GTX 770 Poor Framerate

[chrissphinx]

Here is my build except the card has been replaced with an nVidia GTX 770, this one from EVGA.

I've had this card for a while now and I've had a feeling something was wrong but all I play is Hawken so I just decrease the gfx all the way and forget about it.

But this card should be able to blow through ultra settings @1080p, right? I'm posting some screenshots from Cinebench. This is wrong isn't it? Why is my card phoning it in like this?

Really?? No better than a GTX 460??

The CPU score seems okay to me considering its age, but could it really be bottlenecking the card?

It's worth noting that on a few occasions I've actually gotten the ~120 FPS on ultra I would be expecting in Hawken, but then a day later (or later that day) it will be back to dipping under ~30 FPS and acting like an integrated gpu.

Any help would be much appreciated, I've put this off for so long because debugging graphic card problems seems like satanist sorcery to me and I don't have any goats or candles lying around.

 

[melk]

Time to upgrade to an i5. After that get a 970. I was able to max out Hawken on my i3 / 750 Ti before I upgraded. Do you have PhysX turned on in game?

 

[chrissphinx]

I can't really afford to switch mobos and CPUs right now, besides the output above shows the 1099 beating the i5? Along with the fact that I just dropped $400 on this card this last April, so dropping another $400 less than a year later seems ridiculous. I mean, I know hardware moves pretty fast, but that fast? Plus, we're talking about Hawken here which hasn't been updated in at least a year.

Yes when I use the GeForce Experience panel and click "optimize settings" it turns PhysX on High.

To follow up, I just now played a match where I had a solid ~60 FPS the whole time and launched Cinebench to check again and I averaged 70.99 FPS instead of the previous score. A gain of 10 FPS? For doing nothing?

Not even kidding I have done absolutely nothing between my last post and now.

 

[Ultima99]

I can't really afford to switch mobos and CPUs right now, besides the output above shows the 1099 beating the i5? Along with the fact that I just dropped $400 on this card this last April, so dropping another $400 less than a year later seems ridiculous. I mean, I know hardware moves pretty fast, but that fast? Plus, we're talking about Hawken here which hasn't been updated in at least a year.

Yes when I use the GeForce Experience panel and click "optimize settings" it turns PhysX on High.

To follow up, I just now played a match where I had a solid ~60 FPS the whole time and launched Cinebench to check again and I averaged 70.99 FPS instead of the previous score. A gain of 10 FPS? For doing nothing?

Not even kidding I have done absolutely nothing between my last post and now.

That i5 you're talking about is a dual core laptop cpu. The i5's you're being told to upgrade to are quad core desktop cpu's that would be much faster. AMD just isn't competitive anymore for games.

 

[chrissphinx]

I think you are missing the part where I said I can't afford to upgrade what I have, the AMD CPU I have in here is almost three years old (maybe older).

Are you trying to say the CPU is the bottleneck then, because it's not pegged at all while I am in game.

 

[melk]

Well yes the 770 is a pretty decent card. I can't imagine that you actually spent $400 on it though? Are you outside the US?

Cinebench is a pretty random benchmark to use. I wouldn't really say it's relevant for what you are trying to compare.

Bottom line is, AMD cpu's just don't compete with Intel at this point. The rest of your build you listed, besides the new 770, is from 2011, nearly 4 years old at this point. You can migrate your psu, ram, and hard drive. Just need a new Intel board and cpu. Even a ~$120 i3 will vastly out perform your current setup.

Also, turn PhysX off unless you can't live without it. That may help.

 

[deaedius]

I am interested in testing Cinebench on my kid's computer they have a Core 2 E8400 with a Radeon 7870 and if I remember right it was pretty solid performing despite the poor CPU performance. It does sound like something is a miss.

 

[Armenius]

I think you are missing the part where I said I can't afford to upgrade what I have, the AMD CPU I have in here is almost three years old (maybe older).

Are you trying to say the CPU is the bottleneck then, because it's not pegged at all while I am in game.

Your CPU is actually going on 5 years old (EDIT: as far as when the CPU was released to market in 2010). That is an eternity in the PC world. I was in a similar situation when I upgraded to an i7-4770 a year ago, and performance in the games I played literally doubled using the same video card.

Since you can't afford to upgrade your CPU at this time, and you're not seeing high CPU usage, check your motherboard BIOS settings for AMD Cool'n'Quiet. Turn it off if it's on. This feature will prevent your CPU from achieving maximum performance in order to keep fan noise and temperature down.

 

[Ultima99]

I think you are missing the part where I said I can't afford to upgrade what I have, the AMD CPU I have in here is almost three years old (maybe older).

Are you trying to say the CPU is the bottleneck then, because it's not pegged at all while I am in game.

I didn't miss that, I was just giving perspective to the comment you made about being above an i5.

