Potential bottleneck - any advice?

[Isilwen Nightfall]

Hello everyone,

I am posting under this section because this PC is used pretty much for gaming only, and since I recently bought a new graphic card I would like to understand if there's any bottleneck in my system.

The specs are:

i5 750 @ 2.67GHz <--- This is what I believe might be the bottleneck
Gigabyte P55-US3L Mainboard
Kingmax 8 GB RAM DDR3
SAPPHIRE ATI HD 7950 (recently bought, slightly OCed via CCC)
Windows 7 64 bit
A 500GB SATA HD <--- 2 years and 6 months old - might be another bottleneck
I don't remember the exact wattage of my PSU but it never failed me - should be around 500 or 600.
I run the game at 1920x1080.

Recently I am encountering lower FPS than expected with Sleeping Dogs - I am getting around 36-45 FPS in crowded areas while my GF (who has an ATI HD 6850 BUT an i7 860 @2.80GHz) can pretty much run it at 60fps constantly. She has a lower resolution than me (1600x900), but lowering the resolution myself did not help my FPS at all.
Since my card should be a bit better than hers, I am wondering what might be killing my performance this much.

Any ideas?

Thanks a lot for your help!

 

[Guest]

considering the i5 and i7 are both quadcores it is surprising to see a 30% difference. to tell if your cpu is bottlenecking your grfx card, open up taskmanager and see if it is at a 100% load while gaming.

 

[Isilwen Nightfall]

Not 100%, but around 80%.

If the CPU is not the case I'm really puzzled.

 

[killerhurtalot]

I don't see any bottlenecks.........

Did she have different graphic settings than you?

 

[Guest]

Not 100%, but around 80%.

If the CPU is not the case I'm really puzzled.

the 7xxx series is a different gpu than the 6xxx series (yeah duh)
though it has improvements not all games will see great performance increases and depending on who is using what driver, it could make a difference.

even if you are using the same driver, it could benefit her more than you.

thats my SWAG. (scientific wild ass guess)

 

[aaab]

If you lower your screen res, and the FPS doesn't change. Then you have a CPU bottleneck (for that particular game)

 

[Isilwen Nightfall]

The graphical settings, other than the resolution, are the same for the sake of this comparison. Sleeping Dogs is an open world game, and I guess that in these kind of games processing power might be quite relevant, maybe even more important than the GPU. That's why I was thinking about a CPU bottleneck.

However, the CPU load seems to never reach 100%...

 

[aaab]

CPU load doesn't have to hit 100% load. My bet is the game is single threaded, so only runs on one core. And if one core is hitting 100% you have a CPU bottleneck

 

[Guest]

CPU load doesn't have to hit 100% load. My bet is the game is single threaded, so only runs on one core. And if one core is hitting 100% you have a CPU bottleneck

that is true but: there is only a 0.13Mhz diffidence in the clock speed between the two cpus. a 30% difference in frame rate would need a lot more than that.

the requirements for the game even the recommended is rather moderate.
http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=3478&game=Sleeping%20Dogs

i just doubt that it is a hardware issue . . .

 

[aaab]

that is true but: there is only a 0.13Mhz diffidence in the clock speed between the two cpus. a 30% difference in frame rate would need a lot more than that.

the requirements for the game even the recommended is rather moderate.
http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=3478&game=Sleeping%20Dogs

i just doubt that it is a hardware issue . . .

Whoops, I thought the GF had a sandybridge I7... Sorry about that.


You could try update the firmware on the 7950. I had a recent firmware update for my 7850 and it made quite a difference in FPS.

Other thing you could try is a pure videocard benchmark, then a pure CPU bench and compare with your GF's comp?

 

[Deemo13]

She might just be running on different settings than you. And the 7K Series Radeons havent been out for that long, whereas the 6k drivers have had time to be polished.

Also as a side note, is Sleeping Dogs pretty good? I've been looking at it for awhile and it looked good, but I don't know if its worth getting.

 

[dish_moose]

Try OCing your cpu slightly to see if you have some FPS gains.
-Bruce

 

[Isilwen Nightfall]

I double-checked and the our settings are exactly the same, and both our CCCs are configured to not override anything in-game.

aaab - I'm quite a noob concerning this stuff tbh: by "updating the firmware" you mean the BIOS? I've never done that, I will need to find a tutorial.

Deemo13 - it's good IMHO. The setting is great and the atmosphere is very well done, it reminds me of Jackie Chan movies. Graphically-wise it's probably one of the best looking open world games out there. The hand-to-hand combat is also remarkable, it's quite similar to Batman Arkham City in this regard, with many over the top finishers that really feels like they came out from the aforementioned Jackie Chan movies.
I finished the main quests in about 36 hours so it's quite long (tho I did not rush, I admit).

Only issue are the controls - they did not port them well from the console version, so using a joypad would be best.

 

[Deemo13]

Well, the 7950 should out-do a 6850. And I just bought the game btw.

I wouldn't think the i7 would have that much over an i5. Maybe overclock a little?

 

[Isilwen Nightfall]

I just raised the BCLK from 133 to 140...not much lol, but this is the first time ever I attempt overclocking the CPU. I'm not sure I can do it correctly.

 

[Guest]

watch the temps!
you would benefit from an aftermarket heat sink.
overclocking guide for that:
http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/intel_core_i5_750_overclocking_guide,1.html

 

[Isilwen Nightfall]

Thanks man - I am checking this right now.

Let's see if I can avoid burning down my house.