FPS drops with HD 7970

[insomniac3334]

Hello! I just got my XFX Core Edition HD 7970 and reinstalled Windows to ensure maximum performance. In Battlefield 3 at 1680 x 1050, while my FPS is often ~70 or ~80 on the more open maps, I noticed today it drops as low as 28 during some intense moments on some city maps when there is lots of destruction/buildings being blown up. I am pretty sure that this is unusual for this class of card, am I right? I have performed the following actions to try and rectify the problem:

-Installed all Windows updates
-Installed latest drivers from AMD's website
-Installed latest BIOS update/chipset drivers

Other than this FPS drop, everything seems quite normal. My GPU temp never goes above ~70, my CPU temp stays at ~55 or below, the game runs for hours and never has any crashing or error messages pop up.

If this seems unusual for the HD 7970, what should be my next step?

thanks!

Also, my configuration:

Intel 2500k @ 3.7GHz
CM Hyper 212 EVO
Intel DP67BGB3
Corsair TX750 V2
XFX HD 7970 CE 3GB
16GB (4x4GB) Ripjaws DDR3-1600
Lian Li K58w Case
Samsung Spinpoint 500GB 7200rpm HDD

 

[dechy]

That does sound weird, as my 4870s run @ over 90FPS average, lows of about 35 in the very worst cases on a tweaked High/Ultra profile (pure Ultra destroys my old cards lol). And that's at 1080p...

What's the CPU/GPU load while in game? How about the voltage?

MSAA or FXAA (or both?)?

 

[joedjnpc]

Set the Power consumption levels to 20% + in CCC overdrive.

 

[insomniac3334]

Hilariously, as I was typing a response to you, I got my first BSOD. "Memory Management".

To answer your question, my CPU's 4 cores are at roughly 75% usage during gameplay, while my 7970 sees 99-100% usage.

I am playing with maximum AA settings in the in-game menu, but I haven't touched the CCC yet.

By voltage, do you mean my CPU's voltage?

thanks!

 

[insomniac3334]

Set the Power consumption levels to 20% + in CCC overdrive.

I will try this, but what does it do exactly and why would it help?

thanks!

 

[dish_moose]

Try OCing your cpu to 4.2GHz and see if it makes a difference.
-Bruce

 

[dechy]

Aaahhh, that might be normal then with MSAA at full; most benchmarks I seen put BF3 on a 7970 at average 50FPS @ 1080p, so at your lowered resoultion, if you're averaging 70FPS with MSAA 4x, that might make sense.

Switch to FXAA - High and turn off MSAA and you should BARELY see any difference, especially in such a fast paced game and you will gain an easy 20+FPS

 

[joedjnpc]

I will try this, but what does it do exactly and why would it help?

thanks!

Download and open GPU-z (it monitors you GPU temps, clocks, amps, voltages, etc, etc)
Download and run any Furmark ( any of the present benchmarks )

When I did this I noticed that my core clock speed represented in FurMark in the top left corner of the screen was lower than 925 Mhz (stock core clock), mine was between 770mhz and 850 mhz, fluctuating.

By increased the power setting to 20% + I noticed a huge boost in frames in FurMark benchmarks and my clocks were solid 925 Mhz (to be honest I only required +7% for solid 925 clocks, I set to +20% for a solid 1125 Mhz overclock in CCC overdrive).

While this may not be the case in every 7970 it was the case in mine. I run my 7970 at 1125 / 1575 and +20% power with manual fan settings in CCC. These settings will give you a massive boost in performance, 70-100 fps in BF3 ultra 1920 x 1080.

 

[insomniac3334]

Aaahhh, that might be normal then with MSAA at full; most benchmarks I seen put BF3 on a 7970 at average 50FPS @ 1080p, so at your lowered resoultion, if you're averaging 70FPS with MSAA 4x, that might make sense.

Switch to FXAA - High and turn off MSAA and you should BARELY see any difference, especially in such a fast paced game and you will gain an easy 20+FPS

Silly question, being an nVidia guy and all, how to I force FXAA in the CCC? I see various options for AA settings, but nothing says "FXAA".

