New GTX 970 worse performance than my HD7870??!!

darkhelmet82 · Dec 23, 2014

Hello,

Got a new gtx 970 and the performance is not only worse than what I had expected, but also worse than my 7870 in most of my games. For shadows of mordor, I got a 30+ frame rate boost. In pretty much all other games, I got lower frames than my old card. I monitor with MSI Afterburner and in game menus it shows my clock at stock speed, but when in game it's hovering around 995 mhz. I've seen 2 other posts online where 2 people had the exact same problem but with different brand 970s. No fix was ever found and both people sent their cards back. I've read nothing but great reviews on this card. I've yet to reinstall windows, but I did delete my amd drivers and then ran driver sweeper to clean the remnants. Does anyone no a fix for this? The 2 people that posted with the same problem re installed windows and it still didn't fix the problem. Any advice would be greatly appreciated because other than rma'ing the card, I have no other idea of what to do, not even another card in mind that would offer the same performance without a psu upgrade(like r 290x). Here's my rig...

gigabyte 970-ud3a mobo
fx 6300 OC'd @ 4.4ghz
8gb of ram
evga 500 watt psu

Thanks in advance!

Last Perfect Support · Dec 23, 2014

Your CPU Is so bad that It bottlenecks the GPU, change back your old GPU or buy Intel processor.

darkhelmet82 · Dec 23, 2014

Last Perfect Support :

Ok, I honestly did not mean to select this as the best answer. I find that hard to believe when I've seen plenty of people(including on the 2 posts I mentioned) who had the exact same gpu/cpu combo and they had great performance. I've also heard from plenty of people on this site that that combo, while there may be a slight bottleneck only noticeable in benchmarks, is fine and that there is no way that pairing the same cpu with an even better gpu would give me less frames than my old gpu. This is a matter of something under clocking my gpu(old driver remnants) as it was the same issue with the other people reporting this problem. Again, in those posts, people with the same cpu and gpu were reporting that they had great performance. I'm really trying to avoid an amd/intel flame war and would rather just find a fix for this particular problem since I know it's not an amd/intel issue. Thanks for the reply

Last Perfect Support · Dec 23, 2014

I'm not looking for AMD, Intel war either but I could find it easy to bottleneck your GPU and you can see it also from the price what has like $400 difference.

darkhelmet82 · Dec 23, 2014

Last Perfect Support :

madmatt30 · Dec 23, 2014

Last Perfect Support :

bottlenecking deos not explain a gtx 970 performing worse than a hd7870 with exactly the same components.
& at 4.4ghz a 6300 will barely limit a gtx 970 if at all.

darkhelmet - yeah I got involved in that other thread & the guy gave up in the end & went back to his old gtx670 card.
Your gpu is not ramping upto its full clock speed imo.
Have you got any games with built in benches to compare - Im running a 6300 at 4ghz & a galax gtx 970 so would be a good comparison.

darkhelmet82 · Dec 23, 2014

Last Perfect Support :

No problem, but I went with amd and that's what I'm stuck with for a while. Intel maybe one day, but for now its amd for the processor. I just know that if bottle necking occurs, then at worst, upgrading to a new card would mean that there would just be no performance increase, not a loss in performance, esp with a gpu that's probably twice as good as the old one. Is there a way to un select this as best solution? No offense, I just don't want that to deter other people from answering and offering some technical advice.

Last Perfect Support · Dec 23, 2014

I think they just read the next comment and find out.

darkhelmet82 · Dec 23, 2014

madmatt30 :

Hey man, I think the only in game benchmark I can think of off the top of my head is shadows of mordor. with the 7870 and everything on close to max settings(textures on very high, or whatever the next one down from ultra is) and the benchmark said like 28 avg fps or something like that. last night i put everything on ultra and ran the benchmark and it was 59 avg fps. thats not a bad increase in my opinion. then I launched far cry 4. with the 7870 i was getting around 30 fps sometimes less according to fraps with the "high" preset and msaax2 . put in the 970 and set everything to ultra plus txaa x2 and was getting a fluctuation between 30 and 55 but for the most part it stayed in the 30s and regardless, the stuttering was worse than ever before. Arma 3....never even touched my graphics settings after switching to the 970 and in the same mission where i was previously getting around 30 to 40 fps(in some areas of the map...) i am now getting sometimes less than 20.

