Bad Performance. Need help

[blacklabel67k]

First here are my specs

Phenom II X3 720 2.8ghz
Sapphire HD 5870 1Gb
4gb DDR3
Windows 7 64bit
PSU- OCZ StealthXtream 2 700w
Motherboard- Gigabyte MA790GPT-UD3H


Horrible performance in Bad Company 2 and it feels like this across the board for most open world MP games. For awhile I just thought they were horribly optimized games but it's clear to me now that there's something fishy going on with my hardware. I play all games at my native resolution of 1920x1080.

MP games are where it's the most noticeable, in SP things always seem to work fine. With Bad Company 2 with DX11 I can turn all of the settings down all the way and I still can't even get a stable 60 FPS, no AA, no AF, everything on Low. I don't play any other MP games that are graphically similar or superior to BC2 other than Crysis and both games have the same problems. I do have Black Ops but that game is horribly optimized anyways. I can play Dirt 2 maxed out with 8X AA and recieve great performance yet I can't play games like BC2 or Crysis with even Medium settings? I just makes zero sense.

With different games working fine and others not it's so confusing and I don't know what to make of this. I'm extremely close to bringing it to a computer shop to be fixed and this is my last attempt to find out what's wrong with it.

1. I've reformatted Windows multiple times.
2. I've checked both GPU and CPU temps and they're fine
3. Drivers are always up to date
4. Case flow is great
5. GPU is new, and the issue happened previously on my old one. So I can rule the GPU out as being the culprit.
6.

Is there anything else I can do to check what might be causing performance issues? Could it be faulty hardware that should have been returned and replaced? I was new to PC gaming and I had no idea that it was running so poorly, if I knew I would have tried to get them replaced the day I got them.

 

[HEXiT]

your cpu is a bottleneck for your gfx... bump it to 3.2 if you can (as long as you have sufficent cooling) and hopefully your fps will level out...
if your getting massive drops in fps. then turn up the gfx to max this wont improve your top end fps but will increase the fps at the low end. because your offloading the gfx onto the gpu so freeing up a little cpu. which causes the minimum fps to climb.

 

[Gman450]

As Hexit stated, the CPU is bottlenecking that GPU.
You should overclock it.

 

[blacklabel67k]

Wow? I didnt realize a Phenom II was that weak.... I had an 4870 512mb and I had the same issues.

How is it bottlenecking so bad that I can't even play at any settings though?

 

[HEXiT]

it will only show on certain games. 1s that are more reliant on cpu power than gpu power. to get the same performance from an amd as an intel c2d you need to run 400mhz faster per core. but your 4870 shouldn't have had any issue as your cpu has enough bandwidth to cope with it.
your 5870 is pretty much x2 the power of your previous card so it would be more likely to show a bottleneck roughly equivalent to the 1 missing core. in other words just like games gpu's have a minimum requirement as far as cpu pairing goes.

 

[swifty_morgan]

go into the CCC and check your 3d settings. something in there may be holding you back. BBC2 and Crysis hit cards pretty hard. BBC2 alone needs a "suggested" quad core and the graphics card only has 1gig of memory. Both of these are holding you back in that game. Try turning the RESOLUTION you game at back to 1200 instead of 1900 and see if that helps and don't forget to look in the CCC. Check the game settings ( games control panel ) in BBC2.

 

[blacklabel67k]

Well I do have a quad core, I just unlocked the 4th core. I've already done prime95 testing on it so I know the core is stable. This is an issue I've had for awhile now, so if it happened with my 4870, it can't be a bottlenecking issue. And if the issue persists with 3 cores, then it's got nothing to do with the 4th core unlocking. At least I would assume as much...

CCC settings have been tweaked plenty of times and nothing works. Lowering the resolution helps but doesn't totally fix anything and the performance is still pretty crappy. Mostly the game takes HUGE fps hits in open areas with lots of action, anything more linear and it seems to do fine and I can usually turn the graphics up fairly high. Of course that's how it works for all games, but in a way it seems like I can actually get normal performance in those situations with AA, and other eye candy.

