Greetings. Back in December I built my new gaming rig, which contained 2 7970s in Crossfire and a 3770k OCed to 4.5 GHz. Initially, in the Metro 2033 benchmark I got an average of 84.71 FPS with everything turned on Very High, 4XMSAA, 16XAF and DOF turned on, 1920 X1080. When I overclocked them to 1110MHz on the core clock and 1600MHz on the memory clock, it rose to a healthy 88.92 FPS. When Windows downgraded my copy to an illegal or ungenuine version (as I forgot to activate my product key when I installed it), the performance went way up to 99.82 FPS, same settings ( I assume this is because Windows deactivates some features when running an illegal version). Once I activated my product key and got a geniuine windows copy again, I tested my system with the same benchmark and only got 73.87 FPS. I've been getting similar results ever since, which is no where near the 99.82 FPS from before or even the initial 88.71 with the OC. Some games like BF3 have also been dipping to 100 or less (before it stayed at 120FPS at all times, almost no dips) Any help? (All tests have been conducted under the 12.11 Beta Drivers)
Windows aero might be on I have heard that impacts perfomance at the cost of your desktop looking pretty
Thing is Aero was also turned on when I first installed Windows yet managed to get over 87FPS, so I see no reason why it went down to 73 with the same Aero seetings as before.
I use the classic theme on any windows ver since 95. It's true some programs work better with aero disabled, but some games actually work better with it enabled, and even with media player opened, must be some memory issue.
Memory Issues? Can you explain?
I don't know, but there's been reports of people having higher fps with media player opened somehow, I was reffering to how Windows addresses memory for different tasks, how quickly it organizes workload. There is a big performance increase for low memory systems when disabling all effects, but since the norm is becoming 4gb now it won't be an issue, until some terribly high system requiring OS comes along (see Windows Vista, Windows 8>?).