AMD HD 6950 problem

[ryan08]

Hey all.. i recently bought a new system. the GPU i chose is the Asus 2gig HD6950.
My problem is this.....
when i am playing wow i sit on around 60 fps but when i turn my character it drops to like 5 - 10 then catches up when i stop..
i was looking around for an answer and couldnt find much out there.
i decided to reinstall the driver once i did that it seems to work fine... but then eventually starts doing it again.
im not to sure what to do so hopefully someone out there has had this problem or knows whats going on.

system info:
intel i5 2500k
g skill ripjaws 4 gig
gigabyte p8p67 b3
asus Hd6950 2 gig
win 7 64 bit
corsiar Ax750

thats all u guys should need any help would b great thanks all!

(just a side note: im not 100% convinced the install on windows went smoothly, the 2 drives werent being detected and it concerns me could this be a problem? or am i just stressing out?)

 

[jithint]

Does it happen only with WoW? Try playing the game at the lowest settings and check if it still occurs.

 

[Snipergod87]

If its when you are turning your character that usually means that it is loading textures from the hard drive into the video cards system memory, which is slow and will cause the game to studder like that. Still that system has enough VRAM and DRAM so that shouldn't be a problem... What resolution are you running at and what detail settings?

 

[geekapproved]

...and what hard drive?

 

[pacific27]

I had that exact same problem for awhile. I bought a Sapphire 2gb 6950 and I'm running it in eyefinity with (3) asus 21.5" monitors at 5760x1080. Everytime I would turn The game would slow to a crawl (like 5fps), I also play wow. For me I think it was because I was running at ultra which at that resolution was a little much even for a 6950. I dialed back to good settings, turned shadows to fair, turned sunshafts off, v-sync off and don't have the problem anymore. I will eventually crossfire so I can kick it back up to ultra settings but for the time being it plays very fluidly. I also enabled DX11.

I average 60fps +/- really only slows down in bg's with lots of aoe. Works great in the arena and ran ICC last night flawlessly (10man). I do ocassionally get some "lag" not sure if it's the internet (bandwidth) or CPU, GPU....guess I'll narrow down that question once I crossfire. Not sure any of this helps but that's been my experience. I'm using an pretty budget HDD 7200rpm I imagine going with an SSD would be a performace boost as well. Good luck

 

[ryan08]

Hey all thanks for the replys. its only happening in wow at this stage that i have noticed... i dropped it to low settings and it still happens.. detail settings are on ultra and the res is 1600 x 1200 (this could be totally wrong lol) i think! im not at home right now sorry lol

the hard drive it is installed on is a samsung spinpoint 1 tb
i do have a g.skill ssd 60 gig aswell

i tried turning Vsync off the last night but that was just after i re installed the driver for the GPU again.. it worked fine after that but im just waiting to see if it shits it self again lol when its working it runs on ultra 60 fps fine.. it just decides to stuff up for some reason.

 

[marney_5]

Are you using driver sweep to uninstall your old drivers?

 

[jjb8675309]

try vsync (in game) +triple buffering in CC also make sure all your sliders are set to performance...., it fixed my stutter problems that I was having with my 6870 crossfire setup now it works like a charm, should work for you if you going through something similar with your rig...

 

[ryan08]

havent tried driver sweep but ill look into it for sure.
Ive tried Vsync that seem to work when i did it ill change the other things and i will give it a few days see if it stays that way.

 

[jjb8675309]

yeah I mean wow could be lagging for a while number of reasons bc of bandwidth and largely populated areas, never played the game myself so I couldn't tell you for sure but that is what I would guess is going on, but then again what you described in your original post sounded sort of like input lag caused by vysync or a lack thereof but try to use vsync (in game) and triple buffering (in CCC) and also make sure all your sliders in CCC are set to performance... that way the game can dictate the graphics quality for the most part and you don't have the CCC tweaks trying to override something that WOW can do perfectly fien by itself if you catch my drift, hope you can tweak your settings to get it to be smooth..

 

[nforce4max]

Just drop a few bucks on a cheap SSD and move the swap file on to it. Decent to high Random 4k read writes is what you need. Win xp sp3,vista, and win 7 can do this. That will help speed up the loading of textures as texture memory is a virtual space used by the gpu and it's driver for storage of textures outside the vram which is typically stored in the page file also known as the swap file.

