- Jan 15, 2013
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Alright Tom's Hardware members, I have a challenge for you.
On November 17th, 2011, I successfully salvaged a desktop computer, and rebuilt it to function; It's specs:
Motherboard: Foxconn M6IPMP-K
CPU: AMD Athlon Regor X2 255 @ 3.1 ghz
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws 4GB @ 1333mhz
GPU: GeForce 210
PSU: Antec 440W
I also got a 20", 5ms, 1600x900 monitor with the salvaged computer to boot, not a bad find.
I did the usual driver updates, windows updates, all that fun stuff. I enjoyed playing some games on it, but since I was a novice at the computer 'biz, I was disappointed that my new computer could not handle Skyrim from any aspect. I soon began to play Mount and Blade: Warband and Team Fortress 2 in it's stead. They ran quite 'well' on this rig; for the time, I had not experienced the joys of 60 frame smoothness, average of this time was about ~37 fps.
On May 16th, 2012, I decided to upgrade my toddler computer, by replacing the GeForce 210, with a Radeon HD 6670. (Brand was HIS, for you curious readers.) After the new upgrade, I was very happy with my computer's performance, although, I still wasn't quite satisfied; I remembered my friend's rig, which ran the 'then-legendary' Battlefield 3, on settings that my computer would never begin to comprehend in my eyes.
Later on in the year, in July, I caved on a new computer upgrade, and decided to upgrade my Processor this time around. I upgraded to an AMD Phenom II X4 965, which ran at 3.4ghz. "Wow! Two more CPU cores running at an even higher clock than with my last CPU!" I was definitely enjoying myself after that one. Later, I did a manual re-install of my 6670's drivers, with it being AMD, I had to use a technique to ensure that I got ALL of the old drivers out, which worked out alright. Updated to 12.6 Catalyst.
A little bit of time after Christmas, I got myself a new motherboard and case combo; An ASRock Extreme3 (970 AMD) and a Rosewill CHALLENGER. After re-building my rig again, and feeling proud of myself, I plugged everything up to my dismay, that my old power supply could not power my new motherboard and all of it's components. I soon ordered a new power supply, A Rosewill HIVE-650. It took 12 painfully-long days for it to arrive, cursed holiday mail. But, nonetheless, I plugged it all up again, and happy gaming ensued. That is, until, the issues began to occur. I began to have a new computer problem, but not any ordinary issue. Now my computer had a brand new problem, EVERY. SINGLE. WEEK. A new problem, issue, bug, defect, every. Single. WEEK. I suspected the power supply, and RMA'd the poor thing. Never changed anything though.
Thinking the problem to being a GPU bottleneck, I invested into a new part; The Radeon HD 7850; Sponsered by Sapphire Tech. The week that I spent waiting for it to arrive was excruciating. It arrived on 2/14/13(Go figure.). I had been looking into a new GPU since I got my Phenom II CPU, the 6670 wasn't cutting it at the time. I spent hours upon hours of research, trying to decide my best course of action with my small budget. I eventually succumbed to purchasing the 7850; Due to many happy reviews of it's great 'bang for the buck'.
Within 15 minutes of the 7850's installation, my entire installation of Windows 7 got corrupted, by reasons that I do not know. I then began the sad process of re-installing the damned thing, to Windows 7 Ultimate(More money lost, great.). When I finally got it all to work properly, the first thing I began to do, was install and play Skyrim, my computer's dream(at the time.). On default Ultra settings, the 7850 chopped and slurred so awfully, I closed it immediately. After a few minutes of Googling, I found that Skyrim's shadows put plenty of strain on my Phenom, so I tweaked them to do otherwise; Using [iBlurDeferredShadowMask=22; iShadowMapResolution=2048; and iShadowMaskQuarter=3 : Thank me later c
. This made the shadows even better than Vanilla, and run more well to boot! So I started it up again, and again, it stuttered so awfully, that I just shut off the computer, and went to sleep.
Then next day, I booted up to try out another computer dream; Battlefield 3. I actually have video footage of this feat, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3sN5QLeZ18]. I was quite pleased with this footage, despite the f#$%ing STUTTER AGAIN. Watching the video, you can see my framerate go from 53, 50, 55, randomly to 18, 14, ect. At this point, I was done with the 7850, called up Sapphire Tech, and RMA'd what I thought was faulty.
