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Computer doesn't perform as expected.

S

Shabutie

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 23, 2012
Messages
74
Hello everyone,

I'm new to this forum and was hoping someone could help me out.

First off, I have

i5 2500K, @4.2GHz with voltage on Auto. Temps at 100% load don't go above 60C.
EVGA GTX 680 - stock
GIGABYTE|GA-Z68X-UD3-B3
CM (1000W) RSA00-80GA
4Gx2|G.SKILL F3-12800CL9
Windows 7 64 Home (Legit Copy)
OCZ Vertex 3 - 120 GB SSD
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB (or F1, whichever the popular one is)

Here is a brief history.
I have always built my own computers and things have always been solid, until my last build (above). I've had this for a year, only it was a 580 in the 680's place. I've always felt that something wasn't 100% right, but it was okay because things still 'worked'. The only real issues I had were vsync on causing a weird delay and skipping. It was like playing in a vat of Jello. so I would play without vsync, but screen tearing for me has always been really bad. *Maybe it's because of my Samsung LED monitor? but it's a 2MS response so I don't kno*. The other issue is that if something ran under 60 FPS it would look very choppy too me. Even at 55-58. Which is odd, because I can play 30FPS games on console without issue.

So to today.
I bought the 680 hoping to try this adaptive vsync, and hopefully fix my issues. I seem to have more now. I reformatted both drives for this, and clean installed windows and the new nvidia drivers on the SSD. Then I did the Intel chipset driver/sound driver/network driver all from gigabytes website. I installed some games. This is what I've found.

Diablo 3 Beta - Very Choppy/stuttering like crazy. If I have vsync on there is only a slight delay (it's livable) but will dip below 60 a lot. When I have it off, It gets 230-300 with the occasional dip to 100 when something crazy happens. But it feels like it's bouncing between 10 and 30. This could be because it's a beta or the "agent.exe" situation but it's disheartening. (The game did the same thing with the GTX 580).

Splinter Cell Conviction - Control Seems to run fine and only uses 50% gpu. Console port I suspect.

Dirt 3 - second control seems to run very well, benchmark MAX settings 115 Average, min of 97.

WoW - Frame skips when vsync enabled/ screen tearing pretty bad when it's off.
These are minor frame skips, every few seconds if i study the background going by it will skip a single frame. This did not happen with the 580.

The Witcher 2 - Getting a bit lower FPS than I saw on a benchmark, but bad. 55 - 70 FPS. But it feels off in some way, a little choppy with vsync off, JEllo with it on.

BF3 - Runs at a pretty high frame rate. Max Settings, 100 in small areas, 50 in open 64 player maps. bouncing around 60 average. But it feels jittery.

Firefall Beta - Any time I'm near the town my FPS drops to 40-50. Seems odd as the game runs on low end computers. This is on any settings.

L4D2 - I only get 140-220 FPS. Where I saw triple monitor scores of 130 FPS average. But only skips while loading in the beginning.

So the jist is, I get some frame skips/jitters/and unexpected FPS drops in a handful of games. And VSYNC causes Jello.

What could be wrong with my computer? What should I try?
I have downclocked to 3.3 and it made no difference.
All the drivers are fresh installs.
GPU temp does not exceed 65 C
CPU Temp does not exceed 60 C


Please send any advice this way. I don't want to keep throwing money at the problem without knowing why it's acting up. I just fee like, I have these top of the line products, and have not enjoyed them more than mid range computers I built my friends that run things perfectly.

Appreciate it all, even reading this hell of a long post, I hope I made all the points clearly. Thank you!
 
Did you buy the Samsung LED display when you bought the other parts or is it leftover from a previous build? If it is new, then have you tried a different monitor with this build?

Are you installing anything other than the OS and drivers before you start testing? I wonder if your virus scanner or some other favorite piece of software might be acting up.

Have you updated to the latest BIOS for the motherboard, video card, and the SSD?

Are you using the WHQL video drivers or beta drivers?