 

[jjb8675309]

is the swap file specific to each game that you run? and where is it located bc i am having similar problems in my games and even though Ive been told otherwise, I'm starting to think its bc of my standard 7200 RPM HDD.... what is the procedure for this and do you think it is beneficial for someone that is experiencing similar glitches every now and again

 

[nforce4max]

The swap is only visible to the user as one large file but that is as far as that goes. It only reads and writes to drives as 4k random reads and writes. Mechanical drives perform very very poorly in this area so it is recommended that it is moved onto a SSD. It is worth it over a normal raid setup. The quicker the drive is the faster large textures stored in the texture memory aka the page file the better over all loading improves which smooths out fps from large dips during scenes and action. These new higher end resolutions put a lot more strain on things over all.

 

[jjb8675309]

^so overall for a high end setup, you would install as many games as possible to an SSD? the main fps dips i experiences are during different loading and scene changes... Or do you need to have windows 7 installed to an SSD as well>? im a little green on the subject and considering the upgrade very serously

 

[jjb8675309]

also, where is the swap file found? overall Id rather just buy a small ssd and put the swap file on it and be done with it, instead of reinstalling all my games/windows on the SSD, which in that case I would have to get at least a 128 gb model

 

[nforce4max]

No! Don't install any thing on the SSD. System/control panel/system/advanced system settings/performance/settings/advanced/performance/virtual memory (change) from there you can do this and you can have the swap shred across several drives as well. This is a little trick that server admin know

 

[nforce4max]

128bg is a lot for a page file/swap file drive. I am using a 32gb kingston value now for swap and a normal mechanical for os and programs. It really did the job in GTA IV and multy boxing wow (having several clients open at one) which helped smooth out the dips.

 

[jjb8675309]

ok thanks for the help, I dont have the SSD yet but I just located the settings you are referring to so once its installed I just select the SSD as the paging file source>??

 

[jjb8675309]

so basically if I do that there is no need to install the OS or apps on the SSD correct? if im understanding correctly, the only thing that (OS and games on SSD) would benefit me is faster loading times

 

[nforce4max]

Just about every thing that has any memory that would go to the pagefile will have benefit. The drive can be completely blank except for just that file. What I gave you is the way to set it up after format and once you select that drive reboot then go back and uncheck the boot drive and it will remove the original. The system will reboot and then you will notice a difference just not a large one unless the boot drive is slow from the start but with the swap on another drive it will load more quickly. Load time initially are still limited to the source drive for the game. Once the game is loaded and the same for apps it will be more responsive and textures once loaded will respond more quickly however there are still limitations.

You can use a SSD for booting and some games but space is limited (duh) but also writes cane be a problem over time. Mechanical drives also have problems, they get slower the more you fill them up. Moving the swap to another but better performing ssd will spare the mechanical drive from this task and will perform better because of this. I went into a lot of detail already but am willing to go further.

 

[jjb8675309]

thanks that is plenty, sounds to me like there is a clear advantage to have one, I will likely start with a fresh install of windows on the SSD and I will have the page file run from it as well, I will install my games and apps on my 7200 rpm drive, sound good?

or is there really no advantage (in gaming) to have the OS installed on the SSD? other than a fast booting machine..?

so just a couple of questions im about to run to frys and pick up a 32 or 64 gig model

 

[nforce4max]

What you said at the top of your post is common and there is nothing really bad about it. The option I talked about was due to storage and large file requirements but still making use of the SSD. Windows defaults the pagefile to the boot drive during instillation any way. Just don't move it to the mechanical drive or it will ruin some of the performance gains. The SSD is ware you want that file. If the option I talked about size isn't a concern while the common option that you thought of size does count. Not for speed but general use. 128gb is good for your option while mine is more for economy and making the best of both worlds

 

[jjb8675309]

I follow what you say, but in short my main question is should I just reinstall windows on the SSD (so the paging file is already there) and then everything else on the mechanical 1 tb? does this sounds like a good idea?

 

[jjb8675309]

if your asking me I only have 4 gigs of ddr3 1600 (which I thought was plenty but I have another 4 gigs coming from newegg in a few days since its cheap now)

 

[nforce4max]

Ssd will be more effective when the game gets loaded bit by bit into the ram. some game have a ini or config file to choose how much it can load into the ram.. If it loads a big chunk into your ram then your loading times will be quicker but the actual game play the same. If it pages a lot then do you have enough ram installed?

Windows and OSX is very bad about trying to save ram even when there is a lot installed. I personally got 8gb installed but I have been surprised once when I ran low then got an nice little error when I didn't allot enough for the pagefile running 6 wow clients really hammers the system. So in short the os like to move what it can into virtual memory aka page file to save on ram even though now days ram isn't that much a problem. Some have been able to kill this function off however one needs more than 8gb of ram for that to reliably work.