Low performance with FX 4170 and HD 7950

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MrFagiolo

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Jan 16, 2014
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Hi!

I would ask you how is possible that some games like Crysis 3 and Skyrim don't run fine on my system;

Let'start from Crysis 3: In some benchmarks from Tom's, FX 4170 works fine with GTX 680, with an average of 30 fps (http://www.tomshw.it/files/2013/03/immagini_contenuti/43722/crysis3-cpu_t.png).
My issue is Crysis 3 is unplayable on my system, 11-13 fps average even at lowest settings and resolution.
I was able to play normally only one time.
All patches installed, latest AMD driver installed,
System on "High Performance", AMD Bulldozer patch installed, everything it's ok!


Second, Skyrim: in some places it goes under 20 fps, all' Ultra, but benchmarks say different (http://media.bestofmicro.com/F/E/371210/original/Skyrim.png).

I'm going crazy with this situation. I want to understand what is the problem!
I know that my cpu is a bottleneck for high-end gpu but as said by benchmarks, it wouldn't be a problem anyway.

Are you able to tell me what the hell is goin on in my system?

My Specs:
cpu: fx 4170 4.2GHz
video: Club3D HD 7950 3GB - default frequences
ram: 8GB DDR3 1600MHz
motherboard: AsRock 870 Extreme3 R2.0
HD: 1TB seagate barracuda 7200 rpm
Power Supply: LC Power v2.2 600W

It's maybe my cpu (and in this case benchmarks would be fake!) or maybe the power supply which it doesn't give enough power?

Thank you in advance everyone! And sorry for my poor english.
 
Solution
ProWilma
The FX4170 is claimed to be a quad core, but really on a semi quad core, where 4 cores share 2 modules and it's not as powerful to intel quad cores or even the AMD Phenom IIX4's. From experience, I can tell that it's your CPU bottlenecking the system. Games like BF4 are more GPU bound and you'll have no trouble running them. But when it comes to more CPU intensive games such as Skyrim, AC4 and Crysis 3 which is GPU and CPU bound, AMD CPU's will suffer bad. The per core performance of AMD is significantly lower than an Intel and many these games don't use more than 2. I've had an FX6300 and FX 8350 and they both perform terribly in AC4 and Skyrim. So the problem here is that yes, your CPU was already bottlenecking your GPU, but in CPU...
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ProWilma

ProWilma

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The FX4170 is claimed to be a quad core, but really on a semi quad core, where 4 cores share 2 modules and it's not as powerful to intel quad cores or even the AMD Phenom IIX4's. From experience, I can tell that it's your CPU bottlenecking the system. Games like BF4 are more GPU bound and you'll have no trouble running them. But when it comes to more CPU intensive games such as Skyrim, AC4 and Crysis 3 which is GPU and CPU bound, AMD CPU's will suffer bad. The per core performance of AMD is significantly lower than an Intel and many these games don't use more than 2. I've had an FX6300 and FX 8350 and they both perform terribly in AC4 and Skyrim. So the problem here is that yes, your CPU was already bottlenecking your GPU, but in CPU intensive circumstances, it gets handicapped even more.
 
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Solution
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MrFagiolo

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Ok, thanks for th reply, but at this point, how do you explain the benchmarks reported? Maybe it's just me that I miss something?
 
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ProWilma

ProWilma

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GTX 680 is more powerful than a HD 7950
 
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MrFagiolo

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That's the point! If this video card is more powerful for that cpu, cpu would be a bigger bottleneck, or no? I always thought it was so.

 
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MrFagiolo

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I try to write better: as you say, FX 4170 it's basically a dual core, ok; it strongly bottlenecks my gpu (HD 7950), ok.
BUT, GTX 680 is more powerful than my HD 7950, so, if GTX 680 is more powerful (than HD 7950), the cpu FX 4170 should bottleneck a lot more this gpu (GTX 680), but it's not so as you can see in this benchmark: http://www.tomshw.it/files/2013/03/immagini_contenuti/43722/crysis3-cpu_t.png

What I'm trying to tell you now is that if a gpu is more stronger than another gpu, comparing gpu with the same processor, more powerful is gpu and more bottleneck is with cpu.

Example:

"FX 4170 bottlenecks ---> HD 7950

But if GTX 680 is more powerful than HD 7950

FX 4170 bottlenecks A LOT MORE ---> GTX 680"

Because I think that if a gpu is more powerful for a processor, that processor will be unable to follow the power of that gpu... It's not so?
I hope you understand now what I mean.

