Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in
Your question
Solved

Poor performance and graphics utilization from R9 290

Tags:
  • Performance
  • AMD
  • Sapphire
  • Graphics
Last response: in Graphics & Displays
Share
July 24, 2014 3:50:34 PM

So I upgraded my gaming rig with a Sapphire R9 290 vapor-x OC edition (the blue one). And I have been getting frankly sub par performance. In bf3 on ultra on 1920x1080 I am only getting in the 50's and some dips into the 30's and it makes for a really poor playing experience. Upon looking at my gpu utilization in msi afterburner it getting really weird what look like throttling issues. But the card is staying in the high 50's. And I know reference cards run at like 80*. This issue is really bothering me and I am wondering what could be my problem.

System Specs:
FX6300 @4.7ghz
8gb Crucial Ballistix Sport @1600mhz (dual channel)
Asrock 970 extreme 3
Sapphire R9 290 OC edition stock clocks
Cooler Master GX750 psu (could this be the issue?)


More about : poor performance graphics utilization 290

July 24, 2014 3:57:21 PM

ThomasPK said:
So I upgraded my gaming rig with a Sapphire R9 290 vapor-x OC edition (the blue one). And I have been getting frankly sub par performance. In bf3 on ultra on 1920x1080 I am only getting in the 50's and some dips into the 30's and it makes for a really poor playing experience. Upon looking at my gpu utilization in msi afterburner it getting really weird what look like throttling issues. But the card is staying in the high 50's. And I know reference cards run at like 80*. This issue is really bothering me and I am wondering what could be my problem.

System Specs:
FX6300 @4.7ghz
8gb Crucial Ballistix Sport @1600mhz (dual channel)
Asrock 970 extreme 3
Sapphire R9 290 OC edition stock clocks
Cooler Master GX750 psu (could this be the issue?)



Do you have the latest drivers?
m
0
l
July 24, 2014 3:57:50 PM

Indeed I do, that was the first thing I tried to check.
m
0
l
Related resources
a c 150 À AMD
July 24, 2014 3:58:28 PM

What temp is your 6300 getting to - per uefi/bios?

What % usage is your cpu at (per Task Manager) while your 290 is running flat out?

What cpu cooler are you using?

What motherboard make and model?

What 12v, 5v and 3.3v readings are you getting in bios/usefi?
m
0
l
a b À AMD
July 24, 2014 3:58:33 PM

I don't have time to look into everything at the moment, but I can assure you that your system would run just fine on a 550w power supply, much less that 750w. Now, it's not the best make in the world, so it could be failing, but it wouldn't look like that.

I'm inclined to blame it on your CPU, especially since BF4 is very CPU demanding and the FX6300 is not an incredibly strong contender. (Though the overclock must help with that.)

Try running the game the same way you had it, and then try running it at very minimum details but the same resolution. What happens?
m
0
l
July 24, 2014 4:07:41 PM

Want to point out not BF4, but on BF3. And my cpu temps are not very high at all. 60* c under full load running prime 95. And I am using a DarkRock 3 by BeQuiet. And while playing the game my cpu isn't being maxed. Its at about 60% on each core. My motherboard is an Asrock 970 Extreme 3.

And Dark, I am about to try what you said and report back with the results.

EDIT/UPDATE: I just did a BIOS update...and I may have fixed the issue. Will write back in a few.
m
0
l
July 24, 2014 6:22:26 PM

Okay so I am having other issues and am having trouble staring up battlefield. But in this MMO, Tera. Between Ultra and The lowest graphics settings. I am not getting that much of a difference in fps around towns where there a ton of npc's to render. And my graphics utilization looks really shaky. Like major throttling. My Gpu utilization graph in msi afterburner looks like a stock market graph. I am at a loss here.
m
0
l
a c 150 À AMD
July 24, 2014 7:20:26 PM

What 12v, 5v and 3.3v readings are you getting in bios/usefi?
m
0
l
July 24, 2014 9:34:55 PM

11.985, 5.112, 3.312
m
0
l
a b À AMD
July 24, 2014 9:37:59 PM

ThomasPK said:
Okay so I am having other issues and am having trouble staring up battlefield. But in this MMO, Tera. Between Ultra and The lowest graphics settings. I am not getting that much of a difference in fps around towns where there a ton of npc's to render. And my graphics utilization looks really shaky. Like major throttling. My Gpu utilization graph in msi afterburner looks like a stock market graph. I am at a loss here.


That's not graphics throttling, that's due to the fact that the graphics card doesn't have enough to do.

I would put money on the fact that your overclock is either not quite stable or is producing too much heat... and that the system is then throttling your CPU rather drastically to compensate.