Which PCI express slot did you use for the video card?

That's all I can think of for now.
 
you try a mechanical drive? Even an old one? I know that sounds stupid but I used to get some stuttering with an older ssd. Hope u figure things out.
 
I'll try to answer all of these questions best I can.

This was a fresh OS install. I wiped both the SSD and the HDD before putting the new card in.
I don't think it's the SSD as WoW ran without skipping before this.

The Samsung LED is over a year old at this point, I have not tried another monitor. Do you believe the monitor could be at fault for the skipping? Even though some other games have the capability of running hitch free?

When i installed, I did everything in this order.

SSD: OS - Chipset Driver - Network Driver - Sound Driver - Video Driver (OFficial driver from NVIDIA for the 680) - WoW - D3.

HDD - Steam/vent/Microsoft Security Essentials/Games games and games.

I have not updated the BIOS, ever I believe. But if the hitches didn't happen before, could it be because the bios doesn't like the new hardware? I don't know if there is an update for the video card as it's so new, and the SSD I did at christmas when i bought it.

I used the PCI Express slot closer to the CPU, further away from the PSU on the bottom. This is the same one I used for the 580.

I have not tried installing windows to the HDD. Most of the games are though. Do you mean installing the OS or something like WoW. I imagine it would be easier to install WoW to the HDD first.

Thanks for all suggestions.
 
Shabutie said:
I'll try to answer all of these questions best I can.

This was a fresh OS install. I wiped both the SSD and the HDD before putting the new card in.
I don't think it's the SSD as WoW ran without skipping before this.

The Samsung LED is over a year old at this point, I have not tried another monitor. Do you believe the monitor could be at fault for the skipping? Even though some other games have the capability of running hitch free?
Click to expand...
Small possibility. Try a different monitor if you can so that you can fully rule out the monitor.
Shabutie said:
SSD: OS - Chipset Driver - Network Driver - Sound Driver - Video Driver (OFficial driver from NVIDIA for the 680) - WoW - D3.

HDD - Steam/vent/Microsoft Security Essentials/Games games and games.
Click to expand...
Hmmm, in the future, install MSE on the SSD, not the HDD for better performance. Though when you're doing another fresh install, don't install MSE at all at first just to rule it out. In fact, for your next reinstall, don't install anything under than the first sentence in the part I quoted.

Shabutie said:
I have not updated the BIOS, ever I believe. But if the hitches didn't happen before, could it be because the bios doesn't like the new hardware?
Click to expand...
I'd update the BIOs as a last resort. So keep it in mind once we've exhausted all options.
Shabutie said:
I have not tried installing windows to the HDD. Most of the games are though. Do you mean installing the OS or something like WoW. I imagine it would be easier to install WoW to the HDD first.
Click to expand...
Nah, try installing Windows on the HDD just to fully rule out the SSD.
 
I'm going to try and install windows on the HDD tonight. If i'm already using it as a storage drive, can i just install windows on it currently, or should I format both drives, and install it on the HDD with a full reformat?
 
As long as any data you have is already backed up, I'd go ahead and just format the drive just in case there was an app running ont the HDD that may affect performance.
 
I'm hoping this works, but at the same time I'm not. Because that would mean my SSD was a waste of 280 last year. But these stutters are getting annoying, and I just want my computer to run as well as the money i've spent on it.

Just as an update,

I've updated the drivers to the new beta drivers - no change
Don't have a second monitor to try with, but these are stutters not just screen tears
I updated chipset driver/Audio Driver - no change

Game updates
Games that work well
Splinter Cell Conviction
Just Cause 2
Left 4 Dead 2
Orcs Must Die
TF2
CSS
The Witcher 2
Dirt 3

Games with a slight stutter
Crysis 2 Full DX11 Hi res - When the GPU is at 100% it runs really well and smooth, looking over certain areas I get 50 FPS but the GPU dropped to 80% usage, something is holding it up, but my CPU is at 4.2 GHz. (Funny thing is, the benchmark of times square on max settings averages 75 and never goes below 60) Why would the test go way better than practice.

