plz give this an honest read. or dont reply i dont want any lazy answers to this problem. any mindful help is very appreciated. and thanks in advance to those who reply and help me with this issue:
So I just got the 760 and im getting terrible performance in some games depending on whats going on. i tried to get help with this in the gpu forum but so far nothing is really helping me out.
im gonna post 3 games with a bit of detail as to how they perform in certain areas. plz pay attention to these as i think they are important. and will give a better explanation as to why i think the cpu could be the issue. very surprising results here.
"all games are played on normal to high at 1600 X 900 (native) and its a 60hzmonitor "
Battlefield 3 :
medium settings - will dip into the high 20s at very random times. likes to sit around 40fps and will go over slightly. the weird thing is . i can actually turn up alot of the settings but the fps will not go down. and the fps will not go UP if I turn the settings to low.
World of Warcraft :
This is the one that irritates me the most. as my fps will dip to the low 20s and actually down to 15fps on high settings in "Two Moons" main city in current xpac. i play on a high pop server so i can see how its bringing it down. but at the same time the wierd thing about it. if i turn my settings lower. and drop the resolution nothing happens to the fps. going from high settings to medium should be giving me a huge fps boost. the frames will go to around 60-70 when im out in the wild alone. and it sits at around 70 in raids at medium. wich is even lower than my gtx 630.....not even playing. we are talking about a gpu with like 90 cudas compared to the 1kish on this card. Before you freak out over that comment. i will say that the chances of that card playing on high settings anywhere in the game are nonexistant. you wouldnt get the same results as the 760 at all. but at medium it actually performs about the same. wich is very odd.
Starcraft 2 :
This one im very frustrated with as well. becuase same as the other 2 games.. if i turn my settings down...INCLUDING the CPU reliant graphics settings. such as "model" detail. and physics. NOTHING happens to the fps. it dosnt drop or go down . and these are the most stressing settings outside of the shaders... now heres whats really burning me up. if i drop the shaders down to low. i get a HUGE fps increase. but this card is totally able to push this game on high settings. theres just no way it could be the card lol. i also want to mention that the card just sits at like 536 mhz. it dosnt EVER want to push higher than that.. even after i try to up the boost clock with evga precision.
Final thoughts///////
so that in a nutshell are the problems that im having. and plz dont tell me to open task manager and look at the cpu. ive already done that. i even put that in my post in the gpu forum and somone told me to do it anyway. so the obviously didnt read..lol. im looking at ALL FOUR CORES theres 1 core that does kinda peak out in very short spikes. its like looking at freaking cardiogram.....now the other 3 cores arnt working very hard at all. they probably use maby 20-30%. wich is what i am guessing what they are supposed to do. but the one last core does seem to be working kinda hard. but its not maxing it all the time. again its a 4 core with 2.4 ghz Q6600. i have 3 gigs of 1333 ram. and wd300g hd that has about 60% used space. "incase that could be a factor" so basically could my CPU be too old for this card. is there such thing as having a cpu that only allows a certain amount of mhz to pump out of the card when in-game? and the reason i say IN GAME.. is becuase when im at the character log in screen. or loading into a game in bf3 or doing somthing that only has onescreen showing and really nothing moving besides a couple things. the card runs at 1054mhz........as soon as i get in game the card will go to 650ish..and then a couple seconds later it will go to exactly 535 mhz in almost every game i play. so whats the deal. i need somone who really knows what they are talking about to reply.
The cpu is most definitely the problem. It could also be that (if I'm not mistaken), your mobo has pcie1, no pcie2 or pcie3. That will slow down what your gpu is able to put through, but also, I think that the cpu is just not going to be able to keep up with the gpu. That processor is really old. I used to have an E7200 paired with a 7850. The bottleneck caused by my cpu was insane. Considering that the 760 is a whole lot better than the 7850, I would assume that the bottleneck would be even worse for you. Upgrade your mobo, cpu, and ram if you can.
its pci 2 slot btw. but thanks for the reply. i do intend on getting a new build all together and just hoping that after i do .. the gpu will run better lol. if not ill be short 300 bucks for that gpu. as i got the non superclocked version . wich for w/e reason is cheaper now than when i got mine "non superclocked" lol. maby by then the 780s will be a couple hundred cheaper
oh and for whoever looks at this post next. i forgot to mention that im using a vista 32 bit os.. i wonder if that could have an impact. as i cant use the test function on my evga precision software. it requires a 64 bit os. also looking throught the documentation of the gpu. it mentions somthing about getting the latest drivers for the mother board. im guessing that the evga precision probably isnt working well due to somthing related to my bios or mother board set up. though that could have nothing to do with it.. im a complete noob when it comes to that kind of thing. but these problems mentioned in my first post have nothing to do with the overclocking of the card. as i have tried with default setting and slight overclocks and nothing has changed since i first installed. and btw as of right now im using the newest beta driver version. 326.80 beta
It is possible that you are having some problems based on your OS. 32 bit and it's Vista? That seems less than ideal. Maybe you could try it with a 64 bit Windows 7 install? That could help things some, but regardless, a Q6600 will bottleneck a 760 in pretty much any modern game.
yea i found out in another post that it is FORSURE the cpu. I just recently looked into the power save feature in the nvidia settings. and when i turned it on. it fixed the throttling issue. so instead of using 535 or less mhz in wow it will stay at 1050 mhz now.. cuase i turned it to "prefer max power" in the settings.
however..jumping up +500 constant mhz didnt help anything whatsoever LOL...and i mean basic math can tell ya that if im not seeing a fps increase even when i turn setting down AND using that much more mhz...theres a huge cpu bottleneck...
when you dont change it to "prefer max power" it will only use the power it needs to keep up with the cpu.. so if i had say an i5 or i7 from the last couple years. it would probably sit at around 800-1050 (1050 being the core clock) -IN POWER SAVE MODE- lol....cuase it uses gpu boost 2.0 AND.... get a huge boost in fps cuase of the flat better speeds of the newer cpu. (2.4 to 3.5) lol
so yea it throttles down to match your cpu...question is answered thanks for the help lol
somthing that is very frustrating. and that might help anyone who gets a new nvidia card...look at the CORE CLOCK in the specs of your gpu....and then through the evga precision..look at what its using... if its NOT maxing out then you got a cpu bottleneck. they should make that a little more simple to understand for tech noobs like me foreal lol.
but yea its a journey right? gotta learn somthin somtimes. i do think however that they need to make this a little more simple for people overall. i mean i was fixing to try and rma this thing for no reason.. and outside of flipping that switch hidden away in the middle of the settings....and basically forcing it to work 3 times harder and getting the same results....that was the only way for me to tell forsure it was a bottleneck
thats all you hear about is.."OHHH NAW man you dont need a super fast cpu for gaming".."naw man its all about the graphics card" yaknow lol....for somone like me this is big deal.
Agreed, I use a Q9550 which is a far superior CPU with a GTX 560 and I see a bottleneck. I do own a Z87 system but the Mobo blew in the first week and asus is useless with their RMA
Since you have a 32 bit OS which can't support more then 4gh of ram(technically 3.5gb) that may also be a part of the low fps. I know games like bf3 mulitplayer uses little over 3.5gb of ram on my system. I just recently upgraded to 8gb and it made the world of difference.
yea here in a month or 2 ill be getting a new setup with a 4770 and 8 gigs of ram. cant wait wish i could get an ssd but cant afford it atm sadly :( lol.
Go for an i5 and an ssd instead of an i7. There isn't much point of getting an i7 over an i5 as far as gaming go. You will see very little gains, if any.