Last Perfect Support · Dec 23, 2014

Have you downloaded something to your computer lately? Has there been windows update, with illegal Windows it could do some bad stuff.

darkhelmet82 · Dec 23, 2014

Last Perfect Support :

Everything's legal man.

madmatt30 · Dec 23, 2014

I pull more fps than that ittwwith the shadow of mordor bench mate 70-80 on ultra with tessellation set to ultra too (1080p)
Farcry 4 is a bugbear yo me as I can't play it

madmatt30 · Dec 23, 2014

I pull more fps than that ittwwith the shadow of mordor bench mate 70-80 on ultra with tessellation set to ultra too (1080p) - with tesselation set to normal setting (ie just select the ultra preset it averages 90fps)

Farcry 4 is a bugbear to me as I can't play it with my 360 pad - but on ultra I frame lock vsync it to 50fps & haven't seen any drops below that.
All the arma games are in my steam library but I haven't even installed em tbh

Try the heaven 4 bench
http://unigine.com/products/heaven/

Set preset to custom & set everything to max including aa & tessellation & do a benchmark run 1080p full screen.
Post the results weblink it gives you - I'll run it shortly too.Its solely GPU intensive so results should be very very similar.

Ignore the post above ,mobile forums are playing up.

normal bench

darkhelmet82 · Dec 23, 2014

madmatt30 :

Cool man, I'll try the benchmark later. I'm at work so it'll be this evening before I can get to that. I have a feeling that I'm gonna have a pretty low score since this seems to be the same problem that the other people were having that I mentioned(and you as well). The thing that is stressing me out the most is those 2 people never found a fix. even after reformatting. I haven't tried that yet and if i can't find a fix without wiping my harddrive clean, then I'll do that as a last resort. I'm just really nervous that I'll end up with having all of my stuff to reinstall on top of still having the same problem with the new gpu. I can't wrap my head around the fact that you could re format and still have the same problem unless it was specifically the gpu and it just needs to be rma'd. btw, I have the MSI GTX 970 4GD5T OC. I'll try to run that bench mark and get the scores up here as soon as I get home. Thanks

madmatt30 · Dec 23, 2014

No problem mate - I'm just curious on your overclocks - how are you running them.
Solely multiplier in bios?? Using the auto over clock settings in bios or catalyst??
Just my over clocks are achieved solely via the multiplier - messing with north bridge or fsb can destabilise the pci-express lanes in my experience.

Bear in mind I own a ud3p board so am fully converse with its bios settings - I'm assuming your board is the earlier version so bios layout should be similar if not identical.

The other guy pretty much lost his rag with it all & returned the card before trying everything though - the suggestion that someone else made of a full format & reinstall was a drastic step IMO before trying other stuff.
My next suggestion to him was going to be to set the GPU clocks himself via MSI afterburner but I was a couple of hours too late.

darkhelmet82 · Dec 23, 2014

madmatt30 :

I'm using the multiplier in bios. nothing crazy, no bus speeds changed. can't remember my exact settings but its something like 1.35v and I can't remember the multiplier. somewhere around 22 or 23. haven't had a problem and was stable after an hour of prime 95 sitting nicely at 59 degrees. I'm using an evo hyper 212 to cool it. dude, i will try anything to get this working, esp if it doesn't call for reformatting. you will be my hero if you can help me out. Thanks again and I'll upload some scores later.

madmatt30 · Dec 23, 2014

darkhelmet82 :

madmatt30 :

