1090T bottlenecking a 7970?

I bought a 7970 a few days ago to replace my 6870, as Skyrim was running horribly in my system, and I figured it was time for an upgrade. Problem is, Skyrim still runs horribly. In cities it slows down to 20fps. My GPU is barely working at all, and my 1090T stays at around 30% use in these outside areas. I can't figure out what the problem is. I don't think it should be bottlenecking the system, as the CPU is fast. Shogun 2 runs very nicely with no bottleneck. Can someone explain this? Should I return the card and pick up a 2600k, and revert to my 6870? I'm at a loss here.

It is overclocked to 4.0 GHz. Like I said, Skyrim is the only game that seems to be having problems. Though to be honesty, I had to reinstall Windows so I've only really tested Skyrim and Shogun.

Six 1090T cores at 4GHz with an HD7970 wins, easy.

I've decided to keep the card and my CPU for now. It does seem to run most games without issue. Can anyone explain why I'm having such problems with Skyrim? It runs horribly for no apparent reason.

Skyrim is a badly optimized game that is VERY dependent on your CPU. An overclocked 2500k with a decent video card (let's say a 6770) has no problem playing Skyrim. In GPU dependent games like BF3 you should have really smooth gameplay.

as the guy above me said you need a sandy bridge cpu to play skyrim at its best settings. you dont have a sandy bridge so your experience isnt as good as it could be.

Their has to be something wrong with your game,drivers. Are you running it on the latest drivers? And what fps are you getting while playing? I can say regardless to what others are saying here the 1090t is fine for skyrim


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYF-xHPN0Tw


Not my video but still proof.

I get 60 inside and in caves, 40 outside, and 20 in cities. It's awful. I just ran Battlefield 2 as well, and I was only getting 45. The GPU was only running at about 50%. There has to be a bottleneck.

i have a 7970 on a i7 950 and it runs smooth as can be in all situations.
i turned down AA to 2x but turned on fxaa and AF is at 8x. it looks the same to me but runs smoother.
to pick up some extra frames install this
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4387

Which 700w psu

I cant believe all these people know so little. Im in the same shoes, with a 1055t. Have to OC it to 3.5 to get good frames on skyrim and BF3. It massively bottlenecks my 5850 crossfire so I know its bottlenecking you. My city frames are not as bad as yours though. Make sure you patch skyrim there is a new patch that makes it far smoother.

Your going to have to OC much harder lol, and than replace it in the near future. Also I always wandered if you underclock your cards so the bottleneck with the cpu becomes less and perhaps stabilizes the FPS. Just something I have been wandering.

PS 1055t = 3.4GHZ = 42 FPS/ 3.5GHZ = 50 FPS outside
Yeah the bottleneck is that big.

^^ Who would buy a 7970 and only have 4 GB of ram?

What CPU-NB OC if any are you guys running? I can say for a fact, with my 1100T setup, the difference between 2000 and 2600 concerning 3d performance was quite impressive to say the least. I leave my HT at 2000 / stock clock.

im playing skyrim with a single 5850 and my 1090t stock and i dont get any slow downs

you do you just dont know it.

I'm having a similair issue, I use a QX6800 OCed to 3.27 GHZ with a 7970, and I'm not getting the frames I should, most everything RUNS, but I see weird spiking issues in some games. Like I get 45 fps maxxed in deus ex hr, when that card is capable of way more. Do you think my old processor is causing that problem? I also have an old motherboard with an nvidia chipset which I think may also be causing problems. I see some weird variation though. Obviously its powerful because I can do things like play the witcher 2 at 3840X1080 (20 fps in combat, 40 fps indoors) with ubersampling on, but nothing is running solidly.

I do realize I should generally upgrade my cpu, but I'm waiting for ivybridge before I throw down any money.

i would appreciate any help on this.

Well if that's the case, that's a relief, I was wondering if it was my CPU or the nvidia chipset in my motherboard. I don't really have the greatest idea about how the processors mathematically scale from generation to generation. I was a little bit hesitant to assume it was my processor, because the thing was really good when I bought it, and it is a Quadcore with a decent clock speed, although I do realize it is not as good as an i7 running at the same clock.

So I will just take it as is until ivybridge comes out, otherwise I'd be paying about 400$ for a stopgap.

Yeah, and as luck would have it, I just saw a 2500k and motherboard for $280 on craigslist, gonna snag it hopefully.

I already have 8 GB of DDR3 I picked up while it was on sale.

Hopefully, the guy is playing hard to get, some guy is offering a ridiculously good mobo for 40$ so I'm hoping to buy the processor from one guy and the mobo from the other, sigh, craigslist and people who don't respond within 10 minutes to any and every email. Don't people have smartphones

sabertooth p67

Right, I haven't replied to this thread in a while, but I have new info to add here. Not only is it not running very well in Skyrim, but also in Assassins Creed Revalations. The CPU maxes out around 50% (3 cores maxed out) and the GPU at 40%. It's blatantly obvious there is an overclock here. Should I pickup a 2500k? Is it worth it? Also, I've noticed some annoying coil whine and I've had random crashes (while playing Revalations) after which the computer hangs within a minute. Is this the GPU or the PSU?

Thanks. I'll definitely look into that. Is it as easy to overclock as I've heard?

Also, is the high pitched coil whine a bad thing? I've heard other people have had the same issue but with no real problems with the card.

Finally, how would I know if there are problems with my PSU? After a power outage today my computer crashed a couple of times.

An update. After much struggle and strain, I am finally up and running on my i7-2600k, with a Z68 mobo, and my hd7970 working properly, I now slaughter games. I can even run witcher 2 with ubersampling, which is remarkable for a single GPU.