video card upgrade, GTX 970, per the forum's suggestions, and no performance change

[Vlakmir786]

Well, at least not the ones I am expecting.

Am I doing something wrong, here?
I asked the community about my rather bad FPS and everyone told me to upgrade my video card.

I have an AMD FX 8120 eight core
8gb of memory
Biostar A960D+
And had a Radeon 6850 HD 1gB, which I upgraded toa GTX 970 today.

I started elder scrolls online up and boom.....
maybe like...a 10 fps or so increase? On high settings I get like 15-30 FPS. This seems ridiculous.

I uninstalled the drivers using driver sweeper (or the newly named display something from guru3d) and set it to shut down afterwards, plopped in my new card and installed Nvidia drivers / rebooted. And now...it's like.... what? Where is this amazing performance I'm being told so much about??

???

 

[Gam3r01]

The problem here seems to be your processor, since its the first generation bulldozer "faildozer" architecture.
Even the old Phenom IIs (like my 965) offer similar if not better performance.

My recommendation, attempt to overclock, which still wont help much even if your board supported it.
Or
Get a new motherboard and processor.

 

[Vlakmir786]

So glad everyone on this forum told me to upgrade my video card.

blew $370 on something that didn't help.


thank's tom's.

 

[Vlakmir786]

thought I guess now that I think about it, it would be a mistake to take more advice from here.

 

[Gam3r01]

Sounds like someone didnt do their research before giving the recommendation, which can be an issue.
Your board does list FX processors up to 125w on it support list, if you can shell 150 for a 8320 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113285
or
110 for a 6300 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113286
Your issues should be resolved.

Before spending any more money, look in game at your CPU usage and GPU load. If the CPU is near 100, and the GPU is around 40% or similar, you need a new processor.

 

[Vlakmir786]

Well I asked 3 different tech forums + Reddit and they all seemed to agree getting a newer video card, 290 or GTX xyz would be great for me. I can definitely see some performance increases- I should clarify that. But for the girth and the power of the GTX 970 - I mean, cmon, I should be running elder scrolls online pretty easily unless something else is wrong.

And I should say that, yes, I have had some performance increases - but the stuttering that happens still happens.

Watching a monitor of both GPU and CPU it seems the GPU hit 60% once. Most of the time it was 25-40%.
The CPU total only hit 60% once - But looking at the 8 different cores, Core 7 was almost always maxed and the other cores would be around 10-20%. Then when a stutter would come for a few seconds, they'd jump up to 50% or so, with a few maxing, and then back down.

What I don't understand is why I can be never above 60% GPU, the highest total CPU max is 60% - One core is overused, and why I get anything below perfect smooth framerates. It's like my computer has the resources but just doesn't want to use them? I'm confused.

 

[Vlakmir786]

After playing with the affinity in the process, disabling some cores for ESO, I've noticed that setting it to something like, using 3 cores, gives me about 50 FPS and then hard stutters once they suddenly max out.

What I just flat out do not understand is why I would get below V-sync FPS when I'm using like, 50% of my three cores turned on and 40% of my GPS.

I just flat out do not understand the software/hardware there that explains things like this. I am at a loss because I would expect bottlenecking to be "100% of your CPU is getting used, or somewhere around 80% and then up to 100% (stutter) then to 80% (back to normal FPS).
But it's like I just get whatever FPS the game feels like giving me, and then I stutter when CPU usage spikes.

 

[lucky777s]

Are you having the same problem with other games or just TESO? If its just that 1 game this thread might help http://www.tesoelite.com/forums/threads/fix-stuttering-low-framerate-and-fps-drops.3537/

 

[junkeymonkey]

personally I don't see that cpu the issue

http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia/56/amd-fx-8350-powering-gtx-780-sli-vs-gtx-980-sli-at-4k/index.html

 

[junkeymonkey]

heres another test I found so the chip should not be a issue here

http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia/58/core-i7-4770k-vs-amd-fx-8350-with-gtx-980-vs-gtx-780-sli-at-4k/index.html

 

[junkeymonkey]

heck it may just be one of them luck of the draw things to.. what gtx do you have ?? evga asus ?? we all could buy the exact same card and we may not be close in performance one may kick a$$ and one may suck and the ones in between may be the average ??????

 

[jpmeneses21]

The best, surefire way to "feel" your upgrade is to benchmark your GTX 970. If you can, find benchmark videos of the 6850 on youtube. Benchmark your 970, and compare it to the 6850's results. You can use Unigine Heaven or Valley. They're effective, and quite GPU-intensive as well. And best of all, the basic version is free.

If I'm not mistaken, a 970 should be about more than twice the performance of a 6850. If you get a big jump in the score from your 6850, then the only conclusion is that ESO IS the problem.

If not, you can try checking the following.

1. http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/9090/learning-windows-7-manage-power-settings/
Make sure your power settings is set to high-performance. You can also check Processor Power Management under advanced settings. Make sure that your CPU is set to 100%.

2. You can also check your GPU via overclocking utility. Make sure that the "Power Target" of you GPU is also set at 100%. It's possible that it was set to lower than 100%. Any OC software is ok, but I personally recommend MSI afterburner or ASUS GPU Boost.

3. Just like number 1, you can also check the CPU power management in the BIOS. This is a bit advanced already, but you can just Google how to access the CPU power management in BIOS.

4. Based from personal experience, I've also experienced where one of my CPU cores (I have an i5 4570) acted strange. The CPU was idle but one of the four cores was spiking at 80 to 100% for no reason. It's possible that it was a virus or malware, but I wasn't able to fix it so I re-installed Windows and it fixed the problem.

5. Can also be a driver issue. You can re-install the latest Nvidia driver just to be sure. Also, your old AMD drivers can also be the suspect. Did you uninstall/remove all old AMD drivers for your 6850 before you installed/used your GTX 970?

 

[ccampy]

Try another game is my advice ESO probably being a mmo is CPU bound and relient ob single threaded power at thatthat of which the fx series has none

 

[PolishTank]

A thousand times what ccampy said. Any newer MMO runs like crap on AMD because of their single threaded architecture needs and AMD hasn't made a decent processor since the Phenom II. Get an Intel. Even an inexpensive i3. Problem solved.

 

[junkeymonkey]

so I guess the links I gave above are wrong?? his chip should not be the issue at all