"Upgraded" to GTX 570, but every game I've tried runs poorly.

[PercyChuggs]

Hello. Yesterday I got a new EVGA , upgrading from the GTS 450 I purchased back in October when I first built my PC. This is my very first home built PC, so if I come off as rather noobish, I apologize, this is all still fairly new to me.

I was all excited to finally be able to play games like Crysis on this card, but I was somewhat disappointed by the performance of the game when I first tested it out last night. Even on 1280x720 resolution, with all settings at Medium, the game would chug, and frames would wildly vary from 35 to 60. So I decided to test the card out on STALKER: Clear Sky Complete, and while it performed better, there were still points where the game would struggle when people started to, you know, shoot guns and stuff.

So then I tried out Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box, and bad news got worse, as this game, again only at 1280x720, couldn't top 50 FPS. Now, reading up on this, I guess the game has a problem running on Windows 7, so when I get home tonight, I'll have to try running it in XP SP3 compatibility mode.

Here are my system specs:
MSI H55-GD65 Motherboard
Intel Core i5-750 Processor at stock speed (2.66 GHz)
4 GB Patriot DDR3 RAM
Cooler Master GX series 650W 80 Plus PSU
Seagate 500 GB HDD
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit

I tried a couple more games tonight, and things are only getting worse. All of these are at 1920 x 1080

Borderlands runs terribly. Not even 25 FPS. If my CPU has to be overclocked, just to run a nearly 2 year old game at 30 steady FPS, then something is seriously wrong.

Bioshock 2, pretty much the same thing. Choppy, stuttering.

I tried using Driver Sweeper to clear out my old GTS 450 drivers. That seemingly had zero effect.

I tried monitoring my CPU usage and GPU usage, and for something like Crysis, it's not taxing my GPU OR CPU. I honestly have no idea what is going on here.

Is it possible that my processor, motherboard or RAM is the cause of this issue? I researched the 570 like crazy for 2 months before I bought it, and I read countless claims that "it runs all my games at max settings no sweat", and that wasn't the case for me, at least not from what I tried playing. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated, as I am a primarily console gamer who was always hesistant to jump into PC gaming because I was afraid of issues just like this.

 

[purple stain]

What were the GTX570 clocks at when you run a game?

It is very possible that the GTX570 is being bottlenecked by your CPU.It's not that it has to be overclocked to run a 2 year old game it's just that the GTX570 is so fast that your CPU is not able to keep up with it.

Try O.C.ing to 3ghz and see if it helps any.It's a mild O.C. so the stock cooler should be able to maintain.It will tell if you are bottlenecked or not.I haven't heard of anyone with a first gen i5 not being able to hit 4ghz so you might want to try that in the future.

Here's a O.C.ing guide to aid you.I was a big noob to O.C.ing and I still somewhat am but this guide helped me out a lot.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/263043-29-1156-core-core-overclocking-guide

 

[0ozee]

deffo something wrong there, it isnt a cpu bottleneck or anythin since my core 2 duo @ 3.0ghz and gtx 260 with 4gb ddr2 runs those games better at 1920x1080

maybe the 570 is faulty?

 

[purple stain]

No your not understanding.You saw how the GPU wasn't hardly being used,that's because it's being bottlenecked by the CPU.As I said before the GTX570 is so fast that your CPU can't keep up with it so it pulls the GTX570 down with it.

All i'm saying is give O.C.ing a try and see if it does anything.You can't harm the CPU unless you add way to much voltage.Which, if you follow the O.C.ing guide is impossible.

At the very least try running a GPU stress program like Furmark or Kompbuster and take a screenshot of the GPU activity.

 

[Supernova1138]

Even if the i5 750 is bottlenecking the GTX 570, performance would not be that low at 1080p, the GTX 570 should at the very least be able to deliver a solid 30FPS under those conditions. The problem definitely lies with the video card. Either it is underclocked for whatever reason, there is a driver problem, the card is overheating and is throttling itself severely, or the card is simply defective.

Go to your control panel and go into the power settings, check your power profile, if it is set to the power saving profile, switch it to performance. It's possible that your hardware is being underclocked due to that power profile.

What are the temperatures on the card? If they are getting quite high, ie. 90+ degrees celsius, it's possible the card is throttling to keep the temperatures low.

 

[FlintIronStagg]

Even if the i5 750 is bottlenecking the GTX 570, performance would not be that low at 1080p, the GTX 570 should at the very least be able to deliver a solid 30FPS under those conditions. The problem definitely lies with the video card. Either it is underclocked for whatever reason, there is a driver problem, the card is overheating and is throttling itself severely, or the card is simply defective.

Go to your control panel and go into the power settings, check your power profile, if it is set to the power saving profile, switch it to performance. It's possible that your hardware is being underclocked due to that power profile.

What are the temperatures on the card? If they are getting quite high, ie. 90+ degrees celsius, it's possible the card is throttling to keep the temperatures low.