Now I gotta go, I will reply in a few hours. Thank you for your support, dude. See you later!
 
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Nikolay Savov

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Hi
It`s verry important what game setting you`r running the games ?

with this test PC :
Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition (3.30GHz)
x4 4GB G.Skill DDR3-1600 (CAS 8-8-8-20)
Gigabyte G1.Assassin2 (Intel X79)
OCZ ZX Series 1250w
Crucial m4 512GB (SATA 6Gb/s)
Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 64-bit
Nvidia Forceware 314.07
AMD Catalyst 13.2 (Beta 6)

For CRISYS 3 1920 x 1080 HI QUALITY SMAA x 1 with HD-7950 3GB they have 33 FPS tops :

http://www.techspot.com/review/642-crysis-3-performance/page4.html

You have 11-13 fps average even at lowest settings and resolution .....

The most common sence is that is not the GPU causing the problem ......
you OS + MB + CPU + RAM and HDD are bottleneck

I bet on :
CPU ( try to not OC it for any difference test )
OS
HDD
 
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Nafryti

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Maybe try this TRICK, i just did it and my CPU core usage went from only 4 out of 8 to all 8 out of 8 being used, Windows7 loves to park the Cores on the FX series CPU, after reading your question i decided to google how to fix this, and hot dog i found it, now i have all 8 cores to use whenever i want!!

I recommend this for you because you too use an FX processor, which means, windows is shutting down half of it more than likely, press CTRL+SHIFT+ESCAPE and look at the "Performance" tab, see how many cores are actually being used.
 
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MrFagiolo

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OS? I have win 7 x64 Ice Extreme v1. Might it be a problem?
The power supply? LC Power v2.2 600W
Or the cpu, but considering various benchmarks it seems not the reason...



Tried, all cores unparked. Still the problem

 
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Nikolay Savov

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You can try this simple test:
Run GPU-Z in background - sensor tab - this will track you GPU LOAD , GPU MEMORY LOAD , GPU CORE Load %
Run Task manager also in back ground - performance tab - cpu-load cores
Run the Crisys game for 10 -15 min - game mode not menu
Switch to GPU-Z and Task Manager and look at the loads
If the GPU or CPU is from 90 to 100 % all time then this is the bottleneck

f.e. Before my HD-4870 goes bad memory 2 weeks ago i have played BF4 on medium settings at 100% GPU and 30 % CPU ( and not all cores was loaded )

About the OS :
- if you have CPU load from 40 -50 % before you start the GAME then is something eating you CPU - virus , malare , spyware , trojan etc. .....
- running games in this scenario can have major FPS drop ...........
- clean OS install and if the problem is there again then it`s HW reason ...
 
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MrFagiolo

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Ok, I tried to see cpu and gpu load while gaming session. When I'am in open scenarios where there is a lot of grass, cpu loads at 88-90% costant, and gpu load is about 49%, and fps are about 18-20, depending from scenario. When there isn't much grass or I'm in a small scenario such as a building, gpu loads at 90-97% about, costant, while cpu is on 45-50%, and in this case fps are from 40 to 60.
In this test all settings were on maximum, resolution 1080p and v-sync disabled (always).
 
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Nafryti

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i think i know your problem!
when i had my Radeon HD 5670 i ran into performance problems and instead of downscale the applications demands i set everything on the GPU to "Performance" which i learned offloads many GPU tasks onto the CPU but when i set everything back to default and adjusted the settings of the game i noticed a massive performance boost.

Try leaving the settings as default on your GPU, and turn off the Anti Aliasing, the game looks good still without it.
 
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MrFagiolo

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I tried something like TimerResolution; it seems to work a bit but sometimes, and sometimes it doesn't work... Recently I was able to play Crysis 3 maxed out (except antialiasing which it was on FXAA) in 1080p in open scenarios with much grass, I got about 27-28 fps, the max down peak was 25, so I was able to play.
Now I'm assure it's a cpu bottleneck, but I cannot figure out dafuq happens randomly on my system: sometimes I'm able to play Crysis 3 even in problematic scenarios, sometimes not... Really, I don't care anymore at this point. I will change cpu, stop.
Thank you for your support and as always I apologize for my really bad grammar (I'm from Italy but I preferred to write here because I think your support is a lot better over the other tomshw and computer websites/forums). Thank you everyone.