 

[blacklabel67k]

I mean if there is a bottleneck, why would it totally render these games unplayable? There might be a loss of fps but not even being able to run the game at all???? I don't know.....

 

[swifty_morgan]

did you install any of the software off the gigabyte disc when you installed the mother board drivers ? Like some of that auto update stuff ? or anything else. I had a board that had problems forever until I went into the control panel and removed the gigabyte software.

The processor...... ok, so the fourth core works, so what. That means there was another part of that processor that was defective, that's why it got the x3 moniker and not the x4.

Where you say "lowering the resolution helps"....... leads me to believe it's a video card problem. My opinion is NOT enough vram.

Check the gigabyte software thing.

 

[blacklabel67k]

The 4th core works and has been tested. If there was an issue with another core how would it even work? Not all X3 Phenom II's are defective. Just search it up on google.

I don't think I installed anything for my motherboard at all, if I did I can't remember. But in the windows search I type in "Gigabyte" and nothing comes up

 

[swifty_morgan]

I wasn't referring to the cores. There is more to that die than cores.
start/programs................. any gigabyte stuff ? control panel/add-remove............ any gigabyte stuff ?

 

[Mottamort]

swifty_morgan you may want to look up the binning process on google. There have been many successful unlocking of cores, in fact its what makes AMD attractive to some people, the chance of buying a potential quad core for tri-core price. So telling the guy who has just said he was successful in his unlocking that there is definately something wrong with it is incorrect and not helpful at all. I really urge you to look at the unlocking threads in the forum as well as find out ALL the reason quad cores are marked as tri cores sometimes.

A little homework goes a long way..

Congrats to OP for a successful unlock

 

[swifty_morgan]

Miss my last post did ya ?

 

[Mottamort]

no. but just because theres more to it doesn't mean an unlocked cpu is defective...

 

[blacklabel67k]

Hi, I'm still having this issue. Haven't played any games since. Nothing above has been helpful, any other ideas?

I just did a clean install of Windows 7 and the issue still persists but runs a little better. Still getting huge, unnecessary drops when facing lots of action in an open world setting.

What would be the odds of getting my MB and CPU replaces as defective 2-3 years after purchase? lol I would assume not good.

 

[blacklabel67k]

Also I never tried to overclock, simply because I don't know how.

But I find it pretty ridiculous that it would bottleneck to the point of making any sort of demanding game run at 30 fps no matter what. I could put all settings all the way down on BF3 and I still will touch 38-45 fps which is just not right at all. Again, this same issued occurred with a lesser GPU.

Even games like the first Red Orchestra, that are just plain old games struggle to run @ 60 fps on high settings. It just doesnt make sense and I'm at my wits end. 2 1/2 to 3 years this computer has been like this and I just don't know what's wrong. It had been like 6-7 years since I first had a gaming PC, so I had no clue there was an issue. Now that I've learned so much, it became apparent that something was wrong, and now it seems it's too late to send my CPU and motherboard back in.

edit: Sweet, it looks like the warranty ends for both the MB and CPU at the end of this year. Would you guys say it's safe to blame these performance issues on faulty hardware? If I do a memtest and rule out the memory is fine, should I send both the MB and CPU back to be replaced?

 

[blacklabel67k]

I just came across this while reading reviews for my memory.

Manufacturer Response:
.
Dear Customer

We are sorry to hear you are having issues. This memory is above standard, so especially with AMD platforms, manual settings are required. Without configuring the settings in BIOS, the system will not be stable. The AMD CPU was only designed for DDR3-1333 CL9 max.

Here is our guide to configure settings:

http://www.gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=7688

Once you complete that, the computer should be fast and stable. For any questions or issues, please feel free to contact us directly. We will make sure G.Skill memory works flawlessly in your system.

Thank you
GSKILL SUPPORT

Quality and customer service are our top priorities."

Could this be causing games to be so unstable?

Here is the explanation of how to manually set memory timings.: http://www.gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=7688

 

[blacklabel67k]

bump

 

[blacklabel67k]

*** it, I'll just start a new thread. I blew this one up too much