After waiting ANOTHER few weeks or so, I got my 'new' 7850 in, and got the exact same performance as the latter. This conflicted with all of my previous research, as the 7850 should be able to handle high, or max settings, at the god-like 60 fps. And those tests were done in 1920x1080, as opposed to my 1600x900. I was appalled. It performs worse than 1080p, at 1600x900. I was getting the same amount of frames as my friend with his Phenom II 965 w/ GTX 550ti. Are you serious? The 7850 is matched by a 550ti? I spent nearly $200 on a $100 performing card. I can't express my disappointment.
Newest build:
Motherboard: ASRock Extreme3 970
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 @ 3.4ghz
RAM: 4GB G.Skill (Single Channel) @ 1333mhz
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7850
PSU: Rosewill Hive-650 650W
And since the new RMA'd motherboard, case(Not RMA'd) and power supply, I get a new problem every week. One week, I'll be having terrible memory leaks, and crashing. Next week, I'll be having GPU related crashes. And the week after that, I'll have issues with loading times. My computer just can't work properly, I've replaced EVERY. SINGLE. APPARATUS. IN THIS THING. All the while, my arrogant friend bragging how his i7-2600k w/ GTX 570 is damn near maxing out everything in sight, at 1080p. No stutter. No nothing. No issues. I understand that the 2600k is a damnably good CPU, but my 7850 should be close to his 570. This is just ridiculous.
At this point, I know that the 7850 truly was never meant to max out everything I can live with medium settings as long as I can have 60 fps, which of course is never achieved thanks to this god-awful stutter I keep having.
This stutter is also present in older games, as well as modern: Fable TLC, Dragon Age Origins, Counter-Strike, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, even Mount and Blade; which I played at low/med settings with an average of ~41 fps. In that, I'll watch as my framerate goes from 120, to 118, then back. With the stutter still present. On a 60hz monitor. Whatwhatwhatwhatwhat.
I'm truly at a loss here, I've no idea what is causing this, I'm resorting to Tom's Hardware. Could use a hand here guys.
Remedies that I've tried:
1. Re-install operating system again.
2. Monitor temperatures. (To no avail, never go over 60C)
3. Driver updates. (GPU, DirectX, Windows)
4. Re-seating hardware.
5. Lowering resolution to 1280x720, same issues.
6. Swapping parts with a friend; FX-4100; Corsair RAM.
7. RMA'd everything at least once, never really had faulty hardware.
8. [strike]Smash it with a hammer.[/strike]
On November 17th, 2011, I successfully salvaged a desktop computer, and rebuilt it to function; It's specs:
Motherboard: Foxconn M6IPMP-K
CPU: AMD Athlon Regor X2 255 @ 3.1 ghz
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws 4GB @ 1333mhz
GPU: GeForce 210
PSU: Antec 440W
I also got a 20", 5ms, 1600x900 monitor with the salvaged computer to boot, not a bad find.
I did the usual driver updates, windows updates, all that fun stuff. I enjoyed playing some games on it, but since I was a novice at the computer 'biz, I was disappointed that my new computer could not handle Skyrim from any aspect. I soon began to play Mount and Blade: Warband and Team Fortress 2 in it's stead. They ran quite 'well' on this rig; for the time, I had not experienced the joys of 60 frame smoothness, average of this time was about ~37 fps.
On May 16th, 2012, I decided to upgrade my toddler computer, by replacing the GeForce 210, with a Radeon HD 6670. (Brand was HIS, for you curious readers.) After the new upgrade, I was very happy with my computer's performance, although, I still wasn't quite satisfied; I remembered my friend's rig, which ran the 'then-legendary' Battlefield 3, on settings that my computer would never begin to comprehend in my eyes.
Later on in the year, in July, I caved on a new computer upgrade, and decided to upgrade my Processor this time around. I upgraded to an AMD Phenom II X4 965, which ran at 3.4ghz. "Wow! Two more CPU cores running at an even higher clock than with my last CPU!" I was definitely enjoying myself after that one. Later, I did a manual re-install of my 6670's drivers, with it being AMD, I had to use a technique to ensure that I got ALL of the old drivers out, which worked out alright. Updated to 12.6 Catalyst.
A little bit of time after Christmas, I got myself a new motherboard and case combo; An ASRock Extreme3 (970 AMD) and a Rosewill CHALLENGER. After re-building my rig again, and feeling proud of myself, I plugged everything up to my dismay, that my old power supply could not power my new motherboard and all of it's components. I soon ordered a new power supply, A Rosewill HIVE-650. It took 12 painfully-long days for it to arrive, cursed holiday mail. But, nonetheless, I plugged it all up again, and happy gaming ensued. That is, until, the issues began to occur. I began to have a new computer problem, but not any ordinary issue. Now my computer had a brand new problem, EVERY. SINGLE. WEEK. A new problem, issue, bug, defect, every. Single. WEEK. I suspected the power supply, and RMA'd the poor thing. Never changed anything though.
