x4 860K GTX 960 Benchmarks Scores are too low

Stefan Piechocki

Honorable
Jun 3, 2013
4
0
10,510
Hi

Struggling to find out what is wrong with PC.

Specs wise
FM2+ X4 860K
FM2A88X-ITX+ Motherboard
8GB DDR3 1600
Palit Jetstream 2GB GTX 960
Samsung 250gb mSATA SSD
Fractal Edison 550W

Running wise, its perfect, been up and running for 3 weeks no problems. Windows 8.1 with all updates. Latest Drivers for Nvidia, Latest Motherboard Bios and Drivers.

This wasn't for gaming as I have another one I use but was destined for front room. Some one asked how good it is for gaming so deceid to run a few benchmarks. This is where noticed problems.

3D Mark 06 (old I know) but I noticed when running that FPS was low, the GPU usage was only 25% and less than 500mb memory usage as per afterburner and scores were pretty low comparing to previous results from lot lesser specced machine. Overclocked CPU to 4.2/4.3Ghz to remove any potential bottlenecks and GPU left at stock at moment.

3DMArk scores across board all 4 versions form 06 to latest are less than i3 4130 and 2gb R9 270X even the graphics scores never mind CPU

Not seeing 100% load of close on GTX 960 on any run. I am getting roughly 69FPS on Heaven and card under load along with memory usage.

Icestorm only scores 76747, there are X4 860K and R7 250's in the 70500 range.

Nothing different to this PC than any other, fresh install no bloatware etc.

Have uninstalled and reinstalled, drivers etc but nothing changes.

Everything works perfect, tried GTX 960 in my i5 4460 PC and can play Titanfall easily at 1440p, Dying Light works no problem

 
Solution
1) Stock Haswell i3 is faster than stock Athlon 860K in almost all game engines and tasks, including 3DMarks.
2) Kaveri's memory controller is tuned for high speed RAM. Use dual channel, dual ranked DDR3-2400 for best results. Your DDR3-1600 is not helping.
3) If you overclock and properly tune your 860K it will beat the i3-4130 in more tasks.
4) Keep in mind that the Haswell i3, despite being a "dual-core" behaves as a quad-core due to hyper threading. It is no slouch of a gaming CPU and often performs just as well as a Haswell i5.
5) Try using real game benchmarks, like the new FF14 Heavensward benchmark. It's free and you don't need the game for it to run.
The x4 860k is no where near the same level as the i5-4460 and is probably why you are seeing such a huge difference. It is absolutely lower in performance than the i3-4130... The AMD x4 is basically an Athlon CPU (lacks level 3 cache) and is not really a great idea for CPU intensive gaming.

Are you overclocked at all?
 
1) Stock Haswell i3 is faster than stock Athlon 860K in almost all game engines and tasks, including 3DMarks.
2) Kaveri's memory controller is tuned for high speed RAM. Use dual channel, dual ranked DDR3-2400 for best results. Your DDR3-1600 is not helping.
3) If you overclock and properly tune your 860K it will beat the i3-4130 in more tasks.
4) Keep in mind that the Haswell i3, despite being a "dual-core" behaves as a quad-core due to hyper threading. It is no slouch of a gaming CPU and often performs just as well as a Haswell i5.
5) Try using real game benchmarks, like the new FF14 Heavensward benchmark. It's free and you don't need the game for it to run.
 
Solution