Brand New PC Rig, FPS drop help please!

Hardware GPU
1

 So I want to know if this is normal, or if this is an issue, that is my question, And I need some advice...

I recently got a brand new, first actual gaming desktop PC, i3-3220 and a radeon hd HIS Iceq 7950 :) an ECS mobo on sale for $43 with a raidmax bronze certified 600watt power supply and 4 gigs of hyper X ram black edition i believe.

So I am insanley happy about this PC, considering it was not even $700! Playing my games, smiling and laughing at the fps and maxing out any game i've thrown at it @1080p with more than or about equal to 60 frames :D

however recently, I might not have noticed it before, but recently I've been noticing some pretty strange fps drops down to like 30 from 60+ when i start the game, when i resume the game and even during... I would also like to point out that I have installed directX11 and msi afterburner, nothing else comes to mind. Although the installation of directX11 is very questionable in a way, Battlefield 3 stopped working when i installed it but besides that, I see now that is is greatly needed and it improves how games look, and the frame rate as well!

So like i said before, I've been noticing strange FPS drops when i play games. Some of the games i play are Trine 2, Alan Wake which is my all time favourite xbox 360 game, and definitely in my top 5 of all time! So Things were getting a little strange for me with these drops happening, im positive my pc can handle these games, no doubt about that. So I read another forum about people with similar problems, and they said basically what i've just said. So I also read in the forums that people have overclocked their gpu's clock speed, and fan speed and they've gotten positive reults, or at least it's what others recommend. So i decided to give it a go!

I've been doing this with this new PC with MSI Afterburner, overclocking and playing with the fan speeds and gpu temps so i was familiar with this... I overclock my gpu's maximum clock speed to 1100 MHZ on the core clock, and my fan speed to 100%, nothing else was changed.

So I tested out Alan wake again and there was literally no frame drops whatsoever, anywhere! So I'm concerned whether or not this is a normal situation, or if something is wrong and I need to do some troubleshooting, basically relying on my cousin who's amazing with computer, and forums for this information.

So it would be incredibly amazing if someone could help me out here, or respond even, and thanks in advance!

Thank you...

2

do you also get those frame drops at direct X 9 games?  anyway, did those games work normal before? or is it just the games like trine 2 and BF wo  causing frame drops? because the only thing i could think at the moment is your cpu could be the bottleneck.Because an i3 is only a dualcore with HT. trine2 and BF3 are heavy. im allmost sure that those games can utilize more then 2 cores. but still 30 fps is  playable. so i would not worry to much about it, you can also try to to install the latest AMD  driver for your 7950  the 13.8 Beta 2 driver. or the 13.4 driver.

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonaiw_win8-64.aspx

grtz Angel ☺

 

3

i don't think i got frame drops when i was playing bioshock 1 with directx 10 surfaces disabled, and thanks for the reply! :D and im thinking it could be the cpu, but when i was playing alan wake in windowed mode maxed out, when the drop happened the cpu meter gadget that i had said it was never using more than like 75%, and the ram was never using moer than 70%! I don't know, and i am getting worried, and I do have the latest 13.8 beta driver :P I hope im giving you enough information, please ask away if you have any more questions about what im doing and when etc, and I might not have said this up above but the fps drop is NOT constant, only when i resume, start playing and sometimes during. OH YAH! i figured out that most of it was MSI afterburner causing the framerate issue. however my games do seem to start semi-crashing at around 65+ degrees and i don't think that's normal, I may be wrong because i don't know much about this general topic :/ thank you for the reply once again!

4

And honestly i can't quite remember, but i think the issues were only noticed WHEN i started playing these games. And yes battlefield 3 definitely can utilize more than a dual core, and bf3 isn't working for me anymore because of some directx 11 issue i believe. But when it DID work my minimum frames in bf3 was 45 :)

5

What OS are you using? Windows 7? Windows Vista? Because if you use Windows 7 you shouldn't have to install DirectX11 as it is already delivered with the OS. And all DirectX11 downloads I can find are for Windows Vista so when you are using Windows 7 your installation of DirectX11 could cause problems. The only DirectX I had to install on my newly bought PC was DirectX9.

