Poor 290x Performance

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USMCGrunt

2[H]4U
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Ive been out of the gaming scene for awhile but just before falling out I bought a pair of Sapphire 290x GPUs. Ive started trying to get back into BF4 but the experience isn't matching up to expectations in terms of performance. Regardless of crossfire and whether I'm using DX11 or Mantle, I get poor performance in the area of sub-30 fps with everything turned on at 1920x1200 resolution. I'm running 14.4 drivers. Here's the system specs:

ASUS P8Z77 motherboard
i7 2600k
16GB RAM
x2 Sapphire 290x
SSD

According to [H]ard's review, I should be pulling way more than double the framerate, any ideas??

Initial Update: Running GPU-Z with crossfire disabled, the main GPU was running at 71c at idle. I blew the dust out of the card and its dropped to 63c after about 10 minutes of being back in place. I'd assume, could be wrong, that its throttling itself under load and that's causing my issues?
 
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Have you tried one card at a time?

Seems like you should get way more than that with just one card. What are the selected video options in BF4?
 
seanmcd said:
Have you tried one card at a time?

Seems like you should get way more than that with just one card. What are the selected video options in BF4?
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Having Crossfire disabled is one card at a time and everything is set to their highest settings except resolution scaling, which is left at 100%
 
14.6 and 14.7 have the latest Mantle driver version.

If you haven't already disable Overlay in Origin settings.
 
Pieter3dnow said:
14.6 and 14.7 have the latest Mantle driver version.

If you haven't already disable Overlay in Origin settings.
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That's great but, if performance is poor with latest standard release drivers, then what would moving to beta drivers do to improve things if I am not utilizing the latest Mantle drivers? Performance sucks equally regardless of Mantle or DX being utilized.

Origin Overlay is disabled.
 
I can only say that there is a new version of the Mantle driver from your driver revision . Regarding the in game problems those you can search for these problems on the BF4 forums and find out you are not alone.

Even people with Nvidia cards are complaining about it.

Try the new drivers you can always roll back :) .
 
monitor your GPU temps and clock speeds while you're playing. They might be overheating and throttling back.
 
I was playing Prefect Storm the other day and It pulled me down to 80 fps at Ultra 1920 x 1080 with CX 7950's but reminded smooth under DX 11 on Cat 14.4 and windows 8.1 64Bit .. adding the 6 core Xeon has really helped me.
 
I couldn't help but notice you said you 'blew the dust out of the card and the temp dropped'. The way your initial post is worded suggests the cards are new, are they 2nd hand?
 
fanboy said:
I was playing Prefect Storm the other day and It pulled me down to 80 fps at Ultra 1920 x 1080 with CX 7950's but reminded smooth under DX 11 on Cat 14.4 and windows 8.1 64Bit .. adding the 6 core Xeon has really helped me.
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most of the benchmarks out there show even a core i5 quad core is capable of running BF4 even at 4k.... it is highly GPU dependant and I know from moving from a 3770 to a 3930k the CPU isnt even pegged when running eyefinity... highly doubt your good FPS is from the CPU.

Violator said:
I couldn't help but notice you said you 'blew the dust out of the card and the temp dropped'. The way your initial post is worded suggests the cards are new, are they 2nd hand?
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i would be it is a thermal issue are these reference design cooler?
 
Violator said:
I couldn't help but notice you said you 'blew the dust out of the card and the temp dropped'. The way your initial post is worded suggests the cards are new, are they 2nd hand?
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I bought them when the 290X first came out so no, they are not new or 2nd hand. They are reference design coolers (Which yes I know suck).

TheGamerZ said:
monitor your GPU temps and clock speeds while you're playing. They might be overheating and throttling back.
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Just finished doing this, had GPU-Z keeping a log of temps, fan speed, and clock speed while I played BF4. Imported the 3300 data points into excel and my average clock speed is 965, temp 89c, and fan speed 48%. This was all without crossfire but was also on an indoor map so frame rate was very respectable around 60-90fps the entire time...possibly with dips lower in heavy action but I wasn't watching the counter that closely. I'll need to run through it again on one of the outdoor maps where the main problem was presenting itself.

At the very least though, it shows the card is functioning as expected and reducing clock speed at a minimal amount. Is there an fps tool that will also log its readings to a file? I'd like to be able to overlay FPS with this other data...see what its all doing together.
 
Well your gimping the shit out of your cards with that 2600K. For one each card is only getting 8x PCIe lanes and at 2.0 spec.

The R290X would run BEAST mode for you if you hasd 16x/16x 2.0 or 8x in 3.0 mode.

However part of the problem also lies in the fact that part of the PCI-e bus is used for the crossfire bus which has replaced the external bridge cable. So with 8x/8x plus the overhead of the crossfire traffic you are really gimping your shit.

I had at one point 2x R290x's running at a full 16x lanes 3.0 on my 3930K processor and damn it was fast but I needed the money for an emergency and had to sell a card.
 
tangoseal said:
Well your gimping the shit out of your cards with that 2600K. For one each card is only getting 8x PCIe lanes and at 2.0 spec.

The R290X would run BEAST mode for you if you hasd 16x/16x 2.0 or 8x in 3.0 mode.