Battlefield 3 - 90 % of the time, above 60 FPS, up to 95. Max Details. When i'm on smaller maps, even with 64 players it is smooth. When i'm on big open maps, i have 80 FPS, but it stutters with mouse movements. Turning feels like 30 FPS. Can't figure out why.

World of Warcraft - no vsync, no stutters but screen tearing is terrible. Vsync on, when at 60 FPS is fine, but it will dip to 55 a lot, and hiccups while moving in straight lines.

Bad stutters
Diablo 3 is near unplayable, even though I have 240 FPS.
Quake 3 - I get 990 FPS at 1080P. But it runs like it's 10 FPS. This was the biggest example of lag i could find. (I was playing single player training mission).

Contacting EVGA for an RMA, trying to rule the card out as the issue.

I appreciate any help, I wish I could just pay someone to look at it, I don't have any time for this haha. I just want to play games as smooth and powerful as my hardware should allow.

CSGO,D3,GW2, Max Payne 3. If these 4 run smooth at highest I'll be just delighted.
 
Logitech gaming mouse, mx500 or something like that.

Do you think it could be related to the mouse? I figured they were as basic as they come.

The only thing is, stuttering such as in WoW is not mouse related.
 
Have you tried running it with OC off? Do you have any strange RAM timings in your bios due to OC'n? You may want to check your RAM manufacture forums as well as your mobo forums for any correlation of issue with the mixture of those two.

Otherwise like others have said try swapping hardware like your mouse, keyboard, monitor and such just for good measure. Also are you running on board sound? If so try disabling the on board sound card and try the games. Even if you have no sound just to see if you get the same stutter.
 
It happens with my CPU OC or stock. The only thing I do is change the multiplier but as I said no difference, and temps are more than okay even at full load (Under 60C). I'm at 4.2 Ghz.

I posted my ram timings and things on guru3d and everyone said they looked fine, running in dual channel etc.

Tonight I'm going to change the driver to the older one, i'll try a different mouse and if these don't work I'll try out my TV, to see if it's the same hiccups. Then if none of this works, I'll reformat and install windows on the HDD and unplug the SSD. That's the best I can really try tonight.
 
Well the guy never says if he has any issues other then the timings aren't configuring correctly. Is there any BIOS upgrades for that board that you don't have? You could also just pull one of your DIMMs and then try it again. Also in the games you're showing the stutter does it make any difference if you turn down settings? Are the stutters timed at about the same time.. IE like every 30 seconds?
 
In WoW it's just every few seconds, 1 frame skips. In Tribes/BF it's when i look over big open areas. Just High FPS, choppy movement.

Q3 was just unplayable.

I'll attempt to turn down the settings tonight and see what happens.
 
It's been a while but years ago I had trouble similar to what you describe and it ended up being a failing hard drive. I would suspect your HDD first as that's where your games are installed but I've yet to experience a failed SSD so it's possible that that could also be an issue.
 
Windows and WoW are installed on the SSD, other games on HDD> Both experiencing problems. I doubt they both died?

Is there a test I can perform to check if my HDD is working properly?

Or is there any test to check each of my components? Like a benchmark where I can compare scores etc.
 
Yeah, it would be unlikely that they both fail at the same time unless you had some sort of power surge, but still extremely unlikely. If you have SMART enabled in the BIOS and aren't getting any errors you're probably fine on the drives. You said you experienced the same problems on a 580 as well or was that only for Diablo?
 
The 580 had the same issues with Diablo 3, but some others have reported heavy stuttering in the game, making me think it could be the beta. Battlefield 3 had a bit of a stutter as well (multiplayer only)

The 580 only had the same issue with VSYNC being really laggy. But the stuttering in WoW and Tribes is very new.

Battlefield 3 and Crysis 2 had some stuttering before, but they also weren't staying above 60 so it could have been that.

