Somebody help please!!

Pavel Pokidaylo

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Jun 8, 2013
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I added a second 7950 for crossfire today. I played a bunch of different games and saw almost no FPS gains in a lot of them. The only game I really saw about double my FPS was in Tomb Raider.
Other games like Crysis 3, FarCry 3, Metro LL, Hitman...
all these would either show absolutely no FPS gain at all or maybe a very minor one.

I have an ALienware Aurora with an i7 920 CPU.
8 gig gskill ram 1600

Here are my 3Dmark11 results. http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/7051563

over 14,000 on the Graphics test but only 5,000 on physics and combined test.

Is it my CPU that's holding me back? I'm considering buying a new Case, motherboard and CPU. will a new CPU give me the performance I want? I play on a 24inch 1080p monitor. I want to be at 60fps full time with max settings and maybe some AA.

Most of the games didn't gain any fps at all. Like Metro LL for example. I went to a place in the game and turned up the settings to max and 4XSSAA and I was at 20fps. With both cards running I was still at 20fps in the same place with same settings!
Since I got the first 7950 about 2 months ago I've felt like I had some kind of bottleneck in many of the games. I'd have to dial down some settings to get the desired FPS.

I don't think I can overclock my CPU because the motherboard is OEM. I've been reading different things about this. Some people are saying that an i7 920, even though it's first gen is still a very capable CPU. Others say they saw big changes once they upgraded to a newer CPU. Then others say to overclock it and it will last another 5 years.

I just don't want to spend another 500 bucks and still not be able to play the games like I want to. :(
And I do have the 13.8 beta driver and Crossfire is enabled in CCC as well as frame-pacing.


 
Solution
Looks like you are right. Out of curiosity I ran 3dMark11 on an i7-920 @3.5ghz (12gb DDR3-1333 ram) and got a physics score of 7676. Sounds like something isn't right with your system. I got the 3.5ghz from what your 3dMark link said was your cpu clock - I assume your comp came factory overclocked or whatever.

Make sure the 3.5ghz OC is sticking and see if you can get a physics score closer to mine. I'm not familiar with that OC software you have there. I would just use the BIOS to OC it, but use whatever works for you as long as temps and voltage are good. Here's an article I bookmarked a while back: http://www.overclock.net/t/538439/guide-to-overclocking-the-core-i7-920-or-930-to-4-0ghz

larkspur

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Try the AMD 13.8 beta driver. Also according to 3dMark - Your i7-920 is overclocked to 3.5ghz. Alienware is an oem, but the BIOS will allow OCing. You can probably squeeze some more out, but take some time to understand it first and watch those temps. Understand that some games (and areas of games) CrossFire doesn't work well. Also - your 3dMark score is excellent. Also - 3dMark only shows 2 ram modules. Your system ram will perform best when in triple-channel mode which requires three ram modules. I doubt it's your problem - just an observation.
 

Pavel Pokidaylo

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Hey thanks for quick replies. I'm using the 13.8 beta driver. I downloaded it the day it was released even though I didn't have two 7950s for crossfire yet. I never overclocked my CPU, maybe it came like that? Windows says its 2.66ghz like all stock i7 920s are. I have a program called cputemp or something like that. It monitors the CPU temperature and has a button called XSbench. When I press that I hear the CPU ramping up a few seconds and then it shows me results saying 3500mhz.

As for crossfire not working well in some games or areas of games. Honestly it was the same when I had just the one card. many of the games I've played have had good fps in one area and then low fps in another.

The 3dmark score might be good but I think that's because of the graphics test score. The physics test and combined test results are only 5000. The Graphics test is over 14000 with the two cards. At any rate I should have seen a performance gain in atleast 50% of my games and I didn't see anything besides Tomb Raider gain any FPS. But like I said even before I got the second card I felt like something was holding me back.

I play Star Wars the old republic and I get Horrific FPS in that game during combat.

let's start with the basics atleast. What does that low physics and combined tests score tell you? I'm think the CPU is really holding me back. I mean there's really nothing else that can be causing this. Two 7950s with 13.8 driver and 8 gigs of Ram. Dual Channel. I mean what else could it possibly be.

 

larkspur

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Looks like you are right. Out of curiosity I ran 3dMark11 on an i7-920 @3.5ghz (12gb DDR3-1333 ram) and got a physics score of 7676. Sounds like something isn't right with your system. I got the 3.5ghz from what your 3dMark link said was your cpu clock - I assume your comp came factory overclocked or whatever.

Make sure the 3.5ghz OC is sticking and see if you can get a physics score closer to mine. I'm not familiar with that OC software you have there. I would just use the BIOS to OC it, but use whatever works for you as long as temps and voltage are good. Here's an article I bookmarked a while back: http://www.overclock.net/t/538439/guide-to-overclocking-the-core-i7-920-or-930-to-4-0ghz
 
Solution

Pavel Pokidaylo

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I don't have any overclock software. I've never overclocked a CPU and have no idea how to. I wanted to OC this one so I tried going into bios but I think I only have CMOS? I dunno lol. There were some things there that looked like they were for overclocking but they didnt really do anything.

So you got 7676 thats considerably higher than what I got but what would a new CPU get? like the i5 4670k. Would that CPU get a physics score of like 13000? A physics test with 7000 is only half of the graphics test with 14000 that my result showed. Not sure if it works that way or not. Do you know what a new CPU gets in that physics test? Would be nice to know that. I tried looking but can't find anything because I'm probably not searching for the right things.

Another thing is... Do you think reinstalling windows would help? I just read a forum where someone with a 7970 and i7 920 was getting low fps in BF3 and he tried different things nothing helped then someone suggested reinstalling windows and that fixed the issue for him. I have not reinstalled windows on this computer since I got it and my friend was telling me I should do that.
 

Pavel Pokidaylo

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When I got the 7950 I was told to just pop it in and it should install the driver itself or just download the driver from AMD. I don't remember deleting any old drivers but I've only had AMD cards in this computer. How can I see if there are any old drivers? And besides the drivers, are there any other software related things that could be limiting my fps?