Major FPS dips on brand new PC

darkly_tranquil

Honorable
Nov 12, 2013
7
0
10,510
Hi guys,

I just replaced my old i7 950 (it died) with a new i5 3570 processor (and new motherboard) and I am experiencing significantly poorer graphics performance despite the new PC having more power than the old one and running the same graphics card as before. I have installed the latest Catalyst drivers.

Specifically, the FPS in WoW is dropping to between 10 and 20 at random intervals, and then jumping back up to 90-100. This effect seems to be worst when the graphics card is rendering long distance views, as the FPS improves when only rendering object in the near distance. I have tried reducing the graphics settings in game, but only disabling SSAO had any effect on FPS.

I am running:
ASRock Z77 Pro 4-M motherboard
i5 3570 3.4 ghz (no overclock)
8GB RAM 1333mhz (single stick)
ASUS Radeon HD 7850 2GB
2TB Seagate HDD
1TB WD HDD
750w Power supply (generic)
NZXT Phantom 410 case
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Any help you can provide would be much appreciated, but please keep it simple as I'm not the most tech savvy.
 
Since this happened after changing the cpu and you don't mention an aftermarket Heat sink/Fan I assume you used the stock Intel one, which is difficult to install correctly. Download/run hwmonitor to watch temps. How hot is your cpu and gpu getting?
 

darkly_tranquil

Honorable
Nov 12, 2013
7
0
10,510


I am using the stock intel cooler fan.

I ran HW monitor while I was running around getting ~20 FPS and my CPU maxed at 55C (131F) and GPU maxed at 53C (127F). From what I understand, that should be well within safe temperature range.

 
Yeah that is. Next up lets look at usages and see where the problem actually lies. Open task manager > performance and look at the core usage graphs (not overall usage). Use gpuz or msi afterburner to see gpu usage. Which one is maxing out during the fps dips?
 

darkly_tranquil

Honorable
Nov 12, 2013
7
0
10,510


The 4th CPU is the only one that shows major performance fluctuations when FPS lagging. It seems to run at about 20% higher load than the other CPUs all the time. When FPS is high, it runs at ~70-80%, and drops to around 40% when lagging. The other CPUs run at around 20%-40% and drop to below 20% when lagging.

According to GPU-Z, GPU Load (I assume this is what you mean by 'usage') is at 98-99% constantly. That seems like it could be an issue and might explain why I have no problems outside of running games.
 

darkly_tranquil

Honorable
Nov 12, 2013
7
0
10,510


Yeah, it's far, far worse. On my old 3.07ghz, it rarely dropped below 40fps and ran smoothly most of the time at around 60fps.