New PC FPS Underperformance and Game Crashes

[Quentin Chalmers]

I have been gaming for about 7 years now and finally got around to building my own PC. Everything had been great so far, setup only took me a day and every component in my build was working flawlessly for the first couple of weeks while I moved everything over from my old PC.

The specs for my rig are as follows:

AMD FX-8320 Overclocked to 4.2 Ghz @ 1.36 Volts (Prime 95 stable)
Zalman CNPS9500A-LED Aftermarket CPU Cooler
PNY GTX 760 Factory Overclocked (Latest Nvidia Driver)
G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 @ 8-8-8-24 (Set manually in Bios)
Asus M5A99X EVO R2.0 ATX AM3+ Mobo (Latest Bios Update)
Samsung 840 EVO 120 GB SSD (boot drive)
WD Black 1 TB HDD 7200 RPM (for game storage)
NZXT Phantom 410
CORSAIR CX600M 600W PSU

Before I built this, I did a LOT of research, I spent weeks on the internet comparing benchmarks and reading forums. My goal was to build a PC that was not too expensive, but able to easily play most new games at minimum 30 fps. The total cost ended up being just under $900. I was honestly expecting around 50 FPS on most games with high settings.

In some ways im happy with my new PC, it boots very fast, and is very responsive. However it seems to be having problems with certain games. Dota 2 will play at maximum settings 60 FPS solid no problems, no crashes for over 7 hours straight. However other games I am having issues with.

I set Borderlands 2 to automatically detect settings, it set almost everything to high. While in game I can get 60 FPS fine while just running around but as soon as I enter combat my frame rate tanks. If say 4 enemies are attacking me and I am shooting back at them, the FPS stays between 20-30 until they are dead. All battles are like this, every time a lot of action happens I get a big performance drop.

On top of this, Borderlands randomly crashes. In task manager it will say not responding and then I have to kill the process. Weirdly enough it says Borderlands 2 is running in 32 Bit with Directx 9, doesn't seem right to me.

I also tried Tomb raider Yesterday, I didn't record FPS because the game looked so nice I didnt want to alt escape and start FRAPS haha. I was running at a mix of ultra and high settings and it was definitely playable, but I kept crashing at a certain area after only being in game for 10 minutes.

I have been using CPU-Z and GPU-Z recently a lot to examine my components and I noticed something peculiar. I have recorded sensor data in GPU-Z while in Borderlands 2 and Tomb Raider and after crashing when I examine the logs it appears I always crash right as my GPU hits 100% load. The good news is this means my GPU isn't being bottle-necked by my the CPU or something else. But why would it be crashing at that load? I can upload the sensor data logs and indicate at what time I crash if it helps. The logs show a lot of info including temps, core and memory clocks, and utilization percentages.

If I wasn't at work right now I would be working hard to troubleshoot this. I don't shy away from PC problems, I work hardcore until I fix them. When I get home today I am going to reset my bios from overclock to stock frequency and see if that fixes anything. Will post back here if anything comes up.

I think I have 2 main questions:

1. Is my game performance in Borderlands 2 acceptable? Is something wrong or are my expectations too high? I can post detailed information on in game graphics settings if they help.

2. Why am I crashing? If it turns out its because my CPU is overclocked I will be disappointed, Prime 95 blend tests have been rock solid.

Any help is greatly appreciated! I am very responsive with posts so if you think more detail on something will help with troubleshooting, by all means ask.

Thanks.

 

[dominirican3351]

What are your temps when it crashes. In borderlands 2 turn down psyhx as that tends to hit frames alot. In tombraider try playing on high with the hair filter not on tressfx as this requires alot of power for hair.

 

[Quentin Chalmers]

Temps are perfectly fine. GPU isn't going above 60 Celcius, and CPU is hitting max 55 Celcius.

I am assuming you are replying about the FPS performance, not crashes, correct?

I will turn Physx down on Borderlands when I get home, and post here about the FPS change.

I am not having any fps problems in Tomb Raider, but I will try it with and without tressfx and compare the fps.

