Please help me with my low fps problem r9 390

jkelley9 · Dec 1, 2015

I've searched around and haven't found a solution to my problem.

I just upgrades my HD 6870 to an R9 390 (MSI 8GB 512-bit with the twin frozn cooler & cooling backplate).
I play WoW (no other games to test unfortunately) and thought I could jam on ultra settings since I absolutely should be able to. Unfortunately, I'm sitting around 40 fps in 25m raids and I will bounce from 90-100 fps out by myself down to 40 fps very often.

Playing on 2560x1080 ultrawide monitor.
I did a DDU driver complete uninstall then downloaded and installed the latest AMD Crimson driver.
I ran Furmark at 2560x1080 with dynamic background, burn-in, xtreme burn-in, and post-fx all enabled - I saw a constant 40 fps over 7 minutes of testing, temperature was completely stable at 78°C and the fan wasn't even running more than 75%. So my GPU seems to check out fine, albeit this was only a 7 minute test.

When I'm playing WoW and running MSI afterburner, my core clock jumps up to the posted 1040Mhz but also jumps down to ~300-350 Mhz often. Also, my GPU usage spikes around a lot and doesn't really go over ~50%, and since it spikes all over the place, let's just say the "average" gpu usage is around ~25% but pretty much jumps between 10% and 45%. CPU load never goes over ~40%. All temperatures are very cool.

My monitor is 75 Hz but I have it set to 75 Hz in WoW with vsync disabled.
Monitor "freesync" is disabled also.
I have the monitor hooked up via displayport cable.

System:
Phenom II x4 965 black 3.4Ghz stock clock (no OC)
Hyper 212 Evo cooler for CPU
ASRock 970 EXTREME3 AM3+ AMD 970 + SB950 5 x SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)
MSI Radeon R9 390 DirectX 12 R9 390 GAMING 8GB 512-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0
Mushkin Enhanced ECO2 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC SSD
Windows 10 64-bit
Rosewill RBR1000-MS 1000W Active PFC PSU - Continuous @ 104 Deg. F (40C)

I feel like my machine should be MORE than capable of handling WoW at full settings without any stuttering (which it's also currently doing).

My are my CPU usage, GPU usage, and temps so low and why don't they try harder to up my FPS when gaming? The GPU fan barely even kicks on because the temps are so low to begin with (low GPU load). Even though I'm playing at a higher resolution 2560x1080, I have more than enough vram to handle it now (8GB). I drop down to ~15 fps at times when walking around a crowded city too, which is annoying. Even my old HD 6870 didn't do that.

Please help!

tsxfire · Dec 1, 2015

From the specs at least to me, it sounds like the GPU is being bottle-necked by the processor but I would see what others have to say

Tam99 · Dec 1, 2015

Do you have any core run at 100% constantly while the others is just chilling out?
Maybe because that CPU is old and throttles your GPU's performance.

jkelley9 · Dec 1, 2015

I checked out logicalincrements.com for info on bottlenecking and it says that my 965 shouldn't bottleneck at all. Also, my CPU usage is always low. It almost never spikes over 75% on a single core.

Also, it may be worth mentioning that I'm running MSAA 2x AA.

I'm also running around my garrison at like 23-30 fps even at 1920x1080p windowed mode. Even when running furmark at 2560x1080 with a full burn in test I was getting 40 fps constant lol.

jkelley9 · Dec 1, 2015

Tam99 :

Nope, all cores sitting comfortably around 50% with very small fluctuations.

jkelley9 · Dec 15, 2015

Okay, so I've overhauled my PC to try and fix this issue. I now have the following build:

Intel Core i5-6600k (no OC)
witha new Hyper 212 Evo cooler for CPU
GIGABYTE G1 Gaming GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 (rev. 1.0) LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2133 (PC4 17000) Intel Z170 Platform / Intel X99
MSI Radeon R9 390 DirectX 12 R9 390 GAMING 8GB 512-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0
Mushkin Enhanced ECO2 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC SSD
Windows 10 64-bit
Rosewill RBR1000-MS 1000W Active PFC PSU - Continuous @ 104 Deg. F (40C)

In summary, a new motherboard, cpu, and ram.

