Graphics Performance Issues (Radeon HD 7950)

paulg568 · Nov 6, 2013

I have frame rate issues with a lot of games and I am wondering what piece of hardware maybe causing this issue. Generally I can't have anti aliasing on in any game I play. My previous graphics card had many of the same issues which was a radeon hd 4870.

I am wondering if anyone with similar rigs have similar issues?
Or can someone tell me which piece of hardware may not be compatible with the others?

Here is a list of games i have issues with:

Portal 2 - If it loads to the menu screen, shortly after it will freeze my computer and blue screen
Rage - About 5 FPS
Path Of Exile - Large paricle effects cause huge drop in frame rate
Witcher 2: low fps
If I turn anti aliasing on for just about any game, frame rate drops drastically.

Here are my specs:

Motheboard: Asus Sabertooth 990fx AM3+
GPU: SAPPHIRE Vapor-X Radeon HD 7950 3GB
CPU: AMD FX-8150 Zambezi 3.6GHz Socket AM3+ 125W Eight-Core
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900)
SSD: OCZ Vertex 4 VTX4-25SAT3-256G 2.5" 256GB SATA
PSU: 1200 Watts (don't remember manufacturer)

I feel like these specs should do pretty well with just about every video game.

Thanks.

-Paul

duhmentia · Nov 6, 2013

Yeah i'm not really to sure what is happening there, those components should just breeze through those games, maybe a drivers problem or not connecting the GPU up correctly

AdioKIP · Nov 6, 2013

Sounds like you're having a software issue, not a hardware issue. My hardware is similiar to yours (sabertooth 990fx board, Sapphire 7950, 16 gigs g.skill ram, I just ugpraded from a 6100 to an 8350 processor). Even with my 6100 I was able to run most games on high/ultra with no problem, and the games you're listing are kinda old so should run well. I played thru rage a year or two ago at 5760x1080 using less hardware than you have.

First thing to look at is your drivers. What Catalyst version are you using? Did you wipe your old drivers before doing any video card upgrade (especially if you went from the 4870 to the 7950 without reinstalling windows). After the drivers, what version of windows are you on and is everything up to date?

paulg568 · Nov 6, 2013

AdioKIP :

I have used windows 7 and windows 8 with this hardware.

I don't always uninstall my drivers. I did however install windows 8 from scratch so I would think it wouldn't be driver issues. Maybe I just need to update my drivers. I will try uninstalling them and reinstalling them after work.

Are there amd cpu driver's I can get or just amd gpu drivers?

Could my CPU be bottle necking my GPU?

AdioKIP · Nov 6, 2013

paulg568 :

There are AMD chipset drivers, but they are usually packaged with the graphics drivers. As far as a CPU bottleneck, there shouldnt be. While the bulldozer chips werent the greatest, they are more than adequate for gaming. My 6100 was the same generation as your 8150, just with 2 less cores, and I was able to game on that for nearly 2 years with no issues.

First try updating your drivers like you stated. After that then grab a program like MSI afterburner and check your graphics card useage while running a game (may have to run it windowed) and see if the graphics card is going to 100% useage. Also check your temps, maybe the card is overheating and throttling back.

paulg568 · Nov 6, 2013

AdioKIP :

I completely uninstalled my drivers and updated them to the latest amd drivers. Not much change.

My GPU Usage is around 20%, sometimes it spikes to like 60% but quickly drops back to 20%.

The GPU Temperature stays around 48-51c

Fan Speed doesn't seem to high using MSI afterburner and the AMD catalyst control center. Looks to be about 40%

Could it be my ram timing? Or could my motherboard pci bus be faulty and so it doesn't transfer data to and from the GPUs?

Another issue I thought it could be is the type of RAM. If I look into the motherboard user guide it says my motherboard will accept:
G.SKILL F3-14900CL9D-8GBSR(XMP)

My RAM is:
G.SKILL F3-14900CL9D-8GBXL

Could that matter?

AdioKIP · Nov 7, 2013

paulg568 :

AdioKIP :

I completely uninstalled my drivers and updated them to the latest amd drivers. Not much change.

My GPU Usage is around 20%, sometimes it spikes to like 60% but quickly drops back to 20%.

The GPU Temperature stays around 48-51c

Fan Speed doesn't seem to high using MSI afterburner and the AMD catalyst control center. Looks to be about 40%

Could it be my ram timing? Or could my motherboard pci bus be faulty and so it doesn't transfer data to and from the GPUs?

Another issue I thought it could be is the type of RAM. If I look into the motherboard user guide it says my motherboard will accept:
G.SKILL F3-14900CL9D-8GBSR(XMP)

My RAM is:
G.SKILL F3-14900CL9D-8GBXL

Could that matter?

I highly doubt its your motherboard or ram. In the bios I would check that you have the ram timings set properly along with the voltage, but those issues shouldnt cause your problems. Your video card only hitting 20% useage is why the frames are low, but the question is why.

What resolution are you running at? What brand is your PSU? Normally low video card useage could mean a processor bottle neck, but your processor isnt bad. What kind of processor useage do you see when gaming? What temps does your processor run at?

paulg568 · Nov 7, 2013

duhmentia :

AdioKIP :

I am running at 1920x1200 resolution.

I have an antec 1200w PSU. I think this is the one but I don't have the model number on me. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371032

I changed the RAM timings, it was supposed to be at 9 10 9 28 and it was at 9 11 9 28. It didn't make any difference.

