2 different cards from 2 different brands under performing. What is the actual problem?

spdbump08

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Feb 5, 2013
34
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10,530
I recently purchased a PNY GTX 770. After installing it I started running some benchmarks. Everything was performing much worse than I had anticipated. At 1080p with max settings and 2x AA, Hitman Absolution only got 30fps. Far Cry 3 was getting ~40. Max Payne 3 ~40-50, and I only got 900 in Unigine Heaven 4.0 on ultra with extreme tessellation and 8x aa when I probably should have been around ~1100 or so.

I returned the card, thinking I had received a dud, and went ahead and purchased an EVGA SC ACX 780 because it wasn't that much more expensive, and, what the hell, I'm trying to max everything for a while so lets go with a 780.

Well, I put the 780 in and run the same tests. Hitman Absolution still only gets 30fps and I even turned off AA completely. Far Cry 3 only gets around 50 fps. Max Payne 3 averages around 60, but it dips to the low 40's or even the upper 30's occasionally. Unigine Heaven gets a score around 1330. This is all with gpu boost 2.0, so without that I'd likely be doing even worse.

What is going on?! The card stays extremely cool, never getting above 60 degrees Celsius, and it's pulling full power. My processor and psu should be enough not to cripple these cards like this.
The only thing I can think of is that I might need to update my bios, but since there's a risk involved with that I wanted to get some opinions from other users before I go that route.

Please help me out here guys. Thank you.


System:
i5 3470
asrock h77 pro4/mvp
evga gtx780
corsair vengeance 8gb
seagate barracuda 500gb
xfx pro 550w 80+ bronze
 

Pr3di

Honorable
The 780 required 500W with 42A on the 12V rail, and I think you have 44, so this should not be the case.

Did you update you motherboard bios?
Also, try a fresh windows install if the bios flashing doesn`t do the trick. It might be a complicated driver issue.
 

spdbump08

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Feb 5, 2013
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10,530


I haven't updated the bios yet. My old card was a gigabyte 7850. I uninstalled the amd drivers but could some remnant of them be hiding somewhere and causing problems? I wouldn't think so but I'm at a loss. I guess I'll try and flash the bios and then reinstall windows if that doesn't work. I don't really want to have do that but I definitely want to get this problem fixed so I'll try anything at this point. Thanks for the suggestions.
 

spdbump08

Honorable
Feb 5, 2013
34
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10,530


I updated the bios and it seems to have done something. I've only had time to run one test which was the Hitman benchmark. Now I'm getting an average of 48fps in 1080p with everything maxed and 2x msaa. I still think a gtx 780 is capable of doing better so I might try reinstalling windows too, but going from 30 to 48fps after flashing the bios was definitely a step in the right direction.

Update: Flashing the bios was the solution. Everything works fine now. If anyone else has this issue, check to see if your bios needs to be updated.