RX 460 being bottlenecked by Pentium G4400

caiokn · Mar 1, 2017

Hello there

I recently bought an Asus RX 460 Strix, with 4GB VRAM to substitute my GTX 750 Ti. I thought I would see an increase in either fps or frame times, but in the games I tested (Rise of the Tomb Raider and GTA V), it performed worse than my previous GPU, by a significant margin. For example, at the Geothermal Valley map in RotTR, the 750 Ti managed to stay at a steady 30 fps after I set the Vsync option to Half Adaptive Vsync in the Nvidia Control Panel. The RX 460 barely manages 28 fps, and limiting fps through Radeon Settings or Riva Tuner makes no difference at all. Is it because of the AMD driver overhead? I thought the RX 460 wasn't powerful enough to be bottlenecked by the G4400, even in Medium settings at 1080p.

PS: I know people here recommended me the 1050 Ti, but I couldn't pass on the RX 460 due to it costing a bit more than half the price of the 1050 Ti.

firefoxx04 · Mar 1, 2017

Your cpu is not exactly gaming oriented. You need to measure CPU usage while gaming. If it is over 80% the entire time, it is likely bottlenecking.

I would expect both of your GPUs to perform better with a core i3 or i5.

Also, GTA5 will absolutely destroy an overclocked i5. Trying to play it on a Pentium is just asking for a bad time.

Supahos · Mar 1, 2017

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-750-Ti-vs-Nvidia-GTX-460/2187vs2167

There's a reason it was a lot cheaper you downgraded

caiokn · Mar 1, 2017

Supahos :

Actually, I bought an AMD RX 460, not a GTX 460.

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-750-Ti-vs-AMD-RX-460/2187vs3641

caiokn · Mar 1, 2017

firefoxx04 :

I know what you mean, but both games used to run nicely at a steady 30 fps and Medium/High Settings, with the Vsync option set to Half in the game and Half Adaptive Vsync on the Control Panel. I expected the RX 460 to perform better, allowing me to use higher settings while still maintaining the 30 fps I had before.

Supahos · Mar 1, 2017

Whoops damned same named cards. It should be an upgrade. But not gigantic definitely not a downgrade. Have you fully removed all Nvidia drivers using ddu? There still could be some conflicting driver bits in there if not.

caiokn · Mar 1, 2017

Supahos :

Yes, I made sure to remove them using the add/remove programs thing in Windows and then wiping out the remaining driver files with DDU in Safe Mode. I'm running DX 11 here as I'm still using Windows 8.1, could that be the problem?

Supahos · Mar 1, 2017

I know that whole line prefers dx12 but I can't see it crippling the card enough to perform worse than. A 750ti. There isn't a power pin plug in in your 460 is there?

caiokn · Mar 1, 2017

Supahos :

Yes, there is. I'm using it connected to a sleeved extensor. Didn't think it would be an issue though, Unigine Heaven and Furmark ran OK here for at least 30 minutes each with no issues at all.

Supahos · Mar 1, 2017

No I was making sure you had it plugged in. Some lower end cards will run at a reduced speed with PCI power only was making sure that wasn't your issue. Have you checked MSI afterburner or something similar to make sure it's running at the correct speeds? Go to control panel/power management and make sure everything is set to performance

caiokn · Mar 1, 2017

Supahos :

Seems like everything is running as it should. Core speeds are at 1236 Mhz, while memory speeds are at 1750 Mhz. Power management was already set to performance. Can Windows updates have anything to do with it? Or maybe drivers/BIOS for my mobo?

Supahos · Mar 1, 2017

So yeah it's boosting above stock boost speeds so all seems well on that front. Any chance the game auto detected the new card and goofed with you graphics settings? Also play with AA/filtering stuff as different cards take different hits from them

Supahos · Mar 1, 2017

What are your CPU and GPU temps WHILE gaming? It'll give you a max on the graph section. Perhaps your new GPU is working the CPU harder and causing it to overheat?

caiokn · Mar 1, 2017

Supahos :

I think at first the game settings changed when I installed the new card, but I made sure to revert them back to Medium settings and tweaked some settings here and there. Playing with AA and AF didn't have much effect as it seems that my GPU is being heavily bottlenecked by my CPU, or at least this is what it seems from the OSD.

caiokn · Mar 1, 2017

Supahos :

While gaming, my GPU temps are about 62º C, and my CPU temps usually stay at 46 to 48º C.

Just tried running the older Tomb Raider game (2013) and GPU seems to work fine, but open areas make the fps drop from 60 to 40 in a second. I'm pretty sure there's something wrong going on here, since it usually to play OK on my old HD 7750, although with lower settings. Is there a way I can log what exactly is demanding so much from my CPU while gaming?

caiokn · Mar 5, 2017

Update

After a bit of testing in different games, I found out that actually the CPU isn't bottlenecking the RX460. What's lead me to believe mine was a bottleneck case was the performance of the card in Rise of the Tomb Raider, specifically at the Geothermal Valley area, which seemed to be one of the most demanding of the game. As I mentioned in the 1st post, I wasn't happy with the performance of the card since my GTX 750 Ti performed way better, even though it's a weaker card, so I researched a lot and came across the following video:

[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQhNM-iG_ro"][/video]

Right in the beggining of the video, it shows Lara running through the village part of the map, and both AMD cards struggle to maintain steady 30 fps. The Nvidia one, however, performs very well. I haven't noticed it before, but Rise of the Tomb Raider is a Nvidia Gameworks title, meaning it'll obviously run great in Nvidia hardware. From an article I read at wccftech, although Nvidia doesn't forbid developers from optimizing the game for hardware other than their own, the adjusts can't be done in a way that reduces the performance of Nvidia's cards. Based on that statement, it seems to me that Crystal Dynamics simply didn't make the game in a way that would allow AMD's budget cards to perform better aside from implementing DX12.

In the other games I tested, the performance was indeed superior to that of the GTX 750 Ti, but it seems FXAA worked better on Nvidia anyway, and unfortunately there's no Half Adaptive Vsync option in AMD's control panel. I guess I'll have to deal with it for the time being and maybe get a Nvidia card next time I upgrade.

Thanks all for your help

Supahos · Mar 5, 2017

I think there are ways of removing the game works (aka old Nvidia and all amd GPU killer) if you'll disable it you won't notice any difference most likely other than higher frames. All games works titles are crap for that.

BurgerandChips66 · Mar 6, 2017

Ah, Nvidia Gameworks. Just when you thought you didn't need to spend money on a new graphics card....

RX 460 being bottlenecked by Pentium G4400

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