To those saying my CPU could be limiting the performance, I'd understand if it was a little bit but lows of 28 FPS? That seems a bit low doesn't it?

 

[insomniac3334]

Download and open GPU-z (it monitors you GPU temps, clocks, amps, voltages, etc, etc)
Download and run any Furmark ( any of the present benchmarks )

When I did this I noticed that my core clock speed represented in FurMark in the top left corner of the screen was lower than 925 Mhz (stock core clock), mine was between 770mhz and 850 mhz, fluctuating.

By increased the power setting to 20% + I noticed a huge boost in frames in FurMark benchmarks and my clocks were solid 925 Mhz (to be honest I only required +7% for solid 925 clocks, I set to +20% for a solid 1125 Mhz overclock in CCC overdrive).

While this may not be the case in every 7970 it was the case in mine. I run my 7970 at 1125 / 1575 and +20% power with manual fan settings in CCC. These settings will give you a massive boost in performance, 70-100 fps in BF3 ultra 1920 x 1080.

I set the slider to 20%, all the way to the right, but I still had FPS dips into the 40s unfortunately.

 

[insomniac3334]

This is because, as I mentioned above, your frame dips are probably not due to your GPU at that resolution (unless it's faulty, but I wouldn't expect a faulty GPU to give the performance characteristics you are describing). Also, the 20% power slider increase really only affects things if you have an overclock on your GPU, so it's unsurprising that it didn't affect anything for you.

Figure out if your memory and CPU are fully stable... the occurrence of a BSOD suggests that they are not. I'm guessing that it's something in your CPU/mobo/memory settings that is causing your problem, not your GPU.

Also, what is your average fps? It might help us give you advice if you did a FRAPS benchmark over like 5-10 minutes of typical play and gave us the min/max/average numbers from it.

Before I try any additional benchmarking, I am going to reset my BIOS OC settings to factory. It's not like I really need them at this low res anyways. Hopefully that'll help. I did use my MoBo's auto-OC settings before tweaking myself, so maybe that screwed it up somehow.

 

[insomniac3334]

Yeah that's probably part of your problem... typically mobo auto OC functions just increase the FSB of your system, which can very easily result in instability. You'd be better off doing all your overclocking manually and concentrating on your CPU multiplier.

Also, I can't quite tell if you recognize this or not, but at 1680x1050 with a 7970 you are going to be CPU limited and not GPU limited in games, even demanding ones like BF3. So, framerate drops are almost certainly due to your CPU and not your GPU.

Yes, that does make sense, but I'm glad you clarified.

I just reset all my MoBo OC settings, and if anything I lost a couple FPS. At a really intense part of Gulf of Oman, it dipped into the low 30s. I suppose that's due to the decrease in CPU speed, but I was really hoping it would help smooth things out. I guess I'll do a FRAPS benchmark and report back. Thanks again for the help! This is crazy frustrating.

 

[mike789]

Your system without any overclocking shouldn't have these drops.. Dont have any suggestion just sympathy.. If I were you though, I'd try to test the 7970 on a different computer with BF3..

 

[RussK1]

Just avoid messing with the FSB

There's no FSB on SB. The last time Intel used FSB was with LGA 1366.

@OP

The 2500K should easily hit 4.5ghz on auto voltage

Obviously a 45X multiplier
PLL overvoltage enabled (4.5ghz is the threshhold where this should be enabled)
Long and short power durations should be set to arbitrary numbers (like 300)
Spread spectrum disabled
Load line calibration 3

The 16GB Ripjaws 9-9-9-24 2T @ 1.5v (2T is important because all 4 DIMM slots are occupied)

set the Dram voltage to 1.55 (the extra .05v just adds for stability)

REBOOT and enter windows

Download IBT here~

http://majorgeeks.com/IntelBurnTest_d5987.html

Times to run: 10
Stress level: Very High (4096mb)
Threads: 4

...before you click start open up a temp monitoring program and monitor temps and when you're uncomfortable just click stop.

