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8350 OC Bottlenecking GTX 660 SLI

Tags:
  • Gtx
  • Graphics
  • Bottleneck
  • CPUs
  • SLI
Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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May 23, 2014 10:32:00 AM

I just got a second card installed but when I try to game with it I always hit a CPU bottleneck. I haven't been able to get both of the cards very far past about 50% usage, which is quite ironically frustrating. In BF4 the cards stay about 40-50% usage, while the CPU is at around 50% useage and the FPS is very jagged around 30-50. Similar performance shows up in all graphics demanding games I have checked with as well.

FX-8350 4.7 clock 1.35v
ASUS GTX 660 DCUII OC SLI
Sabertooth 990FX R2.0
Rosewill Hive 650W

More about : 8350 bottlenecking gtx 660 sli

a c 150 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 10:37:23 AM

With your CPU not at 100%, there may be another bottleneck, and I suspect it is the platform. OC your NB. This thought is based on some old data; hopefully someone with more current metrics can step in on this, but I don't think it is the CPU.
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May 23, 2014 10:40:18 AM

Onus said:
OC your NB. I suspect the platform is the bottleneck, but that thought is based on some old data; hopefully someone with more current metrics can step in on this.


I currently have a water cooling system on my CPU (H80i) and just have a 92mm fan aimed at the vcore. Would overclocking the NB cause a temp concern?
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a c 150 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 10:42:21 AM

On a Sabertooth? Probably not, but you always watch your temps when overclocking, and take it in small steps.
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a b à CPUs
May 23, 2014 10:57:10 AM

sounds like you have alot connected to that power supply... 650 is hte minimum for SLI. but those dont take account overclocks.

i'm not sure it's enough for a power hungry 8350... and i'm going to guess you have your GPUs overclocked as well?

try resetting everything to stock speeds, and see if you actually 'get more with less'.

then you know you'll need a bigger PSU
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a c 150 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 11:00:36 AM

That could be, but the Hive is a decent PSU, and the GTX660 is a pretty frugal card, with only one 6-pin PCIe power connector, so 650W ought to be enough.

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a c 100 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 11:26:57 AM

8350 @ 4.7 with LLC voltage bump under load will pull a LOT of current. Make sure you have a good PSU.

It will also generate a LOT of heat. An H80i should be able to handle it, provided your case has good ventilation and you aren't getting heat build up from the SLI setup.

BF4 will use the cores the 8350 has available. What CPU usage are you seeing while gaming?

I've had a Phenom II x6 1090T @ 4.0GHz able to drive 2 HD 7950's to 95-99% usage in crossfire playing Crysis 3. So the platform is capable of good performance when tuned properly.

For SLI, you NEED to have a 990FX board. If you are on a 970 board the chipset will not support both cards at x16. A 990FX board will do both GPUs at x16. This may be your problem.

Hope this info helped.
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a c 150 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 11:36:11 AM

The Sabertooth is a 990FX. Make sure the two cards are in x16 slots.
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a c 100 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 11:37:52 AM

Onus said:
The Sabertooth is a 990FX. Make sure the two cards are in x16 slots.


Yup, I just missed that detail above. Board should be fine, checking the slots being used is a good call.
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May 23, 2014 12:07:19 PM

maddogfargo said:
8350 @ 4.7 with LLC voltage bump under load will pull a LOT of current. Make sure you have a good PSU.

It will also generate a LOT of heat. An H80i should be able to handle it, provided your case has good ventilation and you aren't getting heat build up from the SLI setup.

BF4 will use the cores the 8350 has available. What CPU usage are you seeing while gaming?

I've had a Phenom II x6 1090T @ 4.0GHz able to drive 2 HD 7950's to 95-99% usage in crossfire playing Crysis 3. So the platform is capable of good performance when tuned properly.

For SLI, you NEED to have a 990FX board. If you are on a 970 board the chipset will not support both cards at x16. A 990FX board will do both GPUs at x16. This may be your problem.

Hope this info helped.


The temps haven't increased since installing the second 660. While gaming all cores go to around 30-50% and never see any spikes going anywhere past that area, even though there are serious stutters in game. I could use some help on which slot is x16 since I just put the card in the slot that seemed to make sense. It was the same color as the first cards slot. Also if I were to try and put it in any of the other slots the fans on the card wouldn't have room for the air to flow.

Onus said:
With your CPU not at 100%, there may be another bottleneck, and I suspect it is the platform. OC your NB. This thought is based on some old data; hopefully someone with more current metrics can step in on this, but I don't think it is the CPU.


Tried that out and I didn't see any improvement at all.
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a c 150 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 12:11:46 PM

You want to use the two tan slots; the one nearest the CPU, and the one that is the same color.
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May 23, 2014 12:14:12 PM

Onus said:
You want to use the two tan slots; the one nearest the CPU, and the one that is the same color.