However part of the problem also lies in the fact that part of the PCI-e bus is used for the crossfire bus which has replaced the external bridge cable. So with 8x/8x plus the overhead of the crossfire traffic you are really gimping your shit.

I had at one point 2x R290x's running at a full 16x lanes 3.0 on my 3930K processor and damn it was fast but I needed the money for an emergency and had to sell a card.
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I doubt the 2600K is gimping them, but you might be right about the PCIe.
 
USMCGrunt said:
I bought them when the 290X first came out so no, they are not new or 2nd hand. They are reference design coolers (Which yes I know suck).
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Fair enough. Have you tried any other games/benchmarks at all? I wouldn't just rely on BF4 as a test. Try 3dmark or something and see if your score is where it should be.
 
tangoseal said:
Well your gimping the shit out of your cards with that 2600K. For one each card is only getting 8x PCIe lanes and at 2.0 spec.

The R290X would run BEAST mode for you if you hasd 16x/16x 2.0 or 8x in 3.0 mode.

However part of the problem also lies in the fact that part of the PCI-e bus is used for the crossfire bus which has replaced the external bridge cable. So with 8x/8x plus the overhead of the crossfire traffic you are really gimping your shit.

I had at one point 2x R290x's running at a full 16x lanes 3.0 on my 3930K processor and damn it was fast but I needed the money for an emergency and had to sell a card.
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Unless GPU-Z is wrong, your full of it....not to mention the issue is present with crossfire disabled, meaning no crossfire data is stealing bandwidth.

ZMKaQAO.jpg
 
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Kwisatz Haderach said:
What about the uber mode switch?
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Ah, totally forgot about that switch, I just checked and at least one of them was still set to quiet/normal mode. The other one, I wasn't sure if I heard it click or it was just my finger slipping off the board that made the sound. I'll retest it tonight and see what happens.
 
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Kwisatz Haderach said:
What case are you using?
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That's an additional source of idiocy for me. I am using a Silverstone TJ07 that, once upon a time, was watercooled. Unfortunately, after switching back to air, I failed to buy additional fans so all it has are a pair of 80mm fans in the back pushing air out...which it's probably causing intake air to be sucked in from the top where the hot air may be getting pulled in. I have the side off the case right now and its helping temps. Main card is running at 63c at idle while the disabled card is running at 42c. I'm probably gonna buy a new case that's more suitable for air (plus I got the itch) which should draw those temps down a little better. I also need to completely remove the cards from the system and get them blown out real well. When I blew them out a few days ago, Ieft them in the case and just shot compressed air into the fans and in the back of the heatsink....not a great job.
 
BF4 has crippled CrossifreX either in DX11 or Mantle since the last patch was released a few weeks ago. They should be releasing a new patch sometime this week or next before the new DLC is released to the general public.

It is not your machine.
 
USMCGrunt said:
Unless GPU-Z is wrong, your full of it....not to mention the issue is present with crossfire disabled, meaning no crossfire data is stealing bandwidth.

ZMKaQAO.jpg
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Just so you are aware that screenshot only tells yu what the card is capable of IIRC not what it is installed into.

Kinda like in the 32bit XP days we all had 4GB of RAM but only 3.25GB was usable.

I'm not saying this is your problem just an observation.
 
USMC,
Those cards of yours aren't running the Stilt's mining bios on them, are they?
 
FroggyTaco said:
Just so you are aware that screenshot only tells yu what the card is capable of IIRC not what it is installed into.

Kinda like in the 32bit XP days we all had 4GB of RAM but only 3.25GB was usable.

I'm not saying this is your problem just an observation.
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My understanding, which could be wrong, is that the bus interface speed is listed as 'Capable speed @ running speed'


atp1916 said:
USMC,
Those cards of yours aren't running the Stilt's mining bios on them, are they?
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I wouldn't imagine they are, I haven't done any crypto-mining with these cards and I bought them first hand from Microcenter.
 
USMCGrunt said:
My understanding, which could be wrong, is that the bus interface speed is listed as 'Capable speed @ running speed'
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You actually are wrong, since all Sandy Bridge parts only support PCI-E 2.0..You can use the same Motherboard (with a proper BIOS update most of the time) but you need an Ivy Bridge chip (3770K is what you want) in order to have PCI-E 3.0..
 
USMCGrunt said:
My understanding, which could be wrong, is that the bus interface speed is listed as 'Capable speed @ running speed'
Click to expand...

As stated above he is correct. Your motherboard has 3.0 slot but your processor is limiting it to a 2.0 that's why GPU-Z shows it as a 3.0 slot.
 
It has to be heat and throttling related. I had a 290X myself and played BF4. I had the MSI Twin Frozr and no matter what I did to cool this card it would always get to like 95 and start to throttle after only 20 minutes of game play or so. These cards run like the surface of the sun. Try buying an aftermarket cooler like the arctic cooling extreme. Or what I did which was sell my 290X and pick up a 780 TI. My load temps now on BF4 are 68 max and that is after like 2 hours of gaming, idles about 42. The 290X is an awesome card IF you can get the heat under control.
 
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