I was kinda having the same FPS issues, but maybe slightly better in the heavily populated areas. I read on the WoW forums that the new crimson drivers from amd are flawed, so I reverted back to catalyst 15.10 if I'm remembering correctly.
My FPS problem seems to be much better. I still have ~30 fps sitting in cities with a large amount of people around me. I wish that could be better, but it's not critical. When I jumped into an LFR raid I had a constant 60 fps and it was buttery smooth. I enabled vsync and active-sync on my monitor/gfx card so it caps at 60 fps.
I'm still running at 2560x1080 fullscreen windowed, remember.

My fan was only coming on at > 60C which I didn't like, so I built a new profile with MSI afterburner and it now comes on when I start my PC. Graphics run at ~50C even under heavy load and the fan sits comfortably at a quiet ~30-40%.

My VRAM does not get hot at all. < 50°C so I know that isn't the issue.

CPU seems to be performing well. No load issues.

My biggest problem right now is that my GPU usage is incredibly "spikey." It goes from 0% to 100% to 55% to 0% to 100% to 0% to 92% to 0% etc. The graph on MSI afterburner looks ridiculous. Why is it doing this? Why doesn't it throttle the GPU more instead of being more on-off? And yes, I have vsyn enabled now and I get that, but it did the EXACT same thing when I had all vsync and active sync settings turned off.

Is this an issue? I feel like it is.

jesselav1233 · Jan 10, 2016

i recently upgraded to a msi r9 390 and i haven't been happy. it runs butter smooth then dips hard for a sec and just continuously goes through this loop. really annoying when we paid over 300 for this card. also when i play forest everything maxed settings at 1080p frames are good (still does annoying dip every now and then) the textures look terrible on the grass it looks almost black. i ordered the msi gtx 970 will be here tomorrow i have mixed emotions about it this was the first amd card ive ever used and i know its stronger but i cant help but feel ill still be happier with the nvidea experience. really sucks i was so excited to get this card and now i feel team red is not the way to go. prototype 2 nope 10fps! its a known issue so whatever but still. skyrim doesn't works as well as my gtx 750 ti did so after all this i have to send it back.

jkelley9 · Jan 10, 2016

jesselav1233 :

I don't know what the current deal is between nvidia and radeon but from the past 15 years of building computers about every 3 years or so (for fun, not because I really HAD to) I've ALWAYS had to "configure" the radeon cards to behave better. All of my Nvidia cards kinda of just worked right out of the box.

I got my r9 390 8gb to work well finally. I had to upgrade my cpu to an i5-6600k skylake because WoW plays considerably better in single-threaded tasks on intel CPUs, but that also meant i had to buy a new motherboard (gigabyte z170x-gaming 7) new raw, and i picked up a new 1000w psu too since i think it was the main culprit of my crashing issues. Not because it didn't have enough power, it was just old and offbrand.

I still can't sit in a wow city with full fps. I get like maybe 40 max citty around hundreds of other players. That's just the nature of the gaming architecture for wow. I immediately get 60 fps solid when i back away from most of them and there's only 20 ish players around me. I get a solid 60 fps when raiding, no matter what the graphic demand. Full ultra settings btw, with 2x msaa.

I say 60 fps because i ended up finding that enabling vsync with my monitor's "activesync" (lg ultrawide 34" 2560x1080) was a lot smoother.

The big thing about this gpu is that it throttles up and down hard. I'm starting to learn that I don't like the feature where it "clocks down" when it doesn't see a chunk of load coming. I think this is where you're seeing your issue. If it ever sees a packet of data that it thinks it can handle at the lower clock speed, it de-clocks and I think this is where you're seeing your fps drop, since it doesn't handle the transition smoothly. I could be wrong though.

After a lot of research, the main culprit for these cards not working great for most people was being bottle-necked by the CPU. I like my r9 now, with the new i5-6600k skylake. But the process was kind of a PITA finding the right hardware and settings.