Crysis was in single player, which i think rules out it being the network card, "also i'll stay at like a 5.1 Megabyte download speed on steam, so I think my network connection is probably fine. I also ping low 40's in games like Tribes and WoW.


*appreciate all the people offering advice, if any of you want to fly to boston I'll give you 5 dollars :)*
 
A few posts back i mentioned the bios update with a link, wondering if that's the right file. Also, how do I install it, just click the exe?

I don't think they are parked, but some do spike more than others in tribes. I can try it. won't be home for several hours.
 
I'd probably try unparking first and then if that doesn't do it update the BIOS. Things may have changed on the Gigabyte side since I last had one, but the way I always used to do it was load the rom on a USB key, restart and update. There probably will be a program on their site you can use to do that in windows or if the setup is anything like the ASUS UEFI these days you should be able to update in the BIOS menu via USB.
 
First thing I'll do tonight is Unparking, then if that doesn't work I'll revert the Video Driver, then I'll try a new mouse, then I'll see if I can do the BIOS. That's all I'll have time for tonight.

Thank you for your research and help.
 
convexion said:
I'd probably try unparking first and then if that doesn't do it update the BIOS. Things may have changed on the Gigabyte side since I last had one, but the way I always used to do it was load the rom on a USB key, restart and update. There probably will be a program on their site you can use to do that in windows or if the setup is anything like the ASUS UEFI these days you should be able to update in the BIOS menu via USB.
Click to expand...

Be careful updating your BIOS via USB...make sure your USB stick is formatted FAT32. It might not be an issue with every UEFI/BIOS implementatioin out there, but I bricked my laptop once because I didn't think to check whether the USB stick is NTFS. Just use FAT32 and you shouldn't have an issue.
 
Parking did not fix it, neither did the drivers. Don't have a thumb stick right now. I'll reinstall windows on my hdd this weekend. And try some alternate ram. Is there a benchmark I can run that will help pinpoint?
 
Stutter still exists in some games, only as more of a frame skip here and there. It is definitely related to when the card is not at full performance. The only time I see these skips is when the usage drops from max to something lower. Then I look at the charts, and my CPU is maxed out. But what doesn't make sense, how am I bottlenecking with my CPU at 4.2 GHz? And why did my 580 work fine?

Could it be the 680 drivers are screwy with some games?
 
That's a possibility. Or maybe your 680 is a little buggy. But didn't you have issues with your 580?
 
It could be the 680 but as an owner of one I haven't had any issues like you describe so I doubt it would be a driver issue unless something in your config is whacky. Try resetting to all default settings in the NVCP if you haven't already done so. Also, while playing a game try running HWMonitor in the background and see what temps and voltages it reports. BTW, what's your monitor's native refresh rate?
 
Monitor is at 60. I will run HW monitor tonight. I contacted EVGA about replacing, they had a few suggestions for me as well I'll run through them and report back tonight. At work now so I can't check anything else until then.

I installed a bunch of games last night to test things out. Some were not bothered by this problem, and some showed definite signs of it.

The actual problem is, when GPU is at full i get smooth gameplay. It gets choppy regardless of current frame rate when the GPU usage % goes down at all, like something is preventing it from being at full.

Max Payne 2, obviously old but I wanted some control. 400 FPS smooth as butter.
Hard Reset - generally pretty good, but did have the occasional slow down while at high FPS.
Unreal Tournament 3 - Flawless 200 + but GPU never goes past 50%, CPU limited?
Metro 2033 - didn't seem to stutter, just dipped to 40 FPS in heavy lighting effects, but I think that is just the game
Portal 2 - 180-300 FPS (opening scene with crates smashing) No stutter
Torchlight - occasional skip, nothing too bad
Killing FLoor - Definite frame skips while strafing in a straight line (checking for just such an occasion)

Vsync on any of them resulted in laggy input, or the weird situation where it drops to 55 and looks like 25.