An individual core when running my games was anywhere from 40-90%. I didn't really notice them max out but it's hard to see which one is doing all the work when 8 cores are constantly changing.

Just to see if it was my CPU I overclocked it by about 10%. I didn't see any extra GPU activity nor did my FPS increase.

I don't think my CPU was overheating, I'll need to check the exact temperature when I get home later. I also just took my CPU out and took a can of air to the heat sink and blew any dust out. It did over heat while over clocking once but this was after I finished testing everything.

We don't think anything could be wrong with the pci bus on my mobo? Could it be a data throughput issue? I have tried my graphics card in 2 different pci slots. No change.

coozie7 · Nov 7, 2013

As has been said, that rig should walk all over the games you mentioned in your first post.
Use GPU-Z to check the GPU, it's great little utility, very handy! It'll probably report the PCI-E link as 1.1, maybe at x16, it's probably just the card in doze mode as it's idling, click on the "?" beside the PCI-E info to run the render test and the link should return to full spec.
Give yourself a level playing field to start: Reset the BIOS to stock settings and undo any over/underclocking on the video card, uninstall any tuning software like Afterburner and delete any profiles when prompted or after a restart.
Did you remember to install the motherboard drivers?
Have you checked the CPU/GPU use at idle? anything over 5% or so on either would suggest either you have several programs open or the system has been malware/virus infected.
I know you've done this, but sometimes drivers just doesn't 'take' so redownload the latest WHQL (not Beta) drivers from the AMD site and reinstall. Uninstalling is not really required when updating but I think you should do so in this case.

paulg568 · Nov 7, 2013

coozie7 :

Thanks for the reply. I'll try all this later this evening. As for asus customer support they recommended I install the latest bios which I did. I'll also make sure I have the latest WHQL drivers for my graphics card and motherboard.

UPDATE:

Alright I was using GPU-Z and the bus jumped to pci-e 3.0x16 @ x16 2.0
The load when running the render test gets about 180 fps and the gpu load jumps around 0% to 80% but generally is around 30-50%

When I turn the render test onto full screen even though it says its for crossfire or sli, the load is maxed and the fps average is around 30.

I am not sure what else I should be looking for with GPU-Z so I took a screenshot of GPU-Z after playing path of exile and getting average of 20fps in areas with medium amount of mobs.

link:
http://i.imgur.com/FkNtvDj.gif

Notice that the GPU load is rather low.

Let me know what else I can provide you with to help determine the cause.

Thanks.

coozie7 · Nov 8, 2013

Odd.
What is the CPU temperature? Perhaps the cooler has not seated correctly or the thermal paste has not spread out enough causing the CPU to overheat and throttle?
Pop the side panel off and reseat the card and memory, make sure you've connected the 6 and 8 pin connectors to the card and both have fully seated.
If still no joy run Dxdiag not sure for Win 8 but for Win 7 Start>search programs and files>type Dxdiag and the program should appear in the search box.

paulg568 · Nov 8, 2013

coozie7 :

I reseated both my card and cpu yesterday. My CPU was rather tough to get off the heatsink. It was almost like the thermal paste had glued it to the heatstink. Is that bad?

What should I look for when running dxdiag?

coozie7 · Nov 8, 2013

Some pastes do that, as long as you cleaned the CPU and heatsink before applying new paste and the temperatures are now OK I think we can eliminate CPU overheating as a cause-it's certainly looks like the GPU temperature is not an issue either.
When the main window opens run through all the tabs at the top, any errors will be reported in the lower part of each pane. Also run the 64 bit version and recheck for errors.

paulg568 · Nov 9, 2013

coozie7 :

I put fresh thermal paste on my cpu. It stays around 38c, it maxed at 41c while gaming. There are no problems with dxdiag.

coozie7 · Nov 9, 2013

Like you say, this is d**mn strange, everything seems OK yet the system is clearly being choked.
Something odd stirs in my ancient grey cell...What mose/keyboard do you have? I'm sure I read of a similar problem that was, to all intents and purposes, caused by the mouse drivers polling rate (ignore if you have no mouse/keyboard drivers installed).
And also...
Move the card to another slot, try running with one Ram module in at a time and swap the power leads for the other set.
Or, maybe this: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-1864321/gpu-stuck-maximum-load.html DON'T forget to either backup the registry or set a restore point!
Right now, that leaves me dry, so, anyone else like to offer a DIY suggestion?

paulg568 · Nov 11, 2013

coozie7 :

Turns out my GPU is defective. At least that is what I think.

I tried a nVidia GTX 470 (3 year old card) and it ran my games with 2-4x the frames. I am going to hopefully RMA my GPU and hopefully that will fix my problems.

Should I close this thread or wait till I test out the RMAed GPU?

paulg568 · Dec 17, 2013

I recieved the RMAed Radeon HD 7950 and it had no improvement on performance. Both cards couldn't be defective so I concluded it was just hardware compatibility.

I sold the card on eBay and bought an nVidia GTX 770 and everything runs flawlessly. Maxed settings on Path Of Exile, Rage, and Outlast. Those are all the games I have tried so far. I don't imagine it will have problems with other games.

That AMD card either isn't as powerful as people say, or it just doesn't work well with my motherboard or CPU that well. The GTX 770 cost the same amount seems to be working wonderfully. I have only had it for 1 day though. I just wanted to update my thread and close it out.

Graphics Performance Issues (Radeon HD 7950)

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