I'm using the multiplier in bios. nothing crazy, no bus speeds changed. can't remember my exact settings but its something like 1.35v and I can't remember the multiplier. somewhere around 22 or 23. haven't had a problem and was stable after an hour of prime 95 sitting nicely at 59 degrees. I'm using an evo hyper 212 to cool it. dude, i will try anything to get this working, esp if it doesn't call for reformatting. you will be my hero if you can help me out. Thanks again and I'll upload some scores later.

thats good news mate,your doing things the sensible way
couple more questions,have you installed the msi gaming software which lets you change clock profiles between silent/gaming/oc modes??
Also did you have msi afterburner installed prior to installing the gtx970 when you had the 7870 in originally?

darkhelmet82 · Dec 23, 2014

madmatt30 :

Ok, here's the score http://

I hope I posted that link correctly. It's weird, i tried some games again, same ones, and it seems like its a little better. my clock speeds were flat at 1266. same in the benchmark, however my vram usage was only around 1170 in the benchmark but at one point in far cry 4 it hit 3140. and the memory clock was flat at 3506mhz. is that right? the card's specs say 7000mhz. is there something maybe going on there that would cause me to have a lower score than yours? i mean, its close but it seems like it should have been using more ram then that. card temps never went over 75 degrees. also, what does that x3 mean next to my cpu speed on the bench mark score? anyway, it looks like my problem might not be as horrible as i thought originally but i feel like i ought to be able to get a slightly better score than that.

madmatt30 · Dec 23, 2014

The link doesn't work mate - what was your overall score in heaven??
The men clock & core clock are right mate - the 3500 is DDR so needs doubling to get 7000 & the core clock is your boost clock speed.
The x3 in heaven is the physical number of cores in the CPU (3 cores/2 modules per core)
Heaven doesn't use that much vram so it all looks normal to be honest.

darkhelmet82 · Dec 23, 2014

madmatt30 :

ok, i didn't see your post before i posted my scores...which i did not do correctly. how do i post the link to my score? i tried to just copy and paste it when i went to the url my self after saving the link as a file. anyway, to answer your questions, i don't know about the msi software that lets me change between the modes you mentioned. i did however have msi afterburner installed when i had the 7870 and it is the same one im using now. did not even update yet, which i know i need to. oh and how about what i said about he memory clock speeds in the post with the effed up link? is that normal? thanks in advance

darkhelmet82 · Dec 23, 2014

madmatt30 :

ah, here you are, lol. ok cool. why 3 outta six cores? oh and my score was 1296.

scratch that, i somehow missed the part about 2 modules per core

madmatt30 · Dec 23, 2014

I uploaded the saved image to
http://postimage.org
Then added the thumbnail forum link to my post..
I would have you expected your score to be slightly higher than mine with a 10% CPU frequency increase.
I'm running a Galax exoc - its clocked a tiny bit faster than yours but were talking less than 1%.
Are you absolutely certain that your overclock is rock solid stable with no throttling at all?
Running hwinfo64 in conjunction with afterburner will give you all CPU core frequencies & usage in the afterburner overlay in game.

darkhelmet82 · Dec 23, 2014

madmatt30 :

pretty sure its stable. never had any problems. what about cpu-z? i have that, but i can get hwinfo if that is required.

Also, im not sure what throttling is or how to know if its happening

madmatt30 · Dec 23, 2014

Download hwinfo64 (Google it) install & run (sensor only setting)
Hwinfo shows all cores separately usage & frequency.
It also has minimum/maximum/average over a set time period.
With it running in the background youvcsn open afterburner settings & add this info to the in game overlay.
Which means you can keep a check to ensure all cores are staying at 4.4ghz solid ingame or while benchmarking.

darkhelmet82 · Dec 23, 2014

madmatt30 :

cool, running it now. 2 questions...should i uninstall and reinstall afterburner? and if there is throttling happening, or cores aren't all at 4.4ghz, what can be done to correct it?

New GTX 970 worse performance than my HD7870??!!

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