I agree with others here though, Cinebench isn't a good benchmark for games.

 

[runudownquick]

Sphinx, are you using the phenom2 x4 955 or x6 1055t? The link you provided said x4 955 but screens said otherwise.

As stated turning off PsyhX should make a world of difference in Hawken. OC the cpu if you have an decent heatsink as well. You should be able to hit 4Ghz with ease which would absolutely boost FPS a noticeable margin.

Report back!

 

[Rav3n]

Here is my build except the card has been replaced with an nVidia GTX 770, this one from EVGA.

I've had this card for a while now and I've had a feeling something was wrong but all I play is Hawken so I just decrease the gfx all the way and forget about it.

But this card should be able to blow through ultra settings @1920p, right? I'm posting some screenshots from Cinebench. This is wrong isn't it? Why is my card phoning it in like this?

Really?? No better than a GTX 460??

The CPU score seems okay to me considering its age, but could it really be bottlenecking the card?

It's worth noting that on a few occasions I've actually gotten the ~120 FPS on ultra I would be expecting in Hawken, but then a day later (or later that day) it will be back to dipping under ~30 FPS and acting like an integrated gpu.

Any help would be much appreciated, I've put this off for so long because debugging graphic card problems seems like satanist sorcery to me and I don't have any goats or candles lying around.

You mean 1080P.... correct? If you are trying to play at 1920P then yes that card is choking hardcore.

 

[chrissphinx]

Sphinx, are you using the phenom2 x4 955 or x6 1055t? The link you provided said x4 955 but screens said otherwise.

As stated turning off PsyhX should make a world of difference in Hawken. OC the cpu if you have an decent heatsink as well. You should be able to hit 4Ghz with ease which would absolutely boost FPS a noticeable margin.

Report back!

The x6 1055t is correct. I had purchased a newer AM3+ CPU only to discover I had an older revision of the mobo and couldn't use it, so I swapped with someone else. I realize that this is an old CPU but if it's not being pegged during gameplay than how could it be the bottleneck?

I could try to OC as I do have a rather large aftermarket cooler. But I've not done this before so I don't want to fuck anything up.

 

[HobartTas]

I could try to OC as I do have a rather large aftermarket
cooler. But I've not done this before so I don't want to fuck anything up.

This is one thing you can try very easily with out overclocking;

(1) Benchmark it

(2) Underclock it 20% and benchmark it again.

(3) Underclock it 40% and benchmark it again.

If your benchmark results drop 20% and 40% respectively then your CPU is underpowered. Normally what happens if the GPU is bottlenecking your system then any increases in FPS rates starts tapering off and this then decelerates rapidly with any further overclocking. e.g. my system is a 4930K with two GTX660Ti's in SLI, at the default 3.4Ghz I get about 80 FPS in BF4 high settings at 1080p, overclocking to 4.2 Ghz got me only 5-10 FPS extra so my video cards are the limiting factor as the CPU overclock was 23% but the increase in frame rate was between 6% to 12%.

To understand this better assume your 40% underclock is your new base of 100%, the 20% underclock is a 33% increase/overclock and the normal speed is a 67% overclock, if the increase in benchmark rates is 33% and 67% then its reassonable to assume further overclocking will be extrapolated along this line up until the point the video card starts reaching its limit and this would be the benckmark results other people get with a top-notch CPU with that same card, Since you have an AMD cpu you may find that you may have to overclock to say a crazy speed like 6 Ghz just to match an Intel CPU running at 4.5-5.0 Ghz.

Hope this is of some help.

Cheers

 

[chrissphinx]

This is one thing you can try very easily with out overclocking;

(1) Benchmark it

(2) Underclock it 20% and benchmark it again.

(3) Underclock it 40% and benchmark it again.

If your benchmark results drop 20% and 40% respectively then your CPU is underpowered. Normally what happens if the GPU is bottlenecking your system then any increases in FPS rates starts tapering off and this then decelerates rapidly with any further overclocking. e.g. my system is a 4930K with two GTX660Ti's in SLI, at the default 3.4Ghz I get about 80 FPS in BF4 high settings at 1080p, overclocking to 4.2 Ghz got me only 5-10 FPS extra so my video cards are the limiting factor as the CPU overclock was 23% but the increase in frame rate was between 6% to 12%.

To understand this better assume your 40% underclock is your new base of 100%, the 20% underclock is a 33% increase/overclock and the normal speed is a 67% overclock, if the increase in benchmark rates is 33% and 67% then its reassonable to assume further overclocking will be extrapolated along this line up until the point the video card starts reaching its limit and this would be the benckmark results other people get with a top-notch CPU with that same card, Since you have an AMD cpu you may find that you may have to overclock to say a crazy speed like 6 Ghz just to match an Intel CPU running at 4.5-5.0 Ghz.

