A6-5400k lag issue

j0ndafr3ak · Apr 18, 2013

Hey all,
I recently bought this apu with a msi fm2-a75ia-e53 mainboard and have 8gb 1600mhz ddr3 ram (crucial ballistix elite)
I'm not a hard core gamer, but I like to play games sometimes. Even at 1280x800 would do.
The thing is I can't play at that resolution either. I tried battlefield 3 single player mode but it would badly lag. So I wanted to try an older game, like star wars the force unleashed. Even at the lowest resolution, I got maybe 10 fps...
Can I play at all with this apu? Should I buy higher frequency ram? Would it fix the lagging?

JD88 · Apr 18, 2013

Do you have the latest drivers installed?

lazyboy947 · Apr 18, 2013

well its the A6s igpu that holds you back, and the cpu on bf3 somewhat lol but a higher clocked ram clock would increase performance but it still wont solve lag or barely playable fps, if anything unless u wanna get a A10 or wait till richland apus, get a dedicated gpu like a 640gt or 7750/7770

JD88 · Apr 18, 2013

You should still be getting playable frame-rates in the single player mode of BF3 on low or medium at that low resolution, and Star Wars isn't all that intensive. Something isn't exactly right.

j0ndafr3ak · Apr 19, 2013

lazyboy947 :

thanks for your reply. Though, I don't think this will work in my case. last night I removed my be quiet system power 300 psu and placed another one with a higher wattage and installed a gtx 285. it would still stutter at 1080p at low. at 1600x900 it got better, but not smooth

JD88 :

thanks to you too. that's what I was thinking myself. you don't see many videos or performance benchmark for this cpu out there, and the few you see you ask yourself whether they are fake or not. anyways, people CAN play skyrim at 1080p and I can't even play star wars the force unleashed at 1280x800, a 6-year-ago game.
there must be something wrong with my rig...
I've been searching and found that some have solved this issue by changing their mobo. I'll try to update the bios and post a feedback.

j0ndafr3ak · Apr 19, 2013

JD88 :

yes, I do. they were released on jan 17. there are the beta drivers, too, released on mar 19... as I said, I'll update the bios firmware then maybe install the beta drivers and see how it goes..

j0ndafr3ak · Apr 19, 2013

Update:
Bios updated to the latest version

I tried playing the force unleashed at 800x600 resolution. fraps shows that fps range from 15 to 30 at most, which makes the game unplayable, really slow-paced. thankfully, darth vader is unbeatable so I can blow away my enemies using force farts... darth vader rocks it hahaha

j0ndafr3ak · Apr 19, 2013

Ok, I updated the bios, downloaded the start wars the force unleashed update patch, unchecked the high detail option in the game launcher and now I can play SWTFU at 1080p with stable 28-30 fps which is awesome.. the frames don't drop when surrounded by tens of stormtroopers so I'm happy with it and I didn't even OC... I read somewhere that this game will hardly go past 30 fps no matter what rig you have... so yay game on...

I now just have to fix the lagging with battlefield 3 and I'll be even happier with that...
thank you all for your help

sarinaide · Apr 19, 2013

Hi

The A6-5400K is a dual core/single module with the lower end HD7540D iGPU solution, despite only being a Dual Core and despite the lowest end iGPU offering it is still stronger than any Intel based solution and should give you respectable performance.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/a10-5800k-a8-5600k-a6-5400k,3224.html

I haven't tested that particular unit only A8's and A10's and to see your initial numbers were really low. I do hope that you are sorted now with your driver updates as even on integrated you should be able to get medium settings at lower res although this is title determined.

j0ndafr3ak · Apr 20, 2013

sarinaide :

Hi, thanks for your reply. I haven't had yet the chance to fix the stuttering with battlefield 3, but have fixed it with star wars the force unleashed. There are people out there who play games with 1080p resolution no problem. Maybe on low settings, but I don't care.

