Sapphire HD7870 low GPU usage and FPS

Hello there

I have recently bought the graphic card (HD 7870). The installation was quite easy (mounted at PCIe 2.0 x16) and I didn't need any of the included power adapter, since my PSU is equipped with two 6-pin PCIe connectors. Everything is working fine, except when it comes to playing games. The GPU usage is very fluctuating (between 40 - 60% average), which results in low, annoying FPS, e.g Dark Souls (35 FPS), Battlefield 3 Multiplayer (30 - 40 FPS), Guild Wars 2 (30 FPS).

1920x1080, High Settings, no AA

I have already done some research, formatted my HDD, reinstalled Windows 7 and Windows 8, tried other drivers and configurations, flashed my BIOS, but nothing helps.

The next thing i thought to try is changing my PSU or CPU (because of bottleneck maybe?)

Thank you for your help and best regards.

Specs:

CPU: Core2Quad Q8300 @ 3,11 GHz OC
VGA: Sapphire HD7870 2GB GHz
PSU: SilverPower SP-SS400
OS: Win 8 x64
MB: Gigabyte EP43T-UD3L rev 1.0
RAM: Kingston 4GB

P.S: I assume you have already recognized that I am not good in English and I would like to apologize for that

 

I think its a cpu bottleneck, try heaven 4.0 and valley 1.0 and report the gpu usage, my guess is its going to be around 98% as it is very gpu heavy

 

It happened to me once that in windows I had the power profile (control panel) set to "balanced" where ideally you should put "high performance" for gaming, especially if it is a desktop PC.
That will for sure give you more fps and GPU/CPU usage.
Also, unpark your CPU cores.
If that doesn't work, there's always the posibility that 400W is not enough (system requirements in sapphire page state 500w PSU minimum)

 

Thank you for your responses

I'm going to download the programs and reply when I have some results.
Already tried some configurations of power profiles, no improvements.
Shouldn't there be different symptoms when the PSU is too weak like black screens?

 

are you getting restarts while playing games?, thats the most common symptom of an inadequate psu

 

If none of the above works, you could try resetting the BIOS / Clear CMOS / Try another PCI-E slot

 

True

 

Hope you can fix it.
Try MSI Afterburner and set the power profile of the card at 20%+
Other than that I still don't get why you have low GPU usage :S Are you playing with max settings?

 

No restarts while playing games.
My MB has only got one PCIe x16 slot, the others are 2.0 (is the card compatible?)

No improvements with MSI AB settings.
I have tested nearly all games with max settings, changing them just results in even lower GPU activity.
It seems like the card is always trying to save energy.

The card should always have 99% usage when playing any game right?

Unfortunately I don't have any benchmark results now because I'm not at home..

Thank you for your responses and suggestions appreciate it very much

 

Nope not all games need to use or show 99% usage especially if your using a frame cap or vsync.

I would strongly suggest using ATIman uninstaller and cleaning out your drivers and reinstalling them. Did you upgrade from a different card and if so what card was it. If it was an Nvidia card you should really have used a cleaner to remove all the files. TwL Genetix cleaner will clean BOTH Nvidia and AMD drivers from your system.

Also, try disabling powerplay and ULPS the latter only really applies to dual GPU cards but its worth a try.

 

Oh I see.. But deactivating V-Sync and the FPS-Limiter in some games made no difference.

Before i formatted my drive I was using Driver Fusion and CCleaner + Official CCC uninstaller. Since the reset I have only installed the new 13.8 BETA, I am going to use the tools you mentioned once an update is out.

I upgraded from HD5770.

Powerplay can be disabled via profiles right?

Edit:

Got some benchmark results.

Heaven 4.0:

928 points
max. 68 fps
min. 7 fps
temp: 72°
98% GPU usage

1920x1080, Ultra, no Tesselation, 4x AA

Valley 1.0:

1348 points
max. 65fps
min. 35 fps
temp: 74°
fluctuating GPU activity between 96 - 98%

same settings

Borderlands 2 with MSI AB:



Deactivating ULPS didn't help. Can't find the line to disable powerplay in the *.xml profile.

 

being that heaven and valley both run at 95+% I am going to have to say massive cpu bottleneck in bf3 multiplayer, not all games are going to be 95% or higher gpu usage. what is your cpu usage in BF3 MP?

 

Average CPU usage was about 60% according to the task manager as I can remember. However, I think these were all 4 cores, I can't say exactly since I haven't installed BF3 now (after the reset). I think 80% activity on CPU 0 and CPU 1.

Oh god this sucks when I have to upgrade my CPU I'll have to buy new MoBo + PSU

 

An i5 will definately make things easier:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130694

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116899

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148540

So around $405 bucks without a new PSU... which I think is needed for Haswell. For that add another 65-75 USD.

 

Nice selection..

Do you also know a good gigabyte mainboard?
Are there massive differences to an i5 3570k?

As an PSU I thought of a be quiet! with 630w..

 

Yes but they are a bit more expensive than the MSi I showed you. Though I rather go for an Asus board myself.
This is the differewnce in performance between your cpu and the latest I5:
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core2-Quad-Q8300-vs-Intel-Core-i5-4670K

Also, BeQuiet! PSUs are great, just check for compatibility with Haswell (if you are going for the latest Intel cores, the 3570 is Ivy Bridge)

 

Well, the 4670K looks good.

I think I'll take the GA-Z87-D3HP instead of the MSI board (just 10€ more, but with more USB 3.0 Slots) with the Crucial RAM you suggested.
Furthermore I decided to search for a new case (Sharkoon T28 looks good).
PSU should be be quiet Pure Power L8 630W CM.

What do you think of these components?
I hope this fixes the problem with the gpu usage lol.

Thanks for your help

 

Looks good to me! remember that if you don't have a decent air cooler you should get a cheap and good one to give some OC to that new cpu!
Like the coolermaster hyper 212 evo

 

As long as the games are playable I don't think that I'll OC the CPU now..
When the components are here I'm going to reply if that fixed the problem.
Hopefully it will.

 

I'll be crossing my fingers! Lets hope for the best!