What is my bottleneck?

[bradj11]

I recently built my first computer for gaming and did quite a bit of research before hand. I'm pretty sure I should be getting better performance out of my build. In Guild Wars 2 I'm getting 60fps at times but usually its around mid 20's to 40's. I thought I'd have better luck on Team Fortress 2, but with everything maxxed out It's still somewhat choppy. I'm thinking maybe a bottleneck or something? My build is as follows:

Asrock 990fx Extreme4 Motherboard

AMD fx-8120@3.1ghz (not overclocked)

two Sapphire HD Radeon 6950 graphics cards (not overclocked)

Gskill Sniper Series RAM 2 x 4gb@1866 (not overclocked)

Corsair Gamer Series GS800 psu 800

HDD@7200rpm

Any answers would be much appreciated. I'm still trying to learn.

 

[bradj11]

Should I be able to play most games near 60fps and smoothly? And would a SSD improve gaming performance?

 

[jay2577]

An SSD improves general peformance and when i got my SSD this year i was very very happy with the performance increase and instant response from my whole system. I am not sure that it will help with your current problem though.
The FX cpu's are not always the best at some games. I have my FX 4100 clocked at 4.2ghz and i don't have problems with any of my games although i don't play guild wars 2.
My best advice to you is try and overclock your cpu and see if that makes a difference. The FX cpu is very easy to overclock by just changing the multiplier in the bios.
Can you try this and let me know the difference? If not make sure you have all the latest drivers for your graphics card.
If this doesn't work post again on here and i'll try to help. Guild wars 2 can only make use of 4 cores of your 8 core cpu which doesn't help.

 

[ccovemaker]

I am an AMD fan but the bulldozer are kinda a bust.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-5.html

I would point to that with 2 6950ds for the GPU.

You could always test it......

Get MSI afterburner open that and task manager. Go some place busy like a town. Then alt tab out of the game and see who is busier.

 

[ccovemaker]

As sorry kind unclear.....I don't see 2 6950s having trouble with GW2.

 

[bradj11]

I've tried overclocking my cpu in the bios but whenever I increase the multiplier to get 4.0ghz windows won't load up and I have to reboot and when I go into bios my cpu says it's at 3.1ghz. There are some preset overclock settings but if I select them it increases the bus by a lot and lowers the multiplier. Is that bad? And my RAM defaults to like 800mhz and won't let me change it to 1866mhz. Sorry, if I'm confusing, I'm still trying to learn how to OC. I don't wanna just start changing numbers and kill my cpu. I can't seem to OC my cpu by just increasing the multiplier. I turn off turbo, cool and quiet, etc...

 

[jay2577]

i have cool and quiet enabled with my overclock so it only goes to 4.2ghz when needed but turbo does need to be off. Overclocking for you as you are new to it should just be with the multiplier. When you increse the FSB speed it overclocks more than just your cpu. Have you tried setting the multiplier to 19 for a 3.8ghz speed? I only have the FX 4100 which is at 4.2ghz on stock voltage and i'm thinking that maybe your 8120 might need a small voltage increase to overclock it to 4ghz because it's twice the cores than mine which might need some research as you are new to this as increasing the voltage too much can damage your cpu. 3.8ghz should be fine and if not try setting the multiplier to 18 for a 3.6ghz speed. Try these and let me know the results

 

[jay2577]

Also what cpu cooler are you using?

 

[bradj11]

So I did get my cpu OC'ed to 3.8ghz. It seems that when playing GW2 i'll be looking in an area where there isn't much distance to it and i'll be at 60fps, but then I'll turn around and look at an area with a lot of shadows and trees and mountains off in the distance for a while and my computer starts working like crazy and I drop into the 20's in fps and the area where I was getting 60fps will now be 20 to 30fps. I've heard that I'd probably get an improvement if I went with a quad-core, I was thinking a Phenom ii x4-965?

 

[bradj11]

I've been seeing online to stay away from bulldozer when gaming.

 

[jay2577]

Yes some games are not so good with the bulldozer but most are okay. I would suggest that you make do with what you have until piledriver comes out. Piledriver is bulldozer mark 2 and will improve things.Once you've read some reviews you can then decide between the phenom and piledriver.

 

[DHFF]

I am partial to MSI motherboards. The control Center Application lets you modify the CPU settings in real time, you can alter the Multiply, FSB, voltage ect. and you can instantly see how much of a boost you are getting as well as monitor the temp.

I have an FX-4100 and the most I have ever squeezed out of that bad boy is 4.5Ghz.