In your signature i read you have 2133mhz ram. What speed can you run them with your a10? Do you need to turn on the xmp profile? How did you set it up in your bios?

thdarkshadow · Apr 20, 2013

I had an apu in my PC a while back. Needless to say I won't be doing that again. Sure it has a not absolutely horrible GPU (good for integrated but not for gaming even on low) but the CPU part is downright awful. I would be surprised if you could play battlefield 3. If you want to get a 7750 to go with it or 6670 and crossfire with your iGPU that should make it playable.

sarinaide · Apr 20, 2013

j0ndafr3ak :

sarinaide :

Hi, thanks for your reply. I haven't had yet the chance to fix the stuttering with battlefield 3, but have fixed it with star wars the force unleashed. There are people out there who play games with 1080p resolution no problem. Maybe on low settings, but I don't care.

In your signature i read you have 2133mhz ram. What speed can you run them with your a10? Do you need to turn on the xmp profile? How did you set it up in your bios?

In BIOS you can just set the XMP profile or AMP if you have a supporting kit. Then set the speed divider to 2133.

Stock APU + 2133; get 60FPS vsync @ 1366x768 on low preset. Its quite playable still at 1600x900 or 1680x1050.

j0ndafr3ak · Apr 20, 2013

sarinaide :

j0ndafr3ak :

In BIOS you can just set the XMP profile or AMP if you have a supporting kit. Then set the speed divider to 2133.

Stock APU + 2133; get 60FPS vsync @ 1366x768 on low preset. Its quite playable still at 1600x900 or 1680x1050.

I see. Did you notice any performance improvement with that ram speed? Would i notice the difference between my 1600mhz ram and 2133mhz should i buy it?

sarinaide · Apr 20, 2013

j0ndafr3ak :

sarinaide :

I see. Did you notice any performance improvement with that ram speed? Would i notice the difference between my 1600mhz ram and 2133mhz should i buy it?

Yes you do, the bandwidth increases with faster RAM. DDR3 1600 has around 25GB/s bandwidth, DDR3 2133 Has around 37GB/s bandwidth so the performance will improve which can be dramatic or some times within 10%.

j0ndafr3ak · Apr 20, 2013

sarinaide :

j0ndafr3ak :

sarinaide :

I see. Did you notice any performance improvement with that ram speed? Would i notice the difference between my 1600mhz ram and 2133mhz should i buy it?

Yes you do, the bandwidth increases with faster RAM. DDR3 1600 has around 25GB/s bandwidth, DDR3 2133 Has around 37GB/s bandwidth so the performance will improve which can be dramatic or some times within 10%.

So the 10% will be noticeable, won't it?

JD88 · Apr 20, 2013

When exactly does your lag occur in single player? All the time or just in certain areas? Roughly what FPS are you getting?

I get the feeling that this might not be a performance limitation because there are a lot of videos and talk of people playing BF3 on the A6 at least somewhat smoothly at much higher resolutions. For example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7pScFopnnA

Something else is bottlenecking performance.

j0ndafr3ak · Apr 20, 2013

JD88 :

Yeah, that's what I meant. The game always lags, but there are areas where it is smoother than others. For example, at the beginning there's this level where at some point you're supposed to follow a cable down to the basement and defuse the bomb. Once you're done you should walk back outside. As long as I'm in the basement the lag is occasional, pretty smooth i must say, but as soon as I get outside the game drastically starts lagging and becomes unplayable. When you shoot, it gets even worse. There are lots of soldiers outside... though, i haven't tried the game yet after installing all the updates i mentioned above.