If someone has my same problem, if you read this, the essential solution is what Nikolay Savov has said: cpu bottleneck! You can try some trick around the web such as Timer Resolution; they can work but also don't work. They work a bit or work good, etc.
Try everything BUT remember, best solution is BUYING NEW CPU, NOTHING TO DO MORE.
 
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Nafryti

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WAIT!!!! thats not right, your CPU shouldn't bottleneck at all! a quad core 4.2Ghz is more than enough
however, i find now that your Motherboard is of an old revision of AMD NB, the 870, you need a 990FX to take full advantage of the FX CPU and 7 series GPU
 
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Nafryti

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I'm sorry but i've unselected the answer as this is not the case with your setup, the Motherboard is performance loss, trust me, you want a NB AMD 9XX series chip for the FX CPU's best performance, strongly recommend the 990FX Northbridge.
 
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Nikolay Savov

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Dude :)

First :
- take you time to look in details in the link on the Unselected post before not after ......
Second:
- in what Universe you gonna manage to show me that you gonna take out 20 FPS more from just Motherboard Upgrade .....
To clear what i mean :

with this test PC :
Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition (3.30GHz)
x4 4GB G.Skill DDR3-1600 (CAS 8-8-8-20)
Gigabyte G1.Assassin2 (Intel X79)
OCZ ZX Series 1250w
Crucial m4 512GB (SATA 6Gb/s)
Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 64-bit

and with HD-7950 3GB

For CRISYS 3
Game settings - 1920 x 1080 HI QUALITY SMAA x 1

they have 33 FPS tops !
http://www.techspot.com/review/642-crysis-3-performance/page4.html

NOW - explain me Please how you gonna change the Mobo from AsRock 870 to Any 990FX and you gonna have how mutch 40 - 50 - 60 ????
you will have 35 TOPS i think .......

Common be seriose here ...
The only way to SQUIZE some more FPS is to lower the GAME SETTINGS and Resolution ......

AMD FX-4170 OC to 4,2 GHz with GTX-680 and Crysis 3 1980 x 1200 MEDIM SETTINGS HIT 56 FPS !!!

http://www.techspot.com/review/642-crysis-3-performance/page6.html

This IS CPU Bottleneck - PERIOD !
 
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MrFagiolo

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I really appreciate your further help. But as said, I will buy a new cpu, this time Intel for sure, with an obvious change of motherboard.
Maybe Asus or Gigabyte Z87 with an I5-4670k.
Still thank you everyone!
 
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Nafryti

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I fail to understand how your biased opinion means anything really. I stated the facts about the FX cpu and you come off like you're throwing a tantrum trying to use mismatched hardware as reason AMD sucks, where as i do understand you being an Intel user would never know anything about mismatched NB chipsets as for every new CPU intel makes there's a new socket and chipset. But using an old AM2+ rebranded motherboard will NOT let the FX breath to its potential, i don't know why they are rebranded to AM3+, but its no different than Creative making xFi cards that were rebranded Audigy's with software emulation for the Crystalizer.

I'm not going to ask you to just trust me, because i'm more than certain i'll get a rage post in return about it. "no no no no no no because no" doesn't matter what benchmarks you post either as all these benchmarks are incredibly biased with Windows parking AMD FX cores on ever one of them, i tested my machine unparked and scored higher than 78% of same setups.




well i tried to help, but fanboy flamed on me, additionally, i suggest ASUS for the motherboard, just be sure to get the proper chipset for the CPU, otherwise you'll have this same issue.

 
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Nikolay Savov

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:)
flame ...... fanboy ........ nice one :)

Unpark all the 4 cores of this low end CPU you will never hit more than 40 FPS on Ultra settings with 7950 ......
Including using Motherboard for 500 $ it still sux .....

And a pice of advice :
If You have gained some Score Here then I could ignore you arrogant behavior ......
and calling some on you don`t know Boy is very bad attitude also .....
 
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MrFagiolo

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Come on guys, there is no reason to flame.
@Kamikazi2142 I just got the point, this cpu it's really bad and bottlenecks a lot my system in any case. MAYBE a mobo change would improve the situation in 1% (?), but maybe!
I will buy new processor. FX 8000 it's also a good choice especially for Price/Performance ratio, but this time I go with Intel.
 
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