That is the one I slotted it into. I did notice though that one of the cards is labeled "PCI-E 3.0 x 16 @ x8 2.0" using NVIDIA Inspector.
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a b à CPUs
May 23, 2014 12:19:27 PM

lower your cpu OC to 4.4 then check for improvements.

if the fps normalizes in games then, you may need to up the voltage on your 4.7 OC for stability.
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May 23, 2014 12:29:20 PM

plaintuts said:
lower your cpu OC to 4.4 then check for improvements.

if the fps normalizes in games then, you may need to up the voltage on your 4.7 OC for stability.


Tried it with no improvement.
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a b à CPUs
May 23, 2014 12:36:06 PM

thats odd then,

i have an sli of gtx760 on my 8350, its not showing signs of bottleneck..

have you tried bios update? driver update? every update?
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May 23, 2014 12:39:44 PM

plaintuts said:
thats odd then,

i have an sli of gtx760 on my 8350, its not showing signs of bottleneck..

have you tried bios update? driver update? every update?


BIOS, windows updates, video card drivers + bios, audio drivers, I got everything that comes to mind updated in the last week.
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a b à CPUs
May 23, 2014 12:49:28 PM

swapping the gpu posistion?

but basically, since your gpu or cpu are not hitting at least 80% on games then the problem maybe somewhere else.

can you reset all your OC back to defaults, CPU and GPU then check if the problem worsens.
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May 23, 2014 12:54:36 PM

plaintuts said:
swapping the gpu posistion?

but basically, since your gpu or cpu are not hitting at least 80% on games then the problem maybe somewhere else.

can you reset all your OC back to defaults, CPU and GPU then check if the problem worsens.


I tried that when you said to set the CPU to the default clock. Got everything to its stock settings and lost a good 10 FPS. I got my CPU and both GPUs to hit 99% usage through using 2 different stability testing softwares so I don't think it has anything to do with the PSU at this point either.
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a b à CPUs
May 23, 2014 1:14:11 PM

this may sound tedious,

remove your SLI config

one at a time, heaven benchmark your gpu on stock cpu clock,

just to check if a marginal difference will occur.

if nothing, then

unless this is a driver issue, an overclock instability or ram overclock,

the sabertooth is a good mobo but 30 fps on an OC'd SLI, somethings wrong.
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a c 150 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 1:17:04 PM

Testing the cards individually does seem to be a reasonable thing to do to rule out a card problem.
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a c 84 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 1:47:16 PM

Run the valley 1.0 bench in sli in full screen and post the scores.
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May 23, 2014 2:17:35 PM

Onus said:
Testing the cards individually does seem to be a reasonable thing to do to rule out a card problem.


In Heaven Benchmark:
SLI - 1827
Card A - 1066
Card B - 1062

They stick very close to 99% usage using heaven. A single bad card doesn't seem to be the issue.
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a c 84 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 2:35:09 PM

If you are getting 99% usage the cpu is definitely not a problem
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a c 84 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 2:40:39 PM

If that's at 1080 at extreme hd 1800 is pretty good
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May 23, 2014 2:42:50 PM

coolcole01 said:
If you are getting 99% usage the cpu is definitely not a problem


Full screen max settings on Unigine Valley Benchmark got:

FPS: 52.8
Score: 2209
Min FPS: 20.3
Max FPS: 66.8

Benchmarking programs like that have no problem pushing the SLI to its limits. Its just when I play a game with the setup I don't see CPU usage, GPU usage, or FPS maxed out. Also the last benchmark was just to compare the two cards so I didn't have it running at 1920x1080.
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a c 84 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 2:45:32 PM

Ok what games you playing and what's your fps and settings bud. Because it is working let's see what else might be affecting it
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May 23, 2014 3:24:42 PM

coolcole01 said:
Ok what games you playing and what's your fps and settings bud. Because it is working let's see what else might be affecting it


Well I know my FPS was pretty bad in BF4 usually around the 40 area and would have pretty intense stutters. I just booted up Crysis 3 for a while, and all settings maxed except AA its running smooth at a pretty reliable 60 FPS with both GPUs working full force. I'm looking through my list of games to see if any others throttle like this.