j0ndafr3ak · May 7, 2013

I want to post some updates in my "decently play bf3 on a a6-5400k" quest. there are no benchmarks out there, so someone may be going to need this (my advice, don't buy this apu if you intend to even occasionally game with it - it's awesome in everyday common user tasks, like surfing the internet, watching movies and even some light video editing will do - family dvds and stuff) but other than that, it sucks...
I managed to get this low end apu to perform a little bit better in bf3 multiplayer mode. Somehow, and I don't know why, it performs worse in the single player campaign.
so, the cpu has been oc'ed to 4.02ghz and the igpu up to 870mhz (the stock frequency is 760mhz). with everything set on low, all filters off (except for the AF which doesn't have a off option, so I set it on 1x) and ambient occlusion on off too.
at 1600x900 it is quite playable, I get from 20fps to 35 at most. the gpu load is stable at 99%. (I tried to play at 1080p with settings on auto, but it looked like I was watching a stop motion movie... 17fps to maybe 22). I experienced some stuttering and slight delays, which got me killed a fraction before I could even notice it. so, it doesn't do good in fast-paced situations. (tested on a 64 player map)
I aslo paired this apu with a gtx 285 2gb - which is far more than this a6 can handle - and, though some rare stuttering, it was playable.
so I can assume the igpu is bottlenecking here.
I'll see if I can get a higher gpu clock and post the results... if anyone's interested, of course

this apu is supposed to share 1gb of video memory, though the memory used was only ~460mb during gameplay (at 1080p resolution, too). by default, the memory reserved for this apu on startup is 512mb and there's no way I can change this. the thing is that, when I used the gtx285, the memory was filled up to about 1290mb so I was expecting 800-900mb to be used, in this case. any ideas on how I can change the maximum amount of shared vram?

I hope I made myself clear, English isn't my native language.

pangolin_user · May 7, 2013

did you set your ram on dual channel mode?

j0ndafr3ak · May 8, 2013

pangolin_user :

hi, thanks for your reply.. and for putting doubts in m head

it was one thing I hadn't checked yet (nor noticed it).
so I'll post some screenshots of the bios menus where I made some changes and I'm gonna need some advice cause I don't really know where to put my hands anymore. here they come:

in the screenshot above, there are the auto settings you get if you select the oc genie II mode.
had to manually select the Dram Frequency to 1600mhz (can't leave it on auto) or else cpuz displays the ram speed at 667mhz and not at 800mhz (824mhz in this case, it being overclocked)

in the first image, the dram timing mode was set on auto, but allowed two more options (link and unlink which respectively mean dual and single channel memory settings) in fact if I select link, advance dram configuration becomes available and by clicking twice on it it goes to the page you can see in the third screenshot, otherwise you see another screen where you are prompted to select what channel you want to make changes to (this memory has only two memory slots - itx form factor - hence it sees two different channels)

so after selecting Link, I get to this page, where I don't really know what to do. so I left everything on auto, cause I don't know if changing a value I'll have to change another along with it to make it stable. but I'm confident it's running at the righe speed cause I selected the desired xmp profile so yeah, I figure my ram is set on 8-8-8-24-36 1600mhz

j0ndafr3ak · May 8, 2013

Ok folks, I've solved the mystery. the problem was in the amount of the shared video memory. by default it was set on 512mb but I had to set the dual graphics option on though I don't have any cards to hybrid crossfire it with. but by enabling that I could change the value from 512mb to 1gig. I could even select 2gigs but this apu only supports up to 1gb of shared vram (tbh, the mainboard would be limited to 1gb of vram, but seen that i can select it in the bios, i think it can use up all the 2gigs).
now i can smoothly play bf3 at a resolution of 1600x900 and with the following settings (auto):
texture quality HIGH
shadow quality MEDIUM
effects quality MEDIUM
mesh quality MEDIUM
terrain quality MEDIUM
terrain decoration MEDIUM
antialiasing deferred OFF
antialiasing post MEDIUM
motion blur OFF
anisotropic filter 4X
ambient occlusion SSAO

i get from ~22 to ~35fps, which is fairly playable. when the camera moves fast it sometimes stutters but no big deal..
at 1280x800 the framerate is stable above 30fps but i don't like what it looks like.

in a couple days i should get the hd6570 1gb ddr3 and i'll know how this apu performs when hybrid crossfired with a compatible discrete graphics card.
According to the benchmarks the hd6570 is supposed to perform better on its own than xfired with a low end apu. but we'll see and i'll let you know

A6-5400k lag issue

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