(That being said, both Tera and BF4 are pretty CPU-heavy, and that's a midrange CPU... try running a game that's a lot less intensive on the CPU but has good graphics and see how it deals with that.)
m
0
l
a c 150 À AMD
July 24, 2014 9:43:20 PM

They're OK so your power supply is OK.

Try a different graphics card.
m
0
l
July 24, 2014 9:46:37 PM

But if the card doesn't have enough to do, why do I get fps dips into the 30's? But also runs just fine a few moments before in the 60's? And the clock does seem stable, since I ran a stress test for over an hour and it was fine. But on that note I tried to run at stock clock and same results.

Also, I am having major issues right now where I will try and open up any browser (tested with several, chrome, explorer, opera) and my I guess display driver crashes. And my whole screen goes black and I have to reboot. I thought I had a handle on all this computer stuff after a little over a year. But I seem to be making my problem worse the more I touch it.

I am gonna tackle this issue more tomorrow.
m
0
l
a b À AMD
July 25, 2014 10:38:36 AM

ThomasPK said:
But if the card doesn't have enough to do, why do I get fps dips into the 30's? But also runs just fine a few moments before in the 60's? And the clock does seem stable, since I ran a stress test for over an hour and it was fine. But on that note I tried to run at stock clock and same results.

Also, I am having major issues right now where I will try and open up any browser (tested with several, chrome, explorer, opera) and my I guess display driver crashes. And my whole screen goes black and I have to reboot. I thought I had a handle on all this computer stuff after a little over a year. But I seem to be making my problem worse the more I touch it.

I am gonna tackle this issue more tomorrow.


The answer to your first questions there is simple - because it's getting held back by the CPU. Either the game suddenly has calculations that have to be processed by the CPU that aren't getting done fast enough, thus resulting in a drop in fps, or there's an issue with how the game is asking the CPU to feed data to the graphics card.

If you do a little research, you'll see that the minimum framerate when you're having lag spike issues like that, is almost always the CPU's fault. The fact that you ran it at stock clock and got the same results, however, is... strange.

Now, looking at the second thing there... that makes me strongly suspect that it's either your graphics card or motherboard that's starting to have issues. I know the feeling of thinking like nothing makes sense, and in my experience, it's from a part slowly failing.

Do you have a friends' computer that you can test your graphics card in?


i7Baby said:
According to http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/6354/sapphire-radeon-r... you should be getting about 120 fps.

Your cpu is not bottlenecking it.

So try a different graphics card.


...Wow, erm, what? Aside from the fact that that's a poor benchmark and they don't explicitly go over their test bench, you're missing something really key here...

Benchmarking of graphics cards is designed to run with as little chance of a bottlemark as possible.

That means they're either running a i7 extreme, or at the very least, a very heavily overclocked regular i7, a bare minimum of 16GB of ram, nothing but an SSD, and a clean install of windows with nothing but the game on it.

That means that if the graphics card isn't held back, it should be getting an average of about 110 fps and a minimum drop of about 80 in very intense areas with a lot of explosions.

The fact that it isn't getting that, is in fact indicative of a huge bottleneck somewhere, and the most likely culprit is the CPU.

Yes, it could be a failing graphics card, and with the display driver kicking out like that, it makes me suspect that it might be.. but what you provided was more proof for my point, not proof that it wasn't the CPU acting up.

m
0
l
July 25, 2014 1:17:59 PM

Okay so this is most definitely my 290. I am getting better, more stable performance from a 7790 and an R9 270. I also was able to run all three cards on a separate system to see if the results differ. And it is the same story. Constant crashes and unstable performance from the 290.

Now I suppose there could be compatibility issues with my motherboard and cpu...but I doubt it would be this severe.
m
0
l
a c 150 À AMD
July 25, 2014 5:02:05 PM

Try your 290 in another pc. If it runs OK, then there's something wrong with your pc. If not, then RMA your 290.
m
0
l
July 26, 2014 12:52:42 AM

I ran it in both mine and my friends computers.
m
0
l

Best solution

a c 150 À AMD
July 26, 2014 1:02:38 AM

So if it didn't run any good then RMA it.
Share
July 26, 2014 1:04:41 AM

ThomasPK said:
Okay so this is most definitely my 290. I am getting better, more stable performance from a 7790 and an R9 270. I also was able to run all three cards on a separate system to see if the results differ. And it is the same story. Constant crashes and unstable performance from the 290.

Now I suppose there could be compatibility issues with my motherboard and cpu...but I doubt it would be this severe.


Hate to state the obvious but looks like an RMA is in order for that 290
m
0
l
!