Update: Looks like it happens in Borderlands 2 too kind of. Took off the FPS cap and it was stuck at 62 with everything running at about 40%
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a c 167 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 3:47:46 PM

I would try a totally clean windows reinstallation, just to rule out any software issue.
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May 23, 2014 6:20:09 PM

I don't think the problem is with the SLI configuration. In BF4 I can vastly improve my overall FPS and reduce the stuttering reducing Anti-Aliasing and Ambient Occulsion, which seem to be very CPU dependent. The only question is why are these features bogging down my system when my CPU is nowhere near the usage cap?
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a c 84 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 6:26:17 PM

I just highly doubt it i have two hd 7950's in crossfire with the 8350 and it was great in bf4 ran in the high 90's on ultra with everything so the cpu is more than capable what os do you have
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May 23, 2014 6:40:43 PM

coolcole01 said:
I just highly doubt it i have two hd 7950's in crossfire with the 8350 and it was great in bf4 ran in the high 90's on ultra with everything so the cpu is more than capable what os do you have


Had to upgrade from 7 to 8.1 to stop a pretty consistent stutter with the FX series I ran into. Before I got my SLI and kicked everything from high (exluding AA and AO which were off) to ultra(including those two) and my FPS was shot to hell and I get stutters most of the time during firefights.

In comparison using FRAFS:

Before After
min FPS 23 13
max MS 60 400
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a c 84 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 6:44:24 PM

I think something else is up holy crap is your vcore really 1.35
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May 23, 2014 6:48:00 PM

coolcole01 said:
I think something else is up holy crap is your vcore really 1.35


Yeah, I brought it up to 1.35 and ran prime95 for a half hour and never had a failed worker. Had it like that for a few weeks now and havent had a weird crash at all.
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a c 84 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 6:49:29 PM

dude you may not be getting any prime errors but it is highly undervolted pump it up to at least 1.45 and play your games what cooler do you have
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May 23, 2014 6:57:11 PM

coolcole01 said:
dude you may not be getting any prime errors but it is highly undervolted pump it up to at least 1.45 and play your games what cooler do you have


If I bump up the voltage that high im gonna have serious thermal issues. Running prime95 at 4.8 with 1.4v was enough to make it throttle when I was trying to push it further. I have reseated the pump 3 times and haven't gotten any improvement either.
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Best solution

a c 84 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 6:59:27 PM

at stock the fx 8350 hits 1.42 regularly at 4.2 so if you cant sustain it back it down its not meant to run that low of voltage
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a c 84 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 6:59:39 PM

whats your cooler
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a c 84 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 7:00:02 PM

at what temp do you think you got throttled
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May 23, 2014 7:02:12 PM

coolcole01 said:
whats your cooler

Currently running an H80i as exhaust, but I have good airflow in the case so its not being held back too much. I don't use Corsair Link because I ran into so many bugs that made it a huge hassle. I just plugged the fans into the motherboard and control them via ASUS Thermal Radar. Max fan speed dropped to 2300 RPM for some reason but it doesnt run much hotter.
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a c 84 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 7:05:29 PM

theres your problem run them from the pump you dont need corsair link for them to work i had a friend who did the same thing and it had some problem and we switched it and his temps dropped somethings wrong you can get better than what your doing on air
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May 23, 2014 7:10:29 PM

coolcole01 said:
theres your problem run them from the pump you dont need corsair link for them to work i had a friend who did the same thing and it had some problem and we switched it and his temps dropped somethings wrong you can get better than what your doing on air


I don't understand the issue. Without Corsair Link the fans would just be set to max without any guidance. I put them in the motherboard so I could control them with the ASUS software which is much more dependable. I had this issue back when I was using Corsair Link anyway.
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a c 84 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 7:12:28 PM

i dont get it either you would think it would work the same but for some reason it made a big difference also are you using a sp fan
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a c 84 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 7:13:26 PM

my friend has his 8350 at 1.44 @ 4.7 and his cores top out at 60 which is pretty perfect
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May 23, 2014 7:19:02 PM

coolcole01 said:
my friend has his 8350 at 1.44 @ 4.7 and his cores top out at 60 which is pretty perfect


When I had my voltage up in that area it pretty much capped at 60c too. Its just I was getting a lot of thermal warnings from asus thermal radar so I backed off. The vcore especially was hitting 80C.
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a c 84 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 7:22:50 PM

vcore is voltage and you have one of the best oc amd boards made get hardware monitor and use it for temps the one that says cpu is actually the socket it can go to 72 but you will get a warning at 65 the cores which will show as the package can get to 62
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May 23, 2014 7:27:44 PM

coolcole01 said:
vcore is voltage and you have one of the best oc amd boards made get hardware monitor and use it for temps the one that says cpu is actually the socket it can go to 72 but you will get a warning at 65 the cores which will show as the package can get to 62


Alright so I should just keep bumping up the voltage as see if that improves my performance in games?
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a c 84 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 7:30:49 PM

should look like this
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May 23, 2014 8:21:07 PM

Bumped the voltage up to 1.4 and the stutters are completely gone and I got a good 30 fps increase. Thank you!

You just solved a problem ive had for like a year and just grown to live with.
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a c 84 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 8:22:12 PM

your welcome bud
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a c 84 à CPUs
May 23, 2014 8:24:18 PM

theres a lot of people with undervolted amd chips that think they are running bad when they just have not been shown how to properly overclock when running correctly these chips are pretty awesome
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!