Super slow MSI 7950

[tariqulislam]

I bought this MSI 7950 3Gb a couple of weeks ago, and been playing Sleeping Dogs, Darksiders 2, Dark Souls etc on a 3570K machine. While all the games were playable at their highest settings, the FPS was not very high - around min 24fps to max 45 fps ( I always play @1080p, single monitor). Today I got suspicious about its performance and used 3dmark 11 extreme test@1080p to find out it scores only around X3600! the average fps on the graphics tests was only 15-18fps. I uninstalled-reinstalled the drivers (catalyst 12.8), but the results were almost the same. Tried with another windows 7 x64 from my dual boot, but the results were worse - around X2400 overall. Any idea what might be causing the issue? I thought graphics card either work perfectly or dont at all - never thought they perform slower..

should I RMA it?

My system:
Core i5 3570K
Asrock Z77 extreme4
GSkill ripjaws 2 x 4GB 1600 MHz
MSI Twin Frozr R7950 3GB
Corsair Enthusiast TX650
Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB
Coolermaster elite 310
Windows 7 x64

 

[Herr_Koos]

Since it's an MSI card, it will have come bundled with the MSI Afterburner software package. Use Afterburner's system monitors to verify that your GPU goes to its rated clock speed under load, and that the load temperatures are within the safe zone.

 

[christofergeo]

Combining amd gpu with intel cpu limits your system performance...both cpu and gpu doesnt give 100% and thats a main reason why u dont get much fps.The only thing u can do is maybe to sell the msi and buy a nvidia card which will go much better in your well built system.If u dont want to sell the card u just can overclock both cpu and gpu and see how it does then.

 

[tariqulislam]

I monitored the clocks - they go to the rated clock speed and the temperature keeps below 60 degrees.

I figured out where the problem was. In.my.understanding. The benchmarks on the web mentioned that the 3dmark11 score was P7211 - I thought this 'P' was a label added to denote the level of the score - wrong. It means the test was performed in performance settings on 3dmark11. Whereas I did them on extreme, thus got the score X3600. It all makes sense now.

I looked at one of the older posts: benchmark of six 7950 cards , it has all of the scores shown along with other cards. My MSI 7950 performs better than the benchmark now ( maybe because of the udpated drivers).

Thank a lot for your help, Herr_Koos

 

[Herr_Koos]

Combining amd gpu with intel cpu limits your system performance...both cpu and gpu doesnt give 100% and thats a main reason why u dont get much fps.The only thing u can do is maybe to sell the msi and buy a nvidia card which will go much better in your well built system.If u dont want to sell the card u just can overclock both cpu and gpu and see how it does then.

Not true at all. Whoever told you this does not know what they are talking about.

 

[Herr_Koos]

I monitored the clocks - they go to the rated clock speed and the temperature keeps below 60 degrees.

Thank a lot for your help, Herr_Koos

Cool. If you game performance is still not as expected, you can always tweak settings a bit. You should be able to play most anything with eye candy turned on, but take note when enabling AA or Vsync and the effect that different settings can have on your performance. It may take some time, but eventually you will strike a good balance between visual quality and frame rate.

 

[bigcyco1]

Yeah something is fishy that must be a typo X3600 is high by the way try to run it again and post a screen shot other than that i would just recommend same thing BigMack70 did try a total uninstall and reinstall of the drivers as well

 

[markaflias]

Drivers my friend , drivers

 

[tariqulislam]

What in the world did you overclock your 7950 to in order to score X3600??!?!?!

That's about the score that a 7970 with a ~30% overclock (~1200/1800) will get, unless they made a huge 3dmark11 score boost in the 12.8 drivers. Wow. Do you have any settings altered in the CCC (texture filtering quality/AA quality/tesselation settings)?

X2400 sounds like a much more normal stock 7950 score than X3600. Are you using Lucid MVP? That can increase 3dmark scores considerably and can also screw with game performance. I'd try disabling that if you have it enabled.

You can always try a total uninstall and reinstall of the drivers as well, following these steps:
http://www.overclock.net/t/988215/how-to-properly-uninstall-ati-amd-software-drivers-for-graphics-cards

I didnt overclock at all. The first time benchmark gave me around X3600, and got X2500 to X2200 thereafter. It is really weird that I am getting that score on 7950 where 6990 gets around that.

 

[tariqulislam]

Yeah something is fishy that must be a typo X3600 is high by the way try to run it again and post a screen shot other than that i would just recommend same thing BigMack70 did try a total uninstall and reinstall of the drivers as well

No, it wasnt a typo. I really got X3600 the first time, but getting X2500 or so thereafter. Maybe some settings were tuned down by default - which I really doubt.

 

[bigcyco1]

No, it wasnt a typo. I really got X3600 the first time, but getting X2500 or so thereafter. Maybe some settings were tuned down by default - which I really doubt.

Yeah o.k. that's sound more like what i seen X2500 not to shabby either

 

[tariqulislam]

What about Lucid MVP?

Also, if you messed in CCC with texture quality or tesselation or AA, that can affect 3dmark score.

I think Lucid MVP was bundled with asrock extreme4 drivers and utils the first time when I got a score of X3600. When I uninstalled the graphics drivers, Lucid MVP showed a balloon saying that it has been disabled. Later when testing using 3d mark11, I did not re-enable lucid mvp, and got around X2400. It all makes perfect sense now! thanks! I was hoping maybe my card started performing like a 6990


No, I didnt modify any settings in CCC.

 

[tariqulislam]

Best answer selected by tariqulislam.