Just today I made some upgrades to my computer where I changed: the power supply, replaced 2 case fans, added an extra 4gb stick of RAM and changed my graphics card. The build was successful and it worked! I plugged it in and deleted the old AMD catalyst drivers from my previous HD 6670 and installed 'Catalyst Software Suite 13.12' from amd.com. This was also a success and my display changed back to its 1920x1200 glory after a reboot and games were playing significantly better with the new card; but... The performance of the card just didn't live up to what I have read and researched for a long time and was performing quite severely below par considering the titles I was throwing at the card to play.
World of warcraft for example was getting an average of about 35fps at 'Ultra settings' this is somewhat missing the 86 fps average it is meant to achieve.
Skyrim was another title that disappointed me and the card would frequently dip to 35 but would keep about a 60fps outside of the towns and out of combat.
Is there something wrong with my card? Have I installed the drivers correctly ? Should I install the drivers of MSI rather than AMD? Is there a bottleneck? Should I wipe windows and start from complete fresh? or does the card and computer need time to get used to its swanky new upgrades?
I'm new to the forums and fairly new to PC components installation etc. I would really appreciate it if I could get some help off here.
Skyrim's mods will put a lot of stress to both your cpu and gpu. So assuming you have mods on your skyrim, the 270X will dip lower.
World of Warcraft is more CPU intensive. So with that load on your CPU, you will need a good after market cooler else your CPU will throttle which in term lowers your FPS in your games. Generally reviews have i7s or the FX 8350 and their cpu overclocked so they can be misleading.
I ran a few games and found that the gpu load didn't go above 60% it kind of fluctuated between 40 - 60% load in just cause 2 multiplayer and in the game I was only getting about 45 - 55 fps on average; this dipped to below 30 fps when I went to places with lots of players in also.
Have I wired my gpu properly to my power supply that I installed the same day? Its a modular cx600m. I plugged the 8 pin into the modular connectors on the powersupply and the two six pin connectors to the gpu.
There were a couple of pins on the six pins that could be broken off, my gpu only has dual six pin power connectors so they wasn't used at all.
I'm also wondering if my Bios needs updating I haven't done it since sometime last year. Could that be the problem ?
Im at the point where I will go out and buy new things to add to this damn computer just to get it working! I'll buy an aftermarket cooler if i need to overclock. Ill buy an SSD if I need to start from a fresh windows on a separate drive. I know I sound a little desperate and this is hardly 3rd world problems but I got these parts for christmas as a gift and envisioned myself playing games at the framerate they were meant to not trawling round forums to fix my computer haha.
I can post any screenshots, images and pictures of inside my case and of screenshots of applications if that is of any help to you.
Heres a picture of my PSU. (I plugged the cable with 8pins at the end into the slot with 8 pins on the PSU, then with the other end i plugged in my 2 PCIE 6 pins to the GPU)
Your psu situation is all good. As long as the gpu has all power pins occupied its all good.
What native resolution are you running things at btw? & is there any background apps running in the background that aren't necessary?
If you can - run furmark http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/ if that doesnt get your gpu to 99% -100 % load on max settings then there is a fault with the card.
Yeah ran furmark for about a minute got scared of my card setting on fire but yes i checked on msi after burner whilst it was doing the benchmark and it hit 99% ( I imagine it would have been 100% but it was windowed and had to be moved to have a look at afterburner).
I natively run at 1920x1200 thats an extra 120 pixels on the 1080p benchmarks I guess but thats hardly much of a step up. And not open tasks no but I do have several in the bottom right hand corner by the clock such as: steam, curse client, razer synapse...
My monitor is quite old, I'll link it also if that helps.
I spoke to a few people in the just cause 2 server I was on and the one guy was getting 70fps+ and said he had downloaded his from the manufacturer website (in his case Saphire). Should I install drivers from MSI rather than AMD ? Should I use the disk ? Or should I get this driver thing out of my head :P
Hmm that seems quite low, however I know that wow is a very CPU bound game and AMDs Bulldozer chips aren't really renowned for great CPU performance (as wow is 2 core and can tap into 2 more). I find that my Sandybridge Dual core Pentium often did better than the FX4100 my friend uses.
I also believe Skyrim is quite a CPU bound game- remeber these reviewers are all using i7 3930k's at 5000Ghz to "eliminate bottlenecks". I'd try overclocking your CPU as that might improve your position.
Yes , Its called the chipset on the motherboard. Rest of your gear is fine but its time to upgrade to a better platform. Just changing to a 970 will make difference. Personally i recommend a 990fx just so if you choose to upgrade further you can without having to buy everything.
Personally, I think that it might be your cpu limiting what your gpu can push. If your gpu isn't maxing out and you are getting frame drops, then that means that your cpu is the thing that is maxing out. Skyrim is pretty single threaded, so AMD gpus are less than ideal. So what I'm saying is don't buy another mobo for your cpu is you are looking for better fram rates in skyrim. You ought to be looking at an intel platform, if anything.
So it is down to the motherboard chipset then? Could you link somewhere that says about this, I dont want to order a new motherboard if it isnt the cause of the problem.
Wow = better cpu's make the differnce (WoW is was written for one core)
Skyrim is a unoptimised console port even my HD7950 will drop to the 30's in some area's (and it has very poor AMD card gpu utilization ive seen 12% gpu useage inside dungeons) there are some mods that can help...but not by much
Thanks this opened my eyes a lot actually. Do you think I would gain much performance if I put on a hyper 212 evo and clocked my 6200 from 3.8ghz to around about the 4.2 ish ghz mark and if I would get much performance increase in wow if I was to do that ? And would I be able to pull of that kind of overclock on my board safely do you know ?
Also would a game like battlefield test more of my GPU's performance just so I can get an idea of if my GPU is performing like it should in not so CPU intensive games?