Hope this is of some help.

Cheers

Thank you, this is very helpful! So I'm pretty sure this is my aftermarket cooler. I don't remember if this CPU is the 95w or 125w version, but do you think I'm pretty safe to OC? A couple people in this thread are at 4Ghz. I don't think it is unlocked either, so I'm not sure I'm up for how complicated that makes it ...

 

[kasakka]

Does your system run other games ok?

I don't think the CPU is a huge issue. When I upgraded from a Core2Quad to an Ivy Bridge i5 there was some fps boost in games but not huge by any means. That was on a GTX 560 Ti.

I used to have a GTX 770 (and then two of them) and it should run pretty much anything very well at 1080p as long as you don't go overboard with antialiasing settings (FXAA or SMAA recommended). Also note that unless you have the 4 GB model those "ultra" textures in some games may take too much VRAM and cause stutter and slowdown - usually with no real visual improvement over "high" or "very high".

 

[Dayaks]

Installing MSI Afterburner and looking at the charts might help. Make sure CPU/GPU isn't overheating and usage %'s.

Also perhaps a Firestrike score would help. See if it's inline with other systems similar to yours.

 

[chrissphinx]

Installing MSI Afterburner and looking at the charts might help. Make sure CPU/GPU isn't overheating and usage %'s.

Also perhaps a Firestrike score would help. See if it's inline with other systems similar to yours.

Thank you, it appears my Firestrike score is in fact inline with other users with a 1055t & GTX 770. AMD Cool 'n' Quiet was also enabled, so I've since removed that and OC'd to a modest 3.2 Ghz. CPU-Z is reporting TPD at 141w now, which is still under the cooler's supposed 200w rating, however when I run something like Prime95 to check that I do not exceed the max operating temperature of 61C, it only lasts about 5 minutes before it gets too hot

I've checked the cooler is secured correctly and I don't see anything physically wrong with it, so I'm not sure why it is running so hot. I ran Hawken for about 4 hours on optimized settings (and it does seem to be more consistently ~60 FPS) and CPUID reported that I hit the maximum temperature again. I would remove the cooler to inspect it more closely, but I don't have thermal paste lying around right now.

I suppose this is good enough for now and I'll just run it until it takes a shit and buy new hardware to move the GTX 770 to later.

Thanks to melk, Armenius, HobartTas, rundownquick, Dayaks and everyone else for the suggestions!

 

[Armenius]

Thank you, it appears my Firestrike score is in fact inline with other users with a 1055t & GTX 770. AMD Cool 'n' Quiet was also enabled, so I've since removed that and OC'd to a modest 3.2 Ghz. CPU-Z is reporting TPD at 141w now, which is still under the cooler's supposed 200w rating, however when I run something like Prime95 to check that I do not exceed the max operating temperature of 61C, it only lasts about 5 minutes before it gets too hot

I've checked the cooler is secured correctly and I don't see anything physically wrong with it, so I'm not sure why it is running so hot. I ran Hawken for about 4 hours on optimized settings (and it does seem to be more consistently ~60 FPS) and CPUID reported that I hit the maximum temperature again. I would remove the cooler to inspect it more closely, but I don't have thermal paste lying around right now.

I suppose this is good enough for now and I'll just run it until it takes a shit and buy new hardware to move the GTX 770 to later.

Thanks to melk, Armenius, HobartTas, rundownquick, Dayaks and everyone else for the suggestions!

It wouldn't hurt to spend $5 on some paste to clean and reseat the cooler. It would also give you the chance to inspect the thermal paste spread pattern on the CPU. The heatsink plate on the cooler may be warped, not making complete contact with the CPU.

 

[sk3tch]

Thank you, it appears my Firestrike score is in fact inline with other users with a 1055t & GTX 770. AMD Cool 'n' Quiet was also enabled, so I've since removed that and OC'd to a modest 3.2 Ghz. CPU-Z is reporting TPD at 141w now, which is still under the cooler's supposed 200w rating, however when I run something like Prime95 to check that I do not exceed the max operating temperature of 61C, it only lasts about 5 minutes before it gets too hot

Prime95 is a real CPU killer these days (thanks to AVX2 instructions) - so I would not worry too much about hitting the thermal limits after 5 minutes of Prime95. Focus on it running successfully for a decent period of time. Gaming-wise, your temps are never going to approach that as the CPU will never be as pegged as it is running Prime95. AIDA64 has a pretty good system stress test that you can try that may better approximate "gaming load" - I balance the AIDA64 results with Prime95 results and Battlefield 4 multiplayer "spectator mode" results (let it run for a couple hours) - if all is good then I call it good.

 

[Dayaks]

You could try undervolting your processor if you're only doing a modest OC. It could help a lot with temps. I read of people being around 1.3V at 3.2.