Performance isn't holding up?

[Resonance]

So, after being fed up with hiccups while playing games, I went to try to overclock my GPU, it worked successfully... but, the other day, I went over to a friend's. He has a 550 ti on like a standard company computer, with either a pentium or core 2 duo, i'm not sure. He was playing Guild Wars 2, on max, and he had no hiccups or frame rate drops at all. Yet, when I try to do the same, on my rig (in my banner location), i get so much hiccups and frame rate drops. I noticed in GPU-Z that my core clock and memory and shaders go down to like 50 mhz when i'm not playing a game and just being on the desktop, is this a power savings issue? i've turned off link state power management, yet the same thing continues. it's sort of annoying... any help?

 

[Josh Weston]

It could, in fact, be an issue with your CPU. A friend of a friend has the FX-4100 and some games simply refuse to work with it. Bulldozer isn't overly game friendly, it would seem.

 

[Master&Puppet]

1. Does the same thing happen in other games?
2. Are your GPU clocks stable in Heaven Benchmark?
3. I'd suggest you use something like HWinfo64 to log your cpu and GPU usage so we can see what's going on.

 

[Resonance]

1. Does the same thing happen in other games?
2. Are your GPU clocks stable in Heaven Benchmark?
3. I'd suggest you use something like HWinfo64 to log your cpu and GPU usage so we can see what's going on.

1. It happens depending on what settings I put on the game, so for most cases, if I had the game settings set to max, it'll hiccup occasionally but rise back up to 60 fps, just here, my fps is being hit too.
2. Yes, my GPU clocks seem stable enough in Heaven Benchmark with everything set to high and 4x tessellation.
3. I will download HWinfo64 soon and log it.

I hope it isn't the case with the CPU.

 

[Resonance]

Am I just getting the summary log?

My ratio always changes in all the cores from cool 'n' quiet, i've tried turning it off, it doesn't want to.

 

[NRG!]

if you're using vsync and you can't get 60fps it will drop you to 30fps.

Are you using vsync?

 

[Resonance]

if you're using vsync and you can't get 60fps it will drop you to 30fps.

Are you using vsync?

I usually play with vsync enable, however, this specific game, i have vsync off.

 

[Resonance]

Would you think Cool 'n' Quiet and C1E have a play in this? I've tried disabling them quite a few times, but whenever I go back into windows, I can see the ratio plummet to x7.0 quite often... so i'm sure it those two are still active.

Edit: So I got rid of the ratio changes, so it's staying at 4ghz now. although, i see the gpu clock/shaders/memory change when not playing a game, so that is the issue i'm still trying to fix.

 

[Master&Puppet]

If you go to the sensors page of HWinfo64 you can click "logging start". Save the file somewhere and run the game for about 5 mins.

When you finish stop the logging and open up the spreadsheet. Then you need to cut out the columns for your CPU usage and GPU usage, make them into a graph and upload a screenshot

Long I know but it is quite useful. Keep the original logging sheet - just export the columns to a new spreadsheet in case we want to look back at it.

Also - have you tried offline games and see if this happens (network speed/server speed often has a bigger effect than hardware).

 

[Resonance]

OOOOH WOW. I have no idea why but at idle all my cores on the sensor jump from 1.337v to 1.413v... in bios i have it manually set to 1.104v.. what the heck... that may be the issue.. i'll log it real shortly.

 

[Resonance]

 

[Master&Puppet]

OOOOH WOW. I have no idea why but at idle all my cores on the sensor jump from 1.337v to 1.413v... in bios i have it manually set to 1.104v.. what the heck... that may be the issue.. i'll log it real shortly.

Well - make sure you are reading the VCORE and not VID - there are a lot of numbers there. If you are reading the VCORE then remember that a fixed overclock's idle voltage will be higher than what it runs at under load.

HWinfo64 is brilliant for all kinds of stuff. All the graphs I produce (like those in the threads in my sig) are made like this although I think it is easier to use a line-graph.

It's best if you log every CPU core usage column and then make one graph because total CPU use is only half the picture. If the game only uses 4 threads then total CPU usage will report a lower average CPU use even when those 4 cores might be maxed out.

From what you've posted there though if doesn't look like it's your CPU or GPU.

 

[Resonance]

okay... yeah, i was reading VID instead of the vcore. sometimes people freak out when they don't understand something... like excel. anyways, a question, the vcore on the sensor status... where it only shows "one" "vcore" under something called ITE IT87F has the vcore at 2.796v... which i'm not understanding as much.

for the cpu load for each core

this is the core load and etc at the bottom of the sensor, the shader/geometry/memory was exactly the same the entire time, so i didn't include

hopefully that clears some things out, since i'm no excel expert. also the bottom is over time, it shows the row number as default.

 

[Master&Puppet]

That's great - and as you can see none of them are reporting higher than 80% load at any point. I don't think it's your hardware that's the issue.

My next idea would be for you and your mate to both run http://www.speedtest.net/
and compare your internet connection. Your hardware is better than his so I doubt it's your PC.

 

[Resonance]

Err... yeah, i'm getting 17mb... and he's getting around 24mb, is that the issue?
also i found out about the voltage and whatever, so i'm good about that.

 

[Master&Puppet]

Well maybe not if your internet is that quick.

I presume that you are running the game from the SSD and not the cav green? Data access would probably make a difference at some loading points.

You could try updating or rolling back your drivers to see if there are any issues there.

I tend to think that this is just the nature of online gaming. You are tied to the server and that will control your FPS as much as anything else.

 

[Resonance]

i actually am accessing it from the cav green, if that makes a difference.

 

[garih]

i know this isnt exactly helpfull for your problem, but i run all my games off my old hdd. only my os is on my ssd. and i have no problems on any game.

 

[Master&Puppet]

It could be the cav green - they are power efficient which = slow (I have all my games installed on my cav green too but I cache them on to RAM or my SSD when I play). There is a noticeable difference in performance across the board for me when I do this from loading times to stuttering in new areas. I've seen it in games like Diablo 3, Skyrim and Xcom: Enemy Unknown most recently. It's actually quite well documented in Diablo 3.

Check out this:
You only need to watch the first 3 mins of it (if that). The first 2.5 mins are using a RAMdisk and from 2:37 he plays from his HDD.

If you've got enough room spare on your SSD I can show you how to Cache and and run the game from it even though it is installed in the cav green. See if that makes a difference?

@Garih - out of interest what HDD are you using?

 

[Resonance]

Yeah, I'll see if that'd help. Although, i'm unsure of how to make a ramdisk. Could you tell me how? i'd be pleased if you can show me how to cache as well.

Edit: I've been looking at videos and whatnot to see how people use ramdisk... but it seems like they just copy the entire folder into the ramdisk space. The free version only goes up to 4gb... and this game is around 15gb.