Thinking the problem to being a GPU bottleneck, I invested into a new part; The Radeon HD 7850; Sponsered by Sapphire Tech. The week that I spent waiting for it to arrive was excruciating. It arrived on 2/14/13(Go figure.). I had been looking into a new GPU since I got my Phenom II CPU, the 6670 wasn't cutting it at the time. I spent hours upon hours of research, trying to decide my best course of action with my small budget. I eventually succumbed to purchasing the 7850; Due to many happy reviews of it's great 'bang for the buck'.
Within 15 minutes of the 7850's installation, my entire installation of Windows 7 got corrupted, by reasons that I do not know. I then began the sad process of re-installing the damned thing, to Windows 7 Ultimate(More money lost, great.). When I finally got it all to work properly, the first thing I began to do, was install and play Skyrim, my computer's dream(at the time.). On default Ultra settings, the 7850 chopped and slurred so awfully, I closed it immediately. After a few minutes of Googling, I found that Skyrim's shadows put plenty of strain on my Phenom, so I tweaked them to do otherwise; Using [iBlurDeferredShadowMask=22; iShadowMapResolution=2048; and iShadowMaskQuarter=3 : Thank me later c
. This made the shadows even better than Vanilla, and run more well to boot! So I started it up again, and again, it stuttered so awfully, that I just shut off the computer, and went to sleep. Then next day, I booted up to try out another computer dream; Battlefield 3. I actually have video footage of this feat, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3sN5QLeZ18]. I was quite pleased with this footage, despite the f#$%ing STUTTER AGAIN. Watching the video, you can see my framerate go from 53, 50, 55, randomly to 18, 14, ect. At this point, I was done with the 7850, called up Sapphire Tech, and RMA'd what I thought was faulty.
After waiting ANOTHER few weeks or so, I got my 'new' 7850 in, and got the exact same performance as the latter. This conflicted with all of my previous research, as the 7850 should be able to handle high, or max settings, at the god-like 60 fps. And those tests were done in 1920x1080, as opposed to my 1600x900. I was appalled. It performs worse than 1080p, at 1600x900. I was getting the same amount of frames as my friend with his Phenom II 965 w/ GTX 550ti. Are you serious? The 7850 is matched by a 550ti? I spent nearly $200 on a $100 performing card. I can't express my disappointment.
Newest build:
Motherboard: ASRock Extreme3 970
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 @ 3.4ghz
RAM: 4GB G.Skill (Single Channel) @ 1333mhz
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7850
PSU: Rosewill Hive-650 650W
And since the new RMA'd motherboard, case(Not RMA'd) and power supply, I get a new problem every week. One week, I'll be having terrible memory leaks, and crashing. Next week, I'll be having GPU related crashes. And the week after that, I'll have issues with loading times. My computer just can't work properly, I've replaced EVERY. SINGLE. APPARATUS. IN THIS THING. All the while, my arrogant friend bragging how his i7-2600k w/ GTX 570 is damn near maxing out everything in sight, at 1080p. No stutter. No nothing. No issues. I understand that the 2600k is a damnably good CPU, but my 7850 should be close to his 570. This is just ridiculous.
At this point, I know that the 7850 truly was never meant to max out everything I can live with medium settings as long as I can have 60 fps, which of course is never achieved thanks to this god-awful stutter I keep having.
This stutter is also present in older games, as well as modern: Fable TLC, Dragon Age Origins, Counter-Strike, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, even Mount and Blade; which I played at low/med settings with an average of ~41 fps. In that, I'll watch as my framerate goes from 120, to 118, then back. With the stutter still present. On a 60hz monitor. Whatwhatwhatwhatwhat.
I'm truly at a loss here, I've no idea what is causing this, I'm resorting to Tom's Hardware. Could use a hand here guys.
Remedies that I've tried:
1. Re-install operating system again.
2. Monitor temperatures. (To no avail, never go over 60C)
3. Driver updates. (GPU, DirectX, Windows)
4. Re-seating hardware.
5. Lowering resolution to 1280x720, same issues.
6. Swapping parts with a friend; FX-4100; Corsair RAM.
7. RMA'd everything at least once, never really had faulty hardware.
8. [strike]Smash it with a hammer.[/strike]
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