i7 3930k @ 5.0GHz performance

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clayton006

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jan 4, 2005
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Not sure if I'm getting the full performance of my 5.0GHz CPU. Seems like the system is sluggish at times. My GPU's seem to be working okay, but utilization can be low even with vsync off and running my three screens.

I've compared some heaven and 3D Mark benchmarks and I seem to be close. Does anyone know of a good CPU performance tester / comparison tool so I can make sure I'm running correctly or close to correct?
 
you are running 3 screens with a single 670, that is why.

want full performance? get another 670, or maybe two if your mobo supports it.
 
sorry, didnt see the 4x before the video card.


did you test your system with 3 video cards?

sluggish with games or benchmark tools like futuremark, heaven?

i dont see the cpu being the issue here.
 
No most games are fine. I don't really think I have a horrible problem, just trying to compare my CPU / memory performance with others.
 
clayton006 said:
Not sure if I'm getting the full performance of my 5.0GHz CPU. Seems like the system is sluggish at times. My GPU's seem to be working okay, but utilization can be low even with vsync off and running my three screens.

I've compared some heaven and 3D Mark benchmarks and I seem to be close. Does anyone know of a good CPU performance tester / comparison tool so I can make sure I'm running correctly or close to correct?
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Why not run the games you play and then check your cpu utilization.
 
CPU utilization varies as it should depending on the game, would like to capture CPU utilization historically as that would probably help narrow it down.
 
Can you describe the problem in more detail than "sluggish"? Under what circumstances?
 
Mostly in comparing 3d mark scores and some games acting strangely slow and not using over 20% gpu. Not many mind you, but a few (SWTOR in surround mode for one. This seem to be game specific though)
 
I would blame quad SLI long before I looked at the CPU. Its been a mixed bag for years. Supposedly the newest 310 beta driver has some improvements for quad SLI, maybe look at that?
 
3930K is an absolute MONSTER! There is something else holding your sys back and it is NOT your CPU period. Rule that out now.
 
tangoseal said:
3930K is an absolute MONSTER! There is something else holding your sys back and it is NOT your CPU period. Rule that out now.
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It depends on the games he is playing and if they use more then 4 cores.
BF3 will use more then 4, not sure on how many more.
 
It would be nice to compare some raw performance numbers like sisoft Sandra or something else among similar systems to see if I'm in the ballpark.
 
Hagrid said:
It depends on the games he is playing and if they use more then 4 cores.
BF3 will use more then 4, not sure on how many more.
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3930K has 6 cores with HT. BF3 cannot even make 3930K sweat. This processor punishes BF3. I know I own one.
 
Does this read like a brag post to anyone else? Vague OP with golden-chip level overclock in the subject line?

If not, can you be more specific OP and maybe we can help you out.
 
To test the 3930k run folding@home on it for a while, or run superpi, stuff like that.
 
This isn't some bragging post or golden level chip. Lots of 3930k's can overclock to 5.0ghz and beyond with a custom water cooling setup. Based on some games being flaky in their performance I wanted to rule out my CPU as the issue, with vsync off in some games running in surround mode I can get low GPu usage (40-50%) range and hardly at 60fps (SWTOR, BF3, WoW at ultra). All of these games I've tried at 7680x1600 and some are more playable than others. Some games run fine (Borderlands 2, Batman Ark City, Skyrim). I was looking at a way to compare my raw CPU performance against others to see if I'm in the ballpark.

Regarding the F@H comment, how many PPD should I be running if I don't have bigadv turned on (just the v7 client installed with defaults and smp set to 6 without HT turned on)
 
Disable SLI in the problem games and see if your GPU utilization or framerate climbs.

Are you certain your GPU cooling solution is adequate?
 
GPU cooling is about as good as it's going to get with four air cooled cards. I have a fan in front of them and they mostly stay at 65c when they are loaded close to the max. I would say cooling is ok. Even if they clocked down by a few MHz, not sure that is enough to keep it low.

For now I'll chalk up my bad gameplay due to buggy code. Most games I play are working fine, I was just trying to get someone with a similar setup to run some comparative benchmarks.
 
In recent driver release notes there were issues with 4-Way SLI in some games and situations. Especially with NV Surround as I recall. You might want to grab the latest beta driver. In addition to that, 7680x1600 is extremely demanding where many games are concerned. I think at this resolution you'll always be wanting for faster hardware for the foreseeable future. It is the nature of the beast.
 
Yeah and I replied in the beta threads that my borderlands 2 performance has went up and now Physx is playable in surround. Some games (most SWTOR) just don't like surround and maybe that is the overall problem. I agree with you Dan, and part of my wants to sell my 30's and get 1080p monitors so I don't need to refresh as often, but these 3008wfp's are just great monitors overall.
 
clayton006 said:
Yeah and I replied in the beta threads that my borderlands 2 performance has went up and now Physx is playable in surround. Some games (most SWTOR) just don't like surround and maybe that is the overall problem. I agree with you Dan, and part of my wants to sell my 30's and get 1080p monitors so I don't need to refresh as often, but these 3008wfp's are just great monitors overall.
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Some games hate NV Surround / Eyefinity. And at these resolutions it's extremely demanding. Games that push the graphics boundaries at all are perfectly playable at 2560x1600 on this type of hardware but not at 7680x1600. It's just a whole new ballgame at that resolution. Especially when some AA modes are introduced. That's the unfortunate reality of things. Multiple GPUs do not scale perfectly as you add them. Think of it this way:
  • 2 GPUs = 80-100% scaling (Being generous here.)
  • 3 GPUs = 60-80% scaling
  • 4 GPUs = 40% or worse in some cases.
That's just ballparking it. I haven't gone through all the data available to determine precise scaling in all circumstances and won't. But essentially you reach a point where your GPU power isn't 4x 1 GTX 670 but rather 3x or so. This of course varies by title, game engine, implementation, SLI profile etc. CPU power comes into play as well. Especially on the NVIDIA side. 2560x1600 is 4.1 mega-pixels compared to 2.1 (or thereabouts) mega-pixels of 1920x1080. So you are looking at almost double the resolution. So in perspective 7680x1600 is 3x the resolution of 2560x1600 and 6 times that of 1920x1080. It is 3x greater than 5760x1080 which is probably the sweet spot of multimonitor gaming in terms of what it demands. The way the math works out with modern GPU scaling being all over the place you will not always have the power to do what you can do at 2560x1600 or even 1920x1080. Add some forms of MSAA or SSAA into the mix and you'll cut your performance in half several times before it's over. FXAA has minimal performance impact but there are just some things it doesn't help with.
 
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Well I've been running 7680x1600 since I had 3 - GTX 480's and yeah you are correct it is very demanding. So far, these 670 4GB cards have been great. Like you said Dan it's probably just specific games. Wow works for the most part very well, as well as sleeping dogs and most I play all the time.

Thanks for your insight.
 
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