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Poor PC Performance after upgrading.

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  • Performance
  • Systems
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April 12, 2014 1:13:19 PM

Hey everyone...First post here so forgive me if this is the wrong section, a bit confusing where to post. I built this PC myself and the specs are nothing cutting edge, but a bit greater than an average PC.

I recently upgraded from an ancient Nvidia 9800 GT 512mb GDDR3 video card to a new AMD Radeon R7 260x 2gb GDDR5 , and noticed no performance increase in any game that I play, and in fact some games became worse almost unplayable. This was an almost 200$ card and spec for spec, this card seemingly overpowers my old one...But i've had nothing but problems in the month that i've owned it.

I have tried the official drivers that came with the card, the updated Dec 2013 Drivers and the Beta Drivers from March 2014. No significant change using any of these drivers.

SPECS:
Thermaltake Kandalf Full-Tower Case. Air cooled with 4 case fans.
700w PSU
AMD-FX 6100 6-core 3.4ghz processor. ("Bulldozer") Stock cooler. Not overclocked.
16 GB's DDR3 Patriot 1633mhz RAM.
AMD Radeon R7 260x GDDR5 GPU. The card is default overclocked.

I mainly play World of Warcraft. The old Nvidia card I just slapped the settings on "Good" and ran a perfect 60fps-70fps everywhere, dropping down to 30 in large raids/big cities.

With the new card It can't even do that, which is shocking and confusing. My PC has the specs to theoretically run this ancient game on High/Ultra no sweat, but doing so brings it to a crawling 5-10 FPS. Playing it on "Good" I get about 25 frames and drop to 5-10 in raids and big cities. This is at 1920x1080 resolution.

I really don't know what is going on, but I think its bad drivers / bad video card or possibly a cooling issue? The case is HUGE and I've had the case since around 2005. All stock fans except one replacement because one stopped working. they are all 120mm fans I believe.

I live in a warm state and its about 80 degrees outside right now, and will be 100+ in the summer, as such my bedroom is very hot and I don't have central air where I live.
I do find that while sitting Idle on the desktop my cpu is running at 47 celcius and my GPU is sitting at like 38, everything else is around 30 celsius. This feels pretty high for idle which is why I think it might be a cooling issue.

Any insight, theories or suggestions would be highly appreciated, and I'm working on a very tight budget so can't afford to do anything crazy.

More about : poor performance upgrading

April 12, 2014 1:20:03 PM

Did you fully uninstall the nVidia drivers and the unwanted AMD drivers? What OS are you running?
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April 12, 2014 1:57:22 PM


    Update and reset your BIOS. Often there's bizzaro motherboard issues with some cards.
    Have you tried to start from ground 0? I know it's probably overkill, but a clean install followed by fresh drivers get rid of a lot of potential software issues.
    Play around with your CPU clock speed to see if you're CPU limited in some weird way.
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April 12, 2014 2:26:17 PM

I did a full uninstall of the Nvidia Drivers using the uninstall utility and then did a deep registry scan with Advanced System Care to get rid of any Nvidia remnants before fully installing the AMD Drivers. I followed the same procedure when trying out the different AMD Drivers.

I don't know how to reset the BIOS but the BIOS version is the current version listed by my motherboard. I could try resetting the bios if there is no potential risk to bricking my Mobo?

Operating system is Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. The OS was Fresh installed with no prior operating system when the PC was built in 2012; Windows is completely up-to-date and i've checked all drivers and they are up-to-date. I've never performed a clean install henceforth on this system; I could try it as a last resort but it would be extremely tedious and annoying as I use this PC daily especially for school.



The picture is my temperature sensor at the moment, it is about 80 degrees outside and this is with World of Warcraft running in the background on "Good" settings, have been playing for about an hour.

edit: seems the picture got cut off from showing my GPU temperatures. It is stating 39 degrees celcius for my gpu.
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Best solution

April 12, 2014 4:27:47 PM

First I would download Driver Sweeper from Guru3D or Driver Fusion. Through Programs uninstall AMD and Nvidia drivers. Remove the rest of all AMD and NVidia via the Driver Sweeper/Driver Fusion then reboot, be in VGA mode. Download the latest Catyalyst (actually scroll down on the screen there is newer betas usually below the normal one you see). Download and use Slim Drivers to download all the updated drivers not normally visible but necessary.

Then do the following Basics:
Download and run SPECCY, copy and paste the first tab to show your idle temps instead of estimated values.
Download and run MSI Afterburner, run some of the games, what temps are you getting when underload? Also check the demand with it, you provided some info, but with the above changes we should see some new numbers, so let's check that.

Remember to turn OFF Vsynch. This will cap your FPS.
Open Computer, Can Air dust out the bunnies and use paint brush on the vents, coolers, fans, etc. if you haven't done so yet.

Did you install all Windows Updates? Including options except BING? Check them and repeat till ALL are installed.

Remove whatever AV your using and go to www.filehippo.com and download AVAST! or AVG and do a full system scan - this repeatedly has resolved alot of people issue relying on MS Essentials and something was 'hidden' choking the system or worse as Norton been doing is causing lag on the system .

Download Malwarebytes do a full system scan (AV doesn't pick up alot of malware) - this resolved almost ALL other similiar posts to date as most had Malware the AV didn't pick up.

Repeat the AV/Malware scans till the system comes up clean.
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