In general, are you saying that the specs of my PC are not good enough to play with these sort of things on? Did I not invest enough in my PC to play with these graphics settings?

Thanks.

 

[dominirican3351]

Your build is great for med-high gaming its just that games have these settings in them that cripple cards. Even with my build I'm thinking of throwing in a 750 ti as a dedicated pyshx card.

Check your bios for your cpu to see if its oc some boards do that by default. When you say you are runing latest nvidia driver is it the stable release only or betas also. Also check mobo manual to make sure you have the graphics card in the 16x slot you might have installed in 8x or 4x slot by mistake

 

[Quentin Chalmers]

Your build is great for med-high gaming its just that games have these settings in them that cripple cards. Even with my build I'm thinking of throwing in a 750 ti as a dedicated pyshx card.

Check your bios for your cpu to see if its oc some boards do that by default. When you say you are runing latest nvidia driver is it the stable release only or betas also. Also check mobo manual to make sure you have the graphics card in the 16x slot you might have installed in 8x or 4x slot by mistake

The Bios has not auto overclocked the CPU, I did it all manually. For fun when I first set up the PC I allowed the Mobo to auto overclock, stupid thing ran my ram at 1100 Mhz and 11-13-13-31 timings, and it OC'd the CPU to 3.8 Ghz @ 1.45 Volts LOL. Not ever doing that again.

I am running stable release, not beta. Current driver is 337.88.

I do indeed have the GPU in the x16 slot. On my motherboard its the closest PCI slot to the CPU.

Thanks for the quick replies.

If you are right about these graphics settings I have to say I'm a little disappointed :/ It seems these days you have to spend so much money to get good performance in new games. I mean that GPU was $230, most expensive single PC component ive ever bought. If I wasn't a poor university student maybe I could afford a 400-500 dollar card...

 

[dominirican3351]

I understand how you feel I had a 260x which was not preforming up to par to what i was seeing online. So ended up getting a $750 card at the time. Was it needed no but its good to have also are you runing multiple monitors because that also impacts performance.

 

[Quentin Chalmers]

I understand how you feel I had a 260x which was not preforming up to par to what i was seeing online. So ended up getting a $750 card at the time. Was it needed no but its good to have also are you runing multiple monitors because that also impacts performance.

No, currently running on a single 1920x1080 Viewsonic monitor.

 

[dominirican3351]

best thing is to try beta driver an see if that helps at all

 

[Quentin Chalmers]

best thing is to try beta driver an see if that helps at all

Ok, I will try that too.

Since you are the only one responding to this discussion, do you have any suggestions for why I am crashing in games?

 

[dominirican3351]

For that one I really wouldn't have any insight on exactly why. The only time that my games would crash would be gpu temp on watch dogs or cpu heat reaching over 90 degrees on an unstable over clock. Try and run with vsync on so that your gpu isn't trying to push more than it needs to fps wise this way your gpu doesn't reach 100% load. And your temps being so low under max load is good try and run msi afterburner at the same time to monitor temp load and fps at the same time to see if anything peaks

 

[Quentin Chalmers]

For that one I really wouldn't have any insight on exactly why. The only time that my games would crash would be gpu temp on watch dogs or cpu heat reaching over 90 degrees on an unstable over clock. Try and run with vsync on so that your gpu isn't trying to push more than it needs to fps wise this way your gpu doesn't reach 100% load. And your temps being so low under max load is good try and run msi afterburner at the same time to monitor temp load and fps at the same time to see if anything peaks

I do use Vsync most of the time, my monitor only has a 60Hz refresh rate so no point in my games running higher than that.

Before yesterday I had never payed any attention to GPU load, so I am not experienced with it. Is it not acceptable to run at 100% load?

Im starting to think the issue may be my CPU OC. Forums say Prime 95 can be fine but games still crash.

 

[dominirican3351]

Run the cpu at stock to see what it does. When its at 100% load that means that it is at the peak performance and giving it the most it can. When you lower the graphic settings the load will be lessened

 

[Damn_Rookie]

I do use Vsync most of the time, my monitor only has a 60Hz refresh rate so no point in my games running higher than that.

