Janky / stuttering performance on light CPU over clock

[bunka]

Hi chaps n chappettes ,

rig specs ;
ASUS Sabertooth 990x 2.0,
ASUS r9 280x DC2,
AMD 8core fx 8350 4ghz (with Cooler master 120mm t4 air cooler installed over the stock rubbish),
8gb Kingston hyperX ram (2x 4gb)
120gb intel Cherryville SSD and several HDD's
800W EVGA Gold rated PSU Supernova

I'll start with - I barely ever dabble with overclocking, I just buy the hardware and use it stock for the most part, I played around years ago with cheap hardware and it always led to artifacting and other issues.

I thought, however, seeming as I have moderate hardware and decent enough cooling that I could try to overclock.

Did a light overclock via ASUS ui suite II / Turbo V EVO 'tool' - CPU ratio upped from 4000MHz to 4300MHz and tested GTAV and immediately the performance was janky and stuttering, before it was smooth on high settings, but wanted to OC and put on to max settings to see how she performed.

I then tried 4100MHz and it stuttered, not as much, but still very noticable.

The whole time I was watching HW monitor like a hawk and the temps stayed at about 45-48degs tops (same as before the OC), I'm always conscious of my temps, using all air cooled I like to get what I can on the cheap.

I've been pretty careful, putting everything back to stock once I saw problems, but just not sure what is causing the bad performance after the slightest OC, should I be upping voltages?

Been reading through a few guides but every system is different, if anyone has good experience with similar components to me advice would be helpful,

I also get this awful artifacting issue with my GPU when I OC it the tiniest bit, I'd play a game and after I close the program (after 10 mins or completely randomly) the whole main display has some kind of artifact I cannot describe, the ONLY example I can find is (off the web..) this
http://www.playtool.com/pages/artifacts/screen0032fh.jpg
but the screen is completely unrecognizable, you cannot make out a thing unlike that image ^ ..

Again, temps completely fine, and oddly my 2nd monitor is completely fine..

thanks

 

[Fullmetalalkami]

hi the gpu you have clearly doesnt like being OCed and id suggest not even trying it if its artifacting already, the stuttering from the cpu performance sounds like its again an unstable OC the turbo tools are sometimes a bit dodgy and end up with instability.
download prime95 and run some blend/small ftt tests for 15 mins keep an eye on temps, and download msi kombuster and heaven/valley and stress test the gpu with that and youll be able to test stability better this way rather than crashing games with unstable OCs

 

[Spaztic One]

As far as the crazy artifacting, I once had a similar artifacting (almost identical pixel spatter) after I upped my OC on my graphics cards. In my case, it was purely coincidental and that my DVI cable was just the tiniest bit loose. I reseated it and the artifacting was gone. I've even upped my OC more and had zero issues. I highly doubt that it is your problem, but it's always worth a shot...

 

[bunka]

Thanks for the replies, I'm guessing there is something up with my Gcard but cannot pinpoint what.. So far, the most replicatable way to get the whole screen line/artifacting is to run a game like Arma 3 (after doing a small OC), get into game, quit, then as soon as I go onto a video player like Youtube or FB video player I get the whole screen artifact.. Now, I cannot say for sure that it will ONLY happen when I do that but its been pretty consistent!

One time I managed to hit the windows key, right arrow then enter commanding a shut down and the artifacting WENT! as it logged out of windows..

This led me to believe it might be a driver / software issue ?

I've run Valley benchmark up to fairly high clock settings and it was fine, just as soon as I quit a game it happens.

 

[SinxarKnights]

unplug/disable your second monitor and try your GPU overclock again. I am not sure if it is limited to ASUS 280/280X but there is an issue with using multi monitor setups and overclocking the card. For a while what I did was use the onboard video for my second monitor and the GPU for the main monitor and was able to overclock it without the artifacts.

Strange about your CPU overclock though. My Phenom II X4 820 did the same thing. It acted so strange with a minimal overclock on it, the stuttering it caused was very noticeable. I never did figure out what causes it though and just put it back to stock clocks.

 

[bunka]

unplug/disable your second monitor and try your GPU overclock again. I am not sure if it is limited to ASUS 280/280X but there is an issue with using multi monitor setups and overclocking the card. For a while what I did was use the onboard video for my second monitor and the GPU for the main monitor and was able to overclock it without the artifacts.

Strange about your CPU overclock though. My Phenom II X4 820 did the same thing. It acted so strange with a minimal overclock on it, the stuttering it caused was very noticeable. I never did figure out what causes it though and just put it back to stock clocks.

Very interesting, I've been trying to dig up info for months but amounted to nothing. Its not your typical artifacing either its the entire main display becomes distorted, I've tried waving a window from the 2nd monitor across it does nothing. I can confirm as of now that it does NOT do this when playing YT videos on CHROME, this is only firefox .. And it only happens after launching a game (seemingly any, deus Ex, or arma 3) then quitting and trying to watch a Firefox / youtube video and immidate main display artifact!

I'll try a few more potential options with firefox before disabling the 2nd display, I do not have onboard video and would rather not lose my 2nd display.. Such a pain! Thanks for response

 

[SinxarKnights]

Yeah I use Chrome and it still did it. Sometimes it will do it when just sitting at the desktop doing nothing.

One thing you can try is just overclocking the core and not touching the memory, that worked for me but eventually just put the card back to stock as the gains weren't really worth the extra power use at 1080p. I've personally found (by benchmarking) the core frequency makes a bigger difference on these cards than the memory clock. I am assuming it is because the memory is fast enough as is, but then again the memory frequency can often be maxed out in the software and it will still be stable.

There is a post around here in the forums with more detail on the issue.

 

[bunka]

SinxarKnights, so far you're right, I've upped the GPU clock settings (via amd catalyst control center) to 1105mhz and left the 'high performance memory clock settings' stock at 1500mhz, power limit to 20% because why not and manual fans at 50%... So far I've done what I KNOW causes the artifacting (run 3d application / game, close game, run firefox, watch youtube video - bang, artifact) and its not done it... Benchmarking showing good score without crashing either..

This is forking bizarre, is it a bug with the memory ? Is it worth RMA'ing? this card wasnt 'cheap' about 150 when I bought it, I heard its meant to be heavy duty.. quite shocked so far.

 

[SinxarKnights]

Honestly I don't know what is wrong with it. Mine does the same thing, and a few others that are using the Asus 280/280X with the DCUII cooler. It could be some issue with the card BIOS since they are OC'ed from the factory. I have no clue man, RMA'ing may not help as it seem to be specific to these Asus cards with that cooler.

Because of this issue I decided to grab whatever card Nvidia releases next that fits in the GTX 970's current performance slot. Not sure if it is AMD's or Asus's fault, but it is somebody's fault.