That's all i got :/
 
I ran Memtest 86 4.0 For 8 hours last night, 0 errors.

One thing I noticed though, it said i had an i7 at 3.3. I have an i5.

It also said I have triple channel memory, and the timings were different than what it says in my bios (9-9-9-28) in memtest it said 19-15-15-31

Is this just an error on memtest or could something be set wrong?


I also ran a GPU stress test for 30 minutes, 0 errors. It was suggested by EVGA.

*Update, I guess 4.20 is the newest version, and it has support for sandy bridge,

Do you think 4.0 tested my system incorrectly? Or just that it displayed the info wrong?*
 
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I ran 4.20 and it went just as smooth. 5 passes flawless, and it displayed the correct information about my i5 and the 9 9 9 28 timings, dual channel. I think ram is out.

This weekend I will attempt to disconnect SSD and reformat and install windows on just the HDD, then vice versa only the SSd, to eliminate them.

Question,

can someone give me a full list of the types of drivers I would need to download?

As far as I thought

Video
Audio
Network
Chipset
USB 3.0

Then I have to install my Diablo 3 headset Driver, which actually has issues of it's own. I wonder if this is in any way related? When I bought the d3 headset, the sound is fine, but the mic (when anything is open full screen) comes in and out of quality and people say can be difficult to understand. When i attempt to do sound recorder with something full screen it sounds like Satan takes over the mic and is singing opera. I worked with their team and they couldn't figure it out, i even updated the firmware and nothing changed. Also, in the device manager it left a little yellow exclamation mark next to the audio devices. Just throwing this out there.
 
Just to rule it out, don't install the Diablo driver. The 5 drivers you listed are fine.
 
Yeah that's a good idea, it didn't cause the problem before, but maybe it's angry at the 680. I will report back on sunday with my findings.
 
My money is on the BIOS.

Recently I added an SSD to my system and enabling AHCI for it added about 30 seconds to the boot time, updating to the latest beta bios from Gigabyte improved boot speed dramaticaly but introduced terrible audio lag. (It took far longer than it should have done for me to realise the bios change was responsible). Going to the latest non-beta version fixed everything for me.

I know some people consider it witchcraft, but I always use Gigabytes @Bios windows based flash tool. I've never had a problem, and since their boards are all dual bios, in the unlikely event it fucks up, the system will automaticaly flash the backup over the hosed main bios on the next boot anyway.

http://www.gigabyte.com/MicroSite/121/tech_a_bios.htm - Amazing Chinglish on that download page, but the tool is pretty straightforward. I've never bothered disabling HT, but I always suspend real time AV scanning for the 30 seconds it takes to flash.
Just download and unpack the F13 file then 'update from file' within @bios and choose the GA-Z68X-UD3.F13 file (don't update from the server, and probably a good idea to backup the existing bios to a file too)

Not sure why this problem would get suddenly worse but since it's always been there to a certain degree I assume its moderately different hardware breaking the proverbial camels back.

Edit: I'm guessing the true culprit is some sort of power saving routine not reacting quickly enough when the load goes up, and that a newer bios would fix it. If it's not the BIOS version try disabling any and all power saving options in the bios setup, and/or install gigabyte's 'dynamic energy saver' and turn it on, then off and setting windows power options to 'high performance' to make sure.
 
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Thank you for these suggestions. I will try this before reformatting.

Worst case scenario I buy a new motherboard :p.


Being that i've test my Ram and Video card pretty extensively,

Is there any CPU test I can do to ensure there is nothing wrong with my i5?

SPending a little on a MOBO doesn't hurt me as much as buying a new CPU/MOBO combo would hurt me. I know this is obviously a last ditch effort, but just confirming.
 
Okay so I reformatted and installed on each separate drive. Problem persists with the minimum programs and drivers installed. I'll try the bios thing tomorrow. Cross shipping my card on Tuesday. If none of this fixes it, what could it possibly be?
 
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