If you pass the test you're okie dokie.

Download MSI afterburner here~

http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm

Set up a custom fan profile (there's no alternative to AB)

Download Furmark here~

http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/

Run the Furmark 15min. stability test and report back

 

[RussK1]

An article to read~

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-3-graphics-performance,3063-13.html

BF3 IS NOT CPU bound at all. FYI

 

[insomniac3334]

I will look over the past 3 posts or so in a second, just got back from doing homework all day. Here is a screen capture of GPU-Z and CPU-Z in case somebody notices anything odd!

http://i.imgur.com/fhgsJ.png

Again, I can't thank you guys enough for your help. I consider myself an enthusiast but this problem is so open-ended...

 

[insomniac3334]

Just avoid messing with the FSB

There's no FSB on SB. The last time Intel used FSB was with LGA 1366.

@OP

The 2500K should easily hit 4.5ghz on auto voltage

Obviously a 45X multiplier
PLL overvoltage enabled (4.5ghz is the threshhold where this should be enabled)
Long and short power durations should be set to arbitrary numbers (like 300)
Spread spectrum disabled
Load line calibration 3

The 16GB Ripjaws 9-9-9-24 2T @ 1.5v (2T is important because all 4 DIMM slots are occupied)

set the Dram voltage to 1.55 (the extra .05v just adds for stability)

REBOOT and enter windows

Download IBT here~

http://majorgeeks.com/IntelBurnTest_d5987.html

Times to run: 10
Stress level: Very High (4096mb)
Threads: 4

...before you click start open up a temp monitoring program and monitor temps and when you're uncomfortable just click stop.

If you pass the test you're okie dokie.

Download MSI afterburner here~

http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm

Set up a custom fan profile (there's no alternative to AB)

Download Furmark here~

http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/

Run the Furmark 15min. stability test and report back

I'm not going to bother OCing at the moment, as I'm pretty sure my hardware @ stock speeds should run BF3 ass-smooth at 1680 x 1050. Rather, I want to check for memory/CPU stability at the moment. I'll run Memtest tonight, but is there anything you recommend that won't take as long that I can do right now? I'll try Furmark just to be sure...

 

[bystander]

A couple notes. I've read a lot of problems with BF3 with AA above x4. The game does not handle AA well, try it off, and up to x4 to compare.

Also, if you want to force FXAA on an AMD card, you can't, however, AMD does offer MLAA which is somewhat similar, although I don't care for it that much, but it will work on any game no matter if it allows normal AA or not.

 

[RussK1]

I'm not going to bother OCing at the moment, as I'm pretty sure my hardware @ stock speeds should run BF3 ass-smooth at 1680 x 1050. Rather, I want to check for memory/CPU stability at the moment. I'll run Memtest tonight, but is there anything you recommend that won't take as long that I can do right now? I'll try Furmark just to be sure...

The 2500K should be the least of your worries for BF3.

Yeah run the 15min. burn in with Furmark would be good and wouldn't hurt.

What driver are you running for the 7970?

Pre WHQL driver Catalyst 12.3 here~

http://downloads.guru3d.com/AMD-Catalyst-12.3-RC-Driver-download-2858.html

Beta Catalyst 12.4 here~

http://downloads.guru3d.com/AMD-Catalyst-12.x--8.96-February-28-download-2867.html

Both are to support Radeon 7000 series cards.

 

[RussK1]

A couple notes. I've read a lot of problems with BF3 with AA above x4. The game does not handle AA well, try it off, and up to x4 to compare.

Also, if you want to force FXAA on an AMD card, you can't, however, AMD does offer MLAA which is somewhat similar, although I don't care for it that much, but it will work on any game no matter if it allows normal AA or not.

+1

I've not had a problem with 2xAA but 4xAA is like hit or miss. The game just isn't stable with 4xAA even at OP's lower res....

 

[insomniac3334]

The 2500K should be the least of your worries for BF3.

Yeah run the 15min. burn in with Furmark would be good and wouldn't hurt.

