even HD 7970 is limiting factor when paired with single core CPU. Therefore you should see GPU utilization around 100% in it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is mine (it was done months ago with older drivers so its not the actual result), but performance wise it seems about right for your setup. I'll post latest results when I get home.
I also did some research and results with HD7870 should be around 1300 points, which is OK. The fps drop especially when I look into the distance in a game, e.g BF3 caspian border, borderlands liars berg. The bf3 map operation metro runs with 60fps (in the underground). However, most wanted 2012 is unplayable with 23fps in town, no matter which settings I choose.
Most wanted runs terribly bad even in my setup... it is a bad port. Which other games you have which you can test with? How about Tomb Raider? or borderlands?
Did you unlock the FPS in Most Wanted? The Tomb Raider Benchmark says 53 FPS on max Settings (no HairFX). I don't have Borderlands atm, just BL2. Far Cry 3 also runs with ~50 fps on max, but drops when looking into the distance.
53fps in tomb raider is not bad! how much GPU usage when benching? Far Cry 3 maxed gives me 40-80 fps (with sweetfx) no vsync but capped FPS, 40 ish FPS when I look into the distance (with terrain as water is 60+ fps). The drop in fps is normal if there is intensive graphics to display. But is it consistent with GPU usage? or it drops as FPS drop?
98% when benching :3eyes: GRID 2 also runs fine. Could this really be because of bad programming?? The FPS drop is adequate to the GPU usage, which is unlogical. This means when the card has to do more "work", the GPU usage also goes down instead of going up.
That is what is strange... Because my card when FPS drops is on 99%.... On games that actually dropped where older ones such as Rage which made it unplayable. GPU usage was around 35-70% and fps around 35...
