I just replaced my aging 3870 and figured a GPU with at least 2GB was the way to go but my games are chugging. Do I have to upgrade my CPU as well or are the latest 7.4 drivers a possible cause to my issues? I purchased the Gigabyte GV-R785OC-2GD. Any thoughts on what it could be would be much appreciated. Rig details in my sig. Was really excited when I fired up Steam and saw Portal 2 and Alan Wake but thats on hold for now.
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Just bought a 7850 and performance is disappointing.
- Thread starter alf717
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You should still see a performance improvement going from a 3870, that's a very old card. What's the clock speed on your CPU? Are you overclocking it at all?
When you say "chugging" - what games are you running, what resolution, and what actual FPS are you getting? It's hard to say what is holding you back and what normal performance would be without some actual metrics.
When you say "chugging" - what games are you running, what resolution, and what actual FPS are you getting? It's hard to say what is holding you back and what normal performance would be without some actual metrics.
Sorry I left out some details. Games I was expecting better performance in are GTA IV, Deus Ex Human Rev and CS:S. I max my resolution at 1920x1080 and my CPU runs at 2.7 GHz stock. Nothing in my rig is OC'ed. To be fair, I did notice better performance but my brother who just put a rig together gets about 60+ frames in GTAIV while I only got about 38 FPS. He runs an AMD X4 965, 16GB of RAM and the same 7850. It was kind of why I leaned toward the possibility of my CPU holding me back.
SonDa5
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Really need to OC video card to get the most out of it. It has alot of OC potential.
It's probably your processor. Both CS:S and GTA IV are much more CPU limited than GPU limited, and you are using a relatively slow AMD processor that's only clocked at 2.7GHz. Either overclock your CPU, or ideally upgrade to a faster processor, such as an Intel i5 2500k, or something along those lines.
CS:S should run fine regardless though, pretty much any computer since 2006-2007 can play that game.
I'll price a few and see what I can manage. Was hoping the GPU was going to do it.
The card is already OC'ed from factory. GPU-Z tells me 975 MHz of GPU power and 1200 MHz on the RAM.
I was hoping that as well but that game is killing my frames. Sometimes I'm over 200+ frames close to the max 300 and then I join a 32 man server and I hit 20-30 FPS. I'm use to this but was thinking the speed and RAM of the 7850 would really help me out a lot.
Bottom line:
I guess I just need to rethink a new rig. Might just stick with AMD since I could put a faster X4 or X6 in this machine.
Shadowmonk
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Grab a Phenom x6 and a new aftermarket cooler and jack it up a bit, any CPU bound game should perform much better. I've been an intel man since the phenoms started coming out, but being that your board will except 1 of them its definately worth the upgrade.
I've considered going the Intel route since the Bulldozer was such a bust. Maybe AMD will bring, lets say, an FX-2 line that can compete with Intel but right now I just don't have the cash. I would like to get my hands on an X6 but sadly they are so expensive now. As of now Newegg only has the 1045t but that is almost what I already have. I was thinking of picking up an X4 965 or even thought of risking a 960t purchase to see if it would unlock. Either way I'm going to have to sell my CPU just to get maybe half the cost of whichever CPU I might pick up.
Even bumping the multiplier a bit up to 15 (3 Ghz) should make a difference in the CPU limited games you mentioned.
TomGreen321
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Just try and overclock you CPU. If you can get 3.5Ghz out of it you should see incredible increases. You're resolution and GPU is perfect for that processor, but you just need it to run at a higher clock speed.
A stock q6600 will bottleneck a 7850, by how much I don't know though, will depend on the game too.
I just installed my sapphire 7850 and have a stock q8300 which is basically equivalent to a q6600. Played some witcher 2. Overclocking my gpu core from 860 to 1050 didn't change fps at all. Definite bottleneck going on.
Can't overclock my cpu on this prebuilt acer either. Still happy with my sapphire 7850 though, overclocks well and super silent.
Still debating whether I should upgrade now or later. I'm gonna want a 3570k and 256gb ssd, probably gonna cost me around $600 for all my parts. I can only reuse my power supply and radeon 7850.
Its probably legacy drivers and registry entries. I'd suggest a fresh windows install, i've actually had stuff like this happen to me before when switching between nvidia and ATI cards.....
Its a pain in the ass but it'll probably fix your issues. Also, consider upgrading the rest of your system as well, i5's are pretty cheap and will be a tremendous jump over your C2Q.
anubis44
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You do have to overclock the card to get some kick ass performance out of it. Even without any voltage adjustment, the AMD overdrive slider will take you to 1050MHz core up from whatever your card ships at stock.
My Asus 7850 DirectCUII overclocks to 1200MHz core, 1450MHzx4=5800MHz memory. The card was $270. I'm inclined to say the 7850 with a good custom cooler (like the Asus or Gigabyte versions) is one of the best bang/buck deals available right now. My card seems to be pretty good a memory overclocking; I've seen some say they're maxing out the memory at 1350MHz, but mine is at 1450MHz. Voltage is 1.3 under load. Just used the AMD overdrive slider to set "Power control settings" to +20%. Fans are nice and quiet, even under continuous full load.
If I find I'm not satisfied, I may grab another one and crossfire them.
My MSI Twin Frozr 7850 overclocks to 1150/1450. I don't think anyone is having trouble getting 1450 out of the memory, almost every single 7850 review I've read seems to get that without any issue. However, if you're getting 1200Mhz core without any voltage adjustment that is impressive. Does the Asus 7850 have voltage adjustment? My MSI doesn't but I'm quite happy with 1150Mhz with no adjustment and 62c load temps with no noise.
The only voltage you can adjust is in the asus GPU tweak tool.
Right, but I think only the Asus cards have software adjustable voltage regulators on them, every other review I've read on the other brands doesn't have a voltage controller with software adjustment.
Also, Source games are more Intel CPU-biased - what's your result in the HL2 - Lost Coast benchmark? If it's under 100 fps (the combination of Q6000 and HD5450 spits out 117 fps at the same resolution) that would comfirm CPU issues.
So I too have a 7850. I decided to see what the OP was on about. He is right, GTA4 runs like crap. I have an i7 860 that is overclocked to 4.0ghz. I see about 31% cpu usage in game, and about 86% gpu usage. Overclocking my gpu does not help at all. It just lowers the gpu usage to around 75%. With everything on maximum at 1680x1050, I will get around 60fps in the benchmark, but in game I will see a high of about 67fps and a frequent lows of 25fps (these drops happen a lot). I would say the average in game is probably around 40-45fps.
Honestly, I feel like it has more to do with GTA4 than anything else. I mean, this is how I remember it running when I first bought it. I suppose it could be drivers, but this is how it ran for me back when I had an nvidia card as well. Hell, BF3 runs way smoother than this game and looks fantastic by comparison.
Honestly, I feel like it has more to do with GTA4 than anything else. I mean, this is how I remember it running when I first bought it. I suppose it could be drivers, but this is how it ran for me back when I had an nvidia card as well. Hell, BF3 runs way smoother than this game and looks fantastic by comparison.
Right, like I said hes full of it if he "thinks" his friend is getting 60 plus fps at 1080p on a phenom II. We cant help him with his performance if he dosent know how to determine performance in the first place.
by then we could be saying you should wait till 8xxx series before making a decision
True dat, there's always new shiny faster computer parts around the corner