What driver are you running for the 7970?

Pre WHQL driver Catalyst 12.3 here~

http://downloads.guru3d.com/AMD-Catalyst-12.3-RC-Driver-download-2858.html

Beta Catalyst 12.4 here~

http://downloads.guru3d.com/AMD-Catalyst-12.x--8.96-February-28-download-2867.html

Both are to support Radeon 7000 series cards.

WHOAH. Just realized that my GPU-Z, under "Bus Interface", reports PCI-E 3.0 x16 @ x1 1.1, while all the screenshots I can find of an HD 7970 in GPU Z say PCI-E 3.0 x16 @ x16 1.1. Does this mean anything? Here is my GPU-Z again: http://i.imgur.com/fhgsJ.png

As far as my driver, it is Version 8.950.00 from 2/14/2012. It is the driver that comes up on AMD's website when I search for x64 HD 7xxx series drivers.

 

[frombehind]

WHOAH. Just realized that my GPU-Z, under "Bus Interface", reports PCI-E 3.0 x16 @ x1 1.1, while all the screenshots I can find of an HD 7970 in GPU Z say PCI-E 3.0 x16 @ x16 1.1. Does this mean anything? Here is my GPU-Z again: http://i.imgur.com/fhgsJ.png

As far as my driver, it is Version 8.950.00 from 2/14/2012. It is the driver that comes up on AMD's website when I search for x64 HD 7xxx series drivers.

I would recommend scrubbing your old drivers from the system and install catalyst 12.2 - this is what i got powering my XFX 7970 BE - and the only problem I'm seeing is some minor artfacting in Metro 2033. Every other game is fine...

As far as your PCI express bus - somehting is choking the bandwidth down to 1/16th of what it should be. In short you are seeing is perfomance is being limited by your graphix card. Not that the card doesnt have enough horse-power... its just being forced to comunicate on a pipe that has not enough bandwidth for it.

 

[insomniac3334]

I would recommend scrubbing your old drivers from the system and install catalyst 12.2 - this is what i got powering my XFX 7970 BE - and the only problem I'm seeing is some minor artfacting in Metro 2033. Every other game is fine...

As far as your PCI express bus - somehting is choking the bandwidth down to 1/16th of what it should be. In short you are seeing is perfomance is being limited by your graphix card. Not that the card doesnt have enough horse-power... its just being forced to comunicate on a pipe that has not enough bandwidth for it.

OK...I understand that much...but is it supposed to be choked like this given my hardware setup? Is my older chipset or something the cause? Or is there a problem I need to find? thanks for the clarification!

Also, every time I use Driver Sweeper to remove my drivers, I restart, and Windows auto-installs an AMD driver upon logging in. I have turned off automatic driver installation in Windows update, but this is the OS itself doing the installing not just the update module. Any recommendations?

 

[bystander]

WHOAH. Just realized that my GPU-Z, under "Bus Interface", reports PCI-E 3.0 x16 @ x1 1.1, while all the screenshots I can find of an HD 7970 in GPU Z say PCI-E 3.0 x16 @ x16 1.1. Does this mean anything? Here is my GPU-Z again: http://i.imgur.com/fhgsJ.png

As far as my driver, it is Version 8.950.00 from 2/14/2012. It is the driver that comes up on AMD's website when I search for x64 HD 7xxx series drivers.

Every time I've seen this, it is due to poor seating. Try removing the card and blow compressed air over the pins and into the PCIe slot and put it back in place. Also make sure it's centered well when screwed into place.

 

[RussK1]

Also, every time I use Driver Sweeper to remove my drivers, I restart, and Windows auto-installs an AMD driver upon logging in. I have turned off automatic driver installation in Windows update, but this is the OS itself doing the installing not just the update module. Any recommendations?

Hit start
right click "properties"
go to "advanced system settings"
click "hardware"
click "device installation settings"
tick "no, let me choose what to do"
tick "never install driver software from Windows update"

Save changes and reboot.

Uninstall and re-install driver