 

6

I am using windows 7. Are you saying i should uninstall direct x 11? thanks for replying :)

7

Well battelfield is basically broken now, So that would explain you frame drops. (My brother has the same cpu and gets the same frame drops on bf3) 

With the crashing i would get a new cooler. My brothers pc would crash due to it getting to hot. I'm not sure but i think the max temp on the i3 is around 65c. With the cooler just head for a hyper 212 or Darknight and it shouldn't crash anymore.

8

my computer does not crash, only my games did and now they only sort of crash and then continue when my gpu reaches 65+ degrees :P

9

Best case would be if you had a restore point right before you installed DirectX11 as deinstalling it requires as far as I know external software. But don't quote me on that as I'm a PC novice myself.

I can imagine that the problem might have its origin in that but then again your i3 is a bit weak for BF3 to begin with. Your GPU seems to work just fine keeping you above 60fps but the CPU can't keep up. I would've recommended an i5 for gaming purposes as the i3 is more for casual use. When I was using my dual core I had the exact same problems that I had around 80fps but when something CPU intensive happened my fps would dip to around 20 or so and instantaneously go back up.

 

10

okay then, an i5 is not even an option right now, not gonna happen :( however like i said it's not constant low fps, sorry if you already know that

11

Oh well thats good. I got the game crashing mixed with the whole thing crashing.

12

and i do not have a restore point, that i've made manually anyway...

13

I almost figured as much. I wouldn't have one too. Does the fps drop show in an annoying stutter or do you only see them through monitoring software such as Fraps or MSI Afterburner? Because as MisteryAngel already said 30fps is playable.

14

well it could be your cpu thats running hot, how about your memory usage?

65 degrees on your GPU is normal.

maybe delete, and reinstall direct X.

15

You should scan your computer for malware/viruses etc. Most viruses/bugs can come with lagging your PC out. If you do have a virus and you don't mind erasing everything, go and reformat. (OR MANUALLY REMOVE VIRUS.)

Check if you have a hardware issue. See if things like dust are affecting your PC!

16

My computer is brand new, i do a full avg 2013 security fully activated whole computer scan, and a CCleaner scan/registry clean every couple of days... viruses are not the issue :P and i actually am wondering if it's the cpu running hot... I only have the stock cooler and everybody knows that those are great!... ill have a cpu temp program open next time i play something :) and arches, i figured out the frame fropping im pretty sure, i didn't have MSI afterburner open and that fixed everything! the only thing i had to do is turn down some settings, because an i3-3220 is definitely nothing special, although my 7950 can handle anygame, maybe not at max settings but still! thanks for the help and suggestions etc so far everybody! :D

17

So i just did some testing with alan wake and when the fps drops it stutters and the fps isn't going below 35 give or take a few, im pretty sure that's not supposed to happen unless it's like a a cpu bottleneck... and my absolute maximum cpu temperature while i was playing was 57 for one core, and 52 for the other. my gpu never above 58 degress, my ram never above 70% and my cpu usage never over 70%...

18

and every time i open up alan wake it makes a really quiet scratchy noise, my computer makes it and i don't know if it's a fan or what... the same thing was happening last night when i tried out borderlands 1 and it was making a constant sratchy noise from my computer, like the gpu itself. It was doing that constantly during gameplay

19

hmm thats wierd... overheating isn´t probably the issue then..

maybe its your gpu, try it in a diffrent computer.. and look if you have the same problems then..

it could be manny things... cpu gpu mobo

20

I havnt read all the comments so sorry if this has already been said.Your CPU if porbely the problem its bottlenecking the 7950 , so maybe in cpu intensive games/parts of games that's why your FPS is dropping