Good luck.

huvik · Jan 11, 2016

Are you using the MSI gaming app to achieve your overclock? I have the same GPU and I noticed weird spikes on GPU usage and terrible FPS when using the MSI gaming app. I stopped using it and just use afterburner to overclock and it stopped the GPU usage spikes and got a lot better FPS.

jesselav1233 · Jan 11, 2016

huvik :

hey man im pretty new with gaming computers i have msi afterburner but i havnt had good success with OCing it. would you possibly help me out an let me know what your setting everything to?

jkelley9 · Jan 11, 2016

I'm not overclocking mine. It just has 2 clock modes built in. When it has more load, it goes up to the full clock range. When it's not needed, is winds down to like 325 Mhz or something if I'm remembering correctly. That's basically when I'm in windows and not playing any games, since there's no GPU demand.

I use MSI afterburner to set the fan speed profile only. The one on the card kind of sucks, in my opinion. So I run a custom profile based on doing some tests of my own system.

huvik · Jan 11, 2016

jesselav1233 :

I just went with the same overclock the MSI gaming app applied but used afterburner to apply it. i do beleive its 1060 on the gpu and 1525 on the memory. also upped my power limit, and made a custom fan profile so it runs alot cooler at idle

jkelley9 · Jan 11, 2016

the way i setup my fan profile is i'll test to see what my gpu will usually sit at with the regular profile and it will usually stabilize out at some fan% and temp. if it's too hot (for my liking), i'll bump the fan setting up for that temperature range. then i set it up as plateaus of fan speed, with short ramp ups (not hard changes) so that I don't reach some temperature limbo wher the fan speed is jumping up and down often. I usually can find steady states pretty easily with my more common tasks (regular gaming, raiding, video playback, etc).

Taoism · Feb 2, 2016

Some random thread necromancy here:

Just happened to see this thread. You might try this: http://

supposed to block the goofy gpu drivers from getting too happy with the clocks trying to implement power management silliness.

Taoism · Feb 2, 2016

Odd, link in my last post looks broken but it is still functional. Give it a try

Brljak83 · Jul 1, 2016

jkelley9 :

HII TO ALL WHO ARE HAVING THIS TWO PROBLEMS
I HAVE GOT THE SOLUTIONS FOR BOTH OF IT

As you might have noticed lot of people with the R9 390 are complaining to this problems
The first and easy one is with the MSI Afterburner
It shows that the gpu load is down and up or we call it the card has spikes going form 100% to down 0% and so on
This problem is solved by going to the MSI Afterburner settings
and check the box for ENABLE UNIFIED GPU USAGE MONITORING
NOW YOU WILL SEE THE REAL GPU LOAD

THE NEXT THING WHAT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU OR DONT HAVE TO BE
IS THAT YOU WILL NOW SEE THAT YOU HAVE GPU LOAD AT LIKE 55%
DEPANDING ON THE GAME YOU ARE MAYBE A BIT MORE A BIT LESS

THIS IS NOT A CPU BOTTLENECK
I HAVE THE i3 4130 and the R9 390 GIGABYTE AND HAD THIS PROBLEM
THAT ALL BENCHMARKS ARE GIVING ME 100% IF GPU LOAD
AND THE BENCHMARKS ARE GIVING ME THE RESULT AS IT SHOULD BE FOR
THE R9 390 IN HEAVEN OR VALLEY

BUT GAMES ARE JUST LIKE 50% GPU LOAD

THIS IS NOT AN DRIVER ISSUE OR A BAD GPU OR LIKE I SAID A BOTTLENECK BY THE CPU
YOU JUST GO TO THE SETTINGS OF THE NEW CRIMSON DRIVER
OR EVAN AN OLD CATALYST CONTROL CENTER
AND FIND THE SETTING OF ANTI ALIASING METHOD AND SET IT TO ADAPTIVE

THATS IT...NOW YOU WILL SEE YOUR GPU WILL BE FULLY USED..
IF YOU SET THE METHOD TO SUPERSAMPLING THE GPU WILL ALWAYS BE USED TO 100%
BUT YOU WILL LOSE ON THE FPS..

