GTA V on HD 4850: poor performance, overheating CPU

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troy1960

troy1960

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Apr 3, 2016
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Alright, so recently I've upgraded to from my Asus GeForce 9600GT Silent(512MB) to my new Powercolor Radeon HD 4850(1GB). The point is, GTA V ran smoothly on 30fps on the Asus card on medium, 720p. Now, with the Radeon it runs at a crappy 14fps with again medium, 720p, but my GPU usage drops to 40%, while my CPU gets maxed out, thus the game lags. But why? The HD 4850 is significantly more powerful then the 9600GT, for example: TF2 runs at 40fps, 1080p maxed out on the 9600, but the HD 4850 reaches well over 200fps at again, 1080p all settings maxed out.

In a nutcase: the HD 4850 is way more powerful then the 9600, but the 4850 is just not taking full power. Upping GTA's settings doesn't help either; GPU usage stays at 40-50%.

Also ive noticed my CPU(Intel Core2 Quad Q6700)temp gets way over it's Tcase limit, my Tcase is 62,5 degrees, but during GTA, it goes up to 71! I've recently reapplied compound, Coolermaster HTK-002 to be exact. Pea sized, and I let the heatsink spread it out. Help me out please.

Specs:

CPU: Intel core 2 quad Q6700(OC from 2.66 to 2.80GHz) with stock cooler.
GPU: Powercolor Radeon HD 4850, 1GB GDDR3
RAM:8GB(2 sticks, 4GB each) Mushkin enhanced Silverline DDR2 800MHz (RAM Timings: 5-5-5-18)
Mobo: Asus P5QL Pro
PSU: Spire SP-ATX-600W 600W
Case: Coolermaster Centurion 5
 
Solution
spdragoo
Well, there are maybe some particular issues going on here. First off, the 4850 is a little better than the 9600GT (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html)...but even though it's 3 tiers higher, at that level of performance you really shouldn't expect to see a whole lot of improvement. Especially when the 4850 is still 2 tiers below Tom's current recommendation for their eSports/720p category, the R7 360 (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gpus,4380.html).


However, what I think is the bigger issue is here:



That, along with the comment about your temps going up significantly, points to a severe case of CPU throttling. Best way...
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colinpail

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Have you checked to make sure that the any settings were changed when gta V detected that you had a new gpu or are they the EXACT same

 
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spdragoo

spdragoo

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Oct 17, 2011
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Well, there are maybe some particular issues going on here. First off, the 4850 is a little better than the 9600GT (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html)...but even though it's 3 tiers higher, at that level of performance you really shouldn't expect to see a whole lot of improvement. Especially when the 4850 is still 2 tiers below Tom's current recommendation for their eSports/720p category, the R7 360 (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gpus,4380.html).


However, what I think is the bigger issue is here:



That, along with the comment about your temps going up significantly, points to a severe case of CPU throttling. Best way to test it is by changing the quality settings; if you get the same FPS at "low" as you do on "very high", then your CPU is holding you back. You could try increasing the resolution, to see if the GPU & CPU loads balance out a bit more.

I think you're going to find, though, that with your CPU you're going to have problems getting good performance. It's not surprising, though, since GTA V is heavily dependent on the CPU. Even with AMD's chips not performing as well (http://www.techspot.com/review/991-gta-5-pc-benchmarks/page6.html), your Core 2 Quad is well below them and the Haswell i3-4130 they tested with (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html) -- & those tests were with a Titan X (not the Pascal version), so your 4850 isn't going to perform anywhere near as well.

And I'm not sure there's a whole lot of room left to improve that system -- although it looks you could go for a Core 2 Extreme QX9650//9770 (https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5QL_PRO/HelpDesk_CPU/), for faster core speeds & a faster FSB. But we're talking about replacing a 9-year-old CPU with an 8-year-old CPU for a CPU-intensive game that came out just 19 months ago.
 
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troy1960

troy1960

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So? What can i do to get this to run? get a new motherboard? New CPU? extreme overclocking? can you please help me out with this? i'm level 193 on Online and theres a giant thing going on with online and i want to be there...
 
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spdragoo

spdragoo

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It all depends on where the issue is at. The quickest & cheapest solution, however, is 1) check your case manual to see how many case fans you can put in, & 2) check your case to see how many fans you currently have in. For example, my case came with a single 120mm fan for the back...but I have it maxed out with the 5 that it can take (1 bottom, 1 front, 1 side for intake; 1 top, 1 back for exhaust). Better airflow helps keep my CPU & GPU running fairly cool (CPU usually stays < 60C even when gaming, < 45C at idle/general Internet). Making sure your airflow is as good as it can be will help a lot.

If your case airflow is good, but your temps are still having issues, then what you can do depends on whether it's the GPU or CPU that's overheating. If the GPU is overheating, check its placement: if hot air from the CPU is blowing directly onto the GPU, that's bad from a GPU cooling perspective. Also, make sure that cables or other parts aren't preventing the GPU fans from spinning. You can also use MSI Afterburner to check your fan speeds (works with all GPUs, MSI or not, & works on both AMD & nVidia cards). If the CPU is overheating, you might need to remove & reapply the thermal paste & heat sink, or make sure that the CPU fan is still working and/or not being obstructed.
 
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troy1960

troy1960

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Apr 3, 2016
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welp, i have the standard intel cooling block which is extremely tiny, and i might want to buy a bigger one and then overclock(but again, i dont want my CPU dying). I've reapplied compound a couple weeks ago and idling temps came from 54c to 29c. it does underclock itself when it gets to 71c, but task manager doesnt see my overclocking(it gives me 2.66 instead of 2.80GHz). Furtheron, cooler gets no external heat whatsoever, GPU runs at 39-41c during full load, and i currently have 6 fans out of 8. (cpu fan(1), 120mm exhaust(2), second 180mm exhaust (3), 80mm intake fan(4), GPU fan(5) and my 50mm hard drive/ssd cooling fan(6))
 
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