You probably know this all already, but I thought I'd mention it anyway, as you specifically wrote about your performance dropping form 60 to 30 FPS.

Keep in mind that due to the way V-sync normally works, if the framerate outputted by your GPU drops below your native refresh rate, in this case 60 Hz, the actual framerate displayed will drop down to 30 FPS (exactly half of the native refresh rate), or lower (20, 15, and so on). I won't go into precisely why that is the case here, but will link you to this, which should help explain. As soon as the framerate outputted by the GPU gets above 60 again, it will start displaying 60 FPS again.

A way around this issue is to use adaptive V-sync which is a feature of nVidia graphics cards that you can turn on in the nVidia control panel (or occasionally, directly in games). This leaves V-sync on for when you're above 60 FPS, so as to avoid screen tearing and unnecessarily strain on the graphics card, but automatically and instantly switches it off below 60 FPS, so you don't get artificially limited to 30 FPS.

 

[Quentin Chalmers]

Run the cpu at stock to see what it does. When its at 100% load that means that it is at the peak performance and giving it the most it can. When you lower the graphic settings the load will be lessened

So do you know if it is, or is not acceptable to run the card at 100% load?

 

[Quentin Chalmers]

I do use Vsync most of the time, my monitor only has a 60Hz refresh rate so no point in my games running higher than that.

You probably know this all already, but I thought I'd mention it anyway, as you specifically wrote about your performance dropping form 60 to 30 FPS.

Keep in mind that due to the way V-sync normally works, if the framerate outputted by your GPU drops below your native refresh rate, in this case 60 Hz, the actual framerate displayed will drop down to 30 FPS (exactly half of the native refresh rate), or lower (20, 15, and so on). I won't go into precisely why that is the case here, but will link you to this, which should help explain. As soon as the framerate outputted by the GPU gets above 60 again, it will start displaying 60 FPS again.

A way around this issue is to use adaptive V-sync which is a feature of nVidia graphics cards that you can turn on in the nVidia control panel (or occasionally, directly in games). This leaves V-sync on for when you're above 60 FPS, so as to avoid screen tearing and unnecessarily strain on the graphics card, but automatically and instantly switches it off below 60 FPS, so you don't get artificially limited to 30 FPS.

I did not know that, thank you. I'm going to check out the control panel and see what I can do!

Edit: Reading about it now, guess im a noob haha. I put lots of effort into researching PC parts and not into optimizing my new PC for games.

 

[dominirican3351]

Its acceptable to run card at 100% as long as its not over heating

 

[Quentin Chalmers]

Its acceptable to run card at 100% as long as its not over heating

Hm, ok so that probably isn't the reason im crashing. I am getting great temps on my GPU and not even running at 75% fan capacity yet.

 

[Quentin Chalmers]

Alright so today I tried a couple different things. First, I went into Bios and reset everything to factory default to remove any traces of my overclock. I then downloaded Unigine Valley Benchmark which I have heard is good for testing out GPU performance. I was getting a decent 45-55 fps but then crashed within 5 minutes in the exact same way I did last time, GPU-Z sensor log showed that as soon as my GPU reached 100% load, it crashed. I did notice my GPU temp reached all the way up to 70 degrees Celcius, but that is still within operating specifications so it should be fine. CPU stayed under 55 degrees again.

As soon as I figured out it isn't my OC that is the problem, I decided im not going to worry about in game performance yet, because it looks like something is wrong with my GPU. I am going to try to call PNY and see if I can get some support, this card is brand new and shouldn't be causing problems like this.

Quick question: the RAM in a video card like this runs dual right? That is why I only reach ~3100 Mhz RAM speed on the GPU?

Edit: I should probably switch out the GTX 760 with another card first to test that it is for sure the card...

Thanks again for the help, I will definitely try all the suggestions to improve in game performance when I am sure my card is working properly. Will post back with anything important.

 

[Quentin Chalmers]

In case anyone ever sees this thread, it turns out my GTX 760 was faulty. I sent it in and it was replaced. No problems now