BUT IF YOU JUST SET IT TO ADAPTIVE...YOU WILL GET THE GPU LIKE IN BETWEEN 80 AND UP TO 100% USED
BUT WILL NOT BE LOOSING ON THE FRAMES
AND OF COURSE THE SETTINGS IN THE GAME YOU PLAY ITSELF DEPENDS IF IT NOW WILL BE LIKE ALL TIME 100%
OR IF YOU WILL GET MORE FPS BUT HAVE IT GOING FROM 80% TO 100%

TRY IT
IT WILL WORK
NO BAD GPU
NO BOTTLENECK
JUST SOME GPU SETTINGS
NOTHING MORE

GOOD GAMING AND GOOD LUCK

jkelley9 · Jul 1, 2016

Brljak83 :

jkelley9 :

HII TO ALL WHO ARE HAVING THIS TWO PROBLEMS
I HAVE GOT THE SOLUTIONS FOR BOTH OF IT

As you might have noticed lot of people with the R9 390 are complaining to this problems
The first and easy one is with the MSI Afterburner
It shows that the gpu load is down and up or we call it the card has spikes going form 100% to down 0% and so on
This problem is solved by going to the MSI Afterburner settings
and check the box for ENABLE UNIFIED GPU USAGE MONITORING
NOW YOU WILL SEE THE REAL GPU LOAD

THE NEXT THING WHAT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU OR DONT HAVE TO BE
IS THAT YOU WILL NOW SEE THAT YOU HAVE GPU LOAD AT LIKE 55%
DEPANDING ON THE GAME YOU ARE MAYBE A BIT MORE A BIT LESS

THIS IS NOT A CPU BOTTLENECK
I HAVE THE i3 4130 and the R9 390 GIGABYTE AND HAD THIS PROBLEM
THAT ALL BENCHMARKS ARE GIVING ME 100% IF GPU LOAD
AND THE BENCHMARKS ARE GIVING ME THE RESULT AS IT SHOULD BE FOR
THE R9 390 IN HEAVEN OR VALLEY

BUT GAMES ARE JUST LIKE 50% GPU LOAD

THIS IS NOT AN DRIVER ISSUE OR A BAD GPU OR LIKE I SAID A BOTTLENECK BY THE CPU
YOU JUST GO TO THE SETTINGS OF THE NEW CRIMSON DRIVER
OR EVAN AN OLD CATALYST CONTROL CENTER
AND FIND THE SETTING OF ANTI ALIASING METHOD AND SET IT TO ADAPTIVE

THATS IT...NOW YOU WILL SEE YOUR GPU WILL BE FULLY USED..
IF YOU SET THE METHOD TO SUPERSAMPLING THE GPU WILL ALWAYS BE USED TO 100%
BUT YOU WILL LOSE ON THE FPS..

BUT IF YOU JUST SET IT TO ADAPTIVE...YOU WILL GET THE GPU LIKE IN BETWEEN 80 AND UP TO 100% USED
BUT WILL NOT BE LOOSING ON THE FRAMES
AND OF COURSE THE SETTINGS IN THE GAME YOU PLAY ITSELF DEPENDS IF IT NOW WILL BE LIKE ALL TIME 100%
OR IF YOU WILL GET MORE FPS BUT HAVE IT GOING FROM 80% TO 100%

TRY IT
IT WILL WORK
NO BAD GPU
NO BOTTLENECK
JUST SOME GPU SETTINGS
NOTHING MORE

GOOD GAMING AND GOOD LUCK

Thanks, I'll give this a try when I get home. I just dismissed the issue all this time but it's definitely still there. I'll let you know if it works.

jkelley9 · Jul 9, 2016

Brljak83 :

Wow, I believe you've solved my issue. I'm able to get MUCH fewer GPU usage drops and cycling usage times (0 to 100% up and down every 2 seconds). If graphic demand is high, it appears to show 100% and occasional drop down to somewhere between 80% and 99% which makes me feel better. When ti was doing the 0 to 100% thing before I felt like my card was gong to blow up... like a bad car engine stuttering.

I haven't noticed any performance increase per say, but I haven't done much testing. My performance has been pretty high though anyways.

Thanks!

Thanks!

Please help me with my low fps problem r9 390

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