gyking94 :
clutchc :
I'd say you have something eating CPU clock cycles. There is no other reason the i5 would struggle. Do you have a lot of stuff running at startup when you try to game? Check your tray and see how many items are running. Eliminate as many as possible.
Maybe you better run CCleaner and do the Clean and Registry portions both. And do a malware check to see if you have bloatware taking up clock cycles. Same with a virus scan after updating.
I did a fresh install and reset the BIOS one time and still had the problem. I'm pretty sure everything is configured right. Nothing major runs in the background either. I really think the i5 sometimes bottleneck. In certain maps in Crysis 3, one core has 90% usage and I experience stutter.
That sure sounds like it is a CPU issue. But unless the processor isn't running at its full potential, I can't think of any reason it would be that slow. Are all 4 cores active? My old i5-2500K never had an issue with my R9-290X running Crysis3.
In fact, my even older Phenom II X4 965BE @ 4.0 GHz and my R9-280 can run C3 with no issues. Both were at 1080p resolution. Here are my notes from benchmarks I ran with the PhII/280:
Settings: System Specs High, Textures High, SMAA small 1x
CPU Usage 90-100%. GPU usage 50-100%.
If you feel like it, run the Firestrike benchmark from Futuremark and I'll compare scores with you. I have several builds' results saved. I should be able to come close to your system.