+1 @ bottleneck; 2.6 will restrict that card, but will not make it perform so terribly. Try drivers first, then get back to us

 

[purple stain]

Yah I would have to agree.Check the temps and the clock speeds before we start to think it's has to do with your CPU.

 

[mrvhatever]

What's the temp on your card? Maybe your fan(s) not working properly.

 

[PercyChuggs]

I have a dumb question: does it matter which PCI-E slot I have my card seated in? I have it in the second slot, the one closest to the PCI slot, which holds my TV tuner card. When I first built this PC back in October, I had my GTS 450 in the first slot, and while games like Stalker and The Witcher ran fine on it, I would get messages in the Windows Action Center or whatever it's called (it's a white flag in the system tray) saying there was some error. So I moved the card to the second slot, and those errors went away. Any ideas on this?

 

[purple stain]

Yes, if your only using 1 GPU then you must have it in the top slot.

 

[PercyChuggs]

Yes, if your only using 1 GPU then you must have it in the top slot.

I had my old GTS 450 in the second slot for like 6 months, and was able to play games just fine though...

 

[purple stain]

Most motherboard manufacture's reccomend you use the top slot if your only using a single card.

Have you tried the GTX570 in the top slot,any results?

 

[PercyChuggs]

I will try that when I get home from work in about an hour. I am also going to once again try to re-uninstall and install the drivers. If I am still having problems after that, I will use the OC Genie feature to bump my CPU up. And if that doesn't fix it, I am going to hit my PC with a top rope elbow drop.

 

[purple stain]

Lol.Best of luck to you.Make sure to report back with your results.

 

[PercyChuggs]

I just ran 3DMark11, and the benchmark said my drive was not "FM approved", so that has to be what my problem is. I am going to follow the guide on reinstalling drivers word for word right now, and see if that does anything.

 

[PercyChuggs]

Fresh driver install: didn't work

Completely reinstall Windows 7: didn't work

3D Mark 11 scores: abysmal.

Is there a way I can definitively prove my card isn't working properly so I can get this $330 paperweight replaced?

 

[Supernova1138]

Download GPU-Z and post a screenshot of the GPU information screen. Hopefully we could tell what's wrong from that information. Did you try switching to the top PCI-E x16 slot. If your second x16 slot is only able to run at x4 that could be a major bottleneck. Also what are the temperatures like? If they are ridiculously high your card could be throttling.

 

[PercyChuggs]

Here is what GPU-Z tells me:

 

[purple stain]

Do you have vertical sync disabled?

 

[Supernova1138]

Everything seems to be fine with the card according to the GPU-Z screenshot. You seem to be getting all the bandwidth on PCI-E so that's not causing a bottleneck. Either the card is defective is some way that software can't detect or it's overheating. If there is another system that you or a friend owns that can run the card, try testing it on another computer and see what happens. If performance is poor on both computers, there is definitely something wrong with the card.

 

[FlintIronStagg]

Everything seems to be fine with the card according to the GPU-Z screenshot. You seem to be getting all the bandwidth on PCI-E so that's not causing a bottleneck. Either the card is defective is some way that software can't detect or it's overheating. If there is another system that you or a friend owns that can run the card, try testing it on another computer and see what happens. If performance is poor on both computers, there is definitely something wrong with the card.

+1

 

[PercyChuggs]

Nevermind, 3DMark 11 is wrong, CPU-Z says my CPU is running at 2805.7 MHz

 

[cobra11]

I think the problem might be with my CPU. I just ran 3DMark11, and it's telling me my CPU processor clock is at 1469 MHz. This is way off, it should be set at the stock, i5-750 speed of 2.66 GHz. How can I correct this?

http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/269/benchmarkr.jpg

not entirely true, the cpu if i remember correctly they underclock when not fully in use.., i cant say for certain since i dont have a i core, but i do have a core 2 duo that does underclock when its doesnt need all the processin power (which doesnt happen anymore ) but since the icores are 4x that i would suspect thats whats it doin

i highly say that the problem could be the graphic card or drivers.., have you tried any of the older drivers?

 

[PercyChuggs]

I went back to 275.33 Nvidia drivers, still having the same problems.

 

[phanatiK]

I'm pretty sure your CPU is bottlenecking your GPU. It's definitely a lower end CPU for gaming especially for games like Crysis. I would recommend upgrading but being an 1156 socket CPU you are limited and upgrading to a 1366 for an i7-920 or to 1155 for a 2500k or 2600k would be expensive. Your resolution shouldn't matter if you have a 2gb card but you haven't specified your current clock speed or memory. Most GTX570s come stock at 732 or 750mHz which is lowish for upper end CPU's and you should be able to overclock it to about 850mHz without danger of overheating. I still think its most likely your CPU is bottlenecking the possibilities of your GTX570 because it should perform far better than yours is.