GTX 560 ti not performing/overclocking as expected

[kadoo94]

I recently purchased an EVGA GTX 560 Ti in hopes of playing Battlefield 3 and new DX11 games smoothly campared to my old 9800GTX+. Once I installed it, it definitely shows improvement over the old one (9800GTX+ could not touch the high setting) playing Battlefield at Ultra Quality, 2xAA at around 21 FPS on a 1680x1050 monitor. Nvidia and other forums benchmarked the card playing at least 40 on Ultra, 4xAA with an i7 setup, and I can't even get it the FPS to that mark on high, sitting at 25-30. Could the PCI-E x16 slot/processor/memory/motherboard make such a huge impact toward the actual graphics performance?

Asus P5N-E SLI Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz
Kingston 800 4GB DDR2 RAM
Muskin 800 DDR2 2GB RAM
EVGA GTX 560 Ti FPB
Western Digital 80GB 10000RPM
700W PSU

 

[Sunius]

Hmm, I am not sure where but I doubt GTX 560 Ti is capable of 40 FPS with EVERYTHING maxed out, but it's certainly capable of doing it without AA. Tried it myself, though I overclocked my card to 950 Mhz core clock. Try overclocking as well, should help!

 

[ilikemacandpc]

Remember, these benchmarks were made with much more modern processors.
The i5 2500k or 2600k might have been used or an i7 9xx. These are much more capable for gaming. Thus, the i5's and i7's enable higher FPS in the games. Also, you are using DDR2 whereas the bench-markers surely used DDR3.

In layman's terms, your CPU and ram are holding you back.

 

[FlawlessSin]

I've the same problem with my new card, except it's the 550 TI, what should've been running at 150 while recording on low settings was only hitting at max 90 without recording.

 

[sp0nger]

Even if you had an i5 2500k and DDR3 your GTX 560TI is not going to run BF3 on ultra settings. I dont know what benchmarks you looked at before you bought your card but the benchmarks here on toms hardware clearly show that even a GTX570 only gets ~50FPS on ultra. Hell my GTX 580 only touches 60fps on ultra.

The GTX 560TI should run BF3 on the HIGH settings just fine, whats holding you back is your CPU and memory. If you upgraded those then ide say you might be able to dable in a few ultra settings but your definitely never going to play maxed out on a gtx 560ti.

 

[kadoo94]

Alright thanks, high settings looks great anyhoo, I have tried overclocking with nVidia nTune. Unfortunately, I am unable to bump up the core or memory clocks more that 10 or 15 mhz without artifacting/crashing (this was true for my old card, motherboard issue?) and so whatever marginal performance I get out of overclocking everything is unnoticeable, if not worse than previous (5 fps drop).

Also, on campaign I DO use the ultra default settings, 30 fps very playable. Of course that may be that the multiplayer maps are much more open and detailed.

Does anyone have an idea why I'm having trouble overclocking? the GPU temps are fine, I can bump up fan speed and keep it 60 or lower during load. This seems to be the ideal solution, if I can actually get it to work.

 

[monsta]

Use MSI Afterburner, its free to download even if you dont have an MSI card. Make you sure you unlock the core voltage adjuster in the settings

 

[kadoo94]

Well I solved the problem, well, in a different way. I used the application Game Booster 3. In addition to closing the semi-obnoxious battlelog browser, it got rid of enough invisible processes for a significant performance jump. Now I run 25-40 fps with an average of 35 on Ultra, 2xAA! If i overclock I might make this play very smoothly!

Only lasting concern is that the framerate fluctuates like crazy, but that must be due to the insanity of Battlefield's fights. In campaign I get at least 10 fps more.

EDIT AH I've really done it! Running BF3 All Ultra 2xAA at 35 avg fps, very much playable and as I want it. I upped it using EVGA Precision and OC Scanner, they work great compared to nTune which I uninstalled. Now I am running at 880Mhz Core, 1760 Shader and 2100 memory, using the MSI Twin Frozr II clocks as a good stopping point. Who knows how high I can clock it now?

 

[kadoo94]

Best answer selected by kadoo94.