Can anyone explain why I get low FPS in older games with a higher end PC?

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morrowheat23

morrowheat23

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Nov 12, 2013
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My PC is fairly good by today's standards and here recently I've been trying to play some of the hundreds of steam games I own. However, I'm noticing the same problem with games, most of them run like absolute crap on my PC. A recent example is Far Cry 2. I was able to mostly max out Far Cry 3 and obtain 60 FPS anywhere I went with my PC, but as I loaded up Far Cry 2, and tweaked a few graphical settings, leaving the "General Performance" options at low, and everything else set to "Optimal" I jumped into the game. I immediately noticed I was only getting 17-34 FPS and would never go above that, along with some stuttering.
I also noticed this with Assassins Creed (2007). I had all of the settings turned up, and only was getting 14-20 FPS in the opening Masyaf sequence, after fighting the Templars at the beginning. I turned all of the settings as far down as they could go, and restarted the game, and still was only met with around 40 FPS. I believe my PC is more than powerful enough to handle 7 year old games and more than low settings and 30 FPS.
PC SPECS:
CPU: AMD FX-8350 8 Core @ 4.0Ghz Black Edition
GPU: MSI R9 290x Gaming Edition 4GB
RAM: G Skill Sniper Series 8GB @ 1866 Mhz
MOBO: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3
OS: Windows 8.1 64-bit
PICTURES:
jsOXkMB.jpg
7ga5UGn.jpg
 
Solution
MarkW
If you have antialiasing on anything over 4x, or any of the other "jaggy fixers", turn them down. WAY down. Water quality, smoke, PhysicX, not even to mention long distance view, those things will kill your FPS. Go through every setting in those games. Read the description on each and every one of those. When it tells you that lowering the setting could improve performance, write down the name of the setting, and what it at. Once you have a list of the items you know you need to turn down to improve performance, go back to the ones most likely to make a major difference, take them from where they were down two notches. Make notes every time you make a change. Keep doing this until you get to where the game will run like you want it to...
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harryfishrules

harryfishrules

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Hey morrowheat23. This does sound a bit odd. I suspect your issue is that newer games are specifically optimised for newer cards and allow huge performance increases whilst older games don't manage the GPU as efficiently. What percentage of utilisation does your GPU run at whilst playing these older games?
 
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morrowheat23

morrowheat23

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Is there a way to check that? My Logitech G13's LCD displays CPU and RAM usage only. Perhaps CPUID HWMonitor? I've also notced that when opening up CPU-Z my CPU speed doesn't go up past 1.4GHz. Ubisoft themselves said that their games benefit from a higher clock speed rather than a more powerful GPU.
 
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harryfishrules

harryfishrules

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Use MSI Afterburner: (http://gaming.msi.com/features/afterburner)
 
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MarkW

MarkW

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Post screenshots of both CPU-Z and GPU-Z to a site like TinyPic.com, and use the IMG link they give you to post copies of those images into this thread.

You can capture the screen shot of the output by selecting the CPU-Z or GPU-Z window, then pressing ALT-PrtScrn button, and then opening Paint or any picture editor, and save the image as a JPG image.

Then upload that to any pic site. I use TinyPic.com because its free and simple to use.
 
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morrowheat23

morrowheat23

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Pics are up in the original post.
 
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morrowheat23

morrowheat23

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UPDATE: I turned off 3 BIOS features that limited the CPU's power consumption, taking my core clock from 1.4 Ghz and back to the 4.0 Ghz that it is supposed to run at out of the box, and switched my PC off of the Power Saver Plan. However, when testing AC1, I still got 40-60 FPS with some settings still turned down. I believe my PC can handle this game no problem, or are these results to be expected out of my rig?
 
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morrowheat23

morrowheat23

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No overclocking was done. These are stock speeds.
 
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MarkW

MarkW

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If you have antialiasing on anything over 4x, or any of the other "jaggy fixers", turn them down. WAY down. Water quality, smoke, PhysicX, not even to mention long distance view, those things will kill your FPS. Go through every setting in those games. Read the description on each and every one of those. When it tells you that lowering the setting could improve performance, write down the name of the setting, and what it at. Once you have a list of the items you know you need to turn down to improve performance, go back to the ones most likely to make a major difference, take them from where they were down two notches. Make notes every time you make a change. Keep doing this until you get to where the game will run like you want it to. There will be some games that simply will refuse to run at the FPS you want. That happens. Game developers are designing games to make them beautiful on 4K monitors and even higher. Most of us will not have those video cards and monitors for years. If you do what I have suggested here, you will figure out which settings make a difference for you in games, and the process will go faster for you after that. But keep those notes handy. Because some games will need different settings lowered.
 
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Solution
morrowheat23

morrowheat23

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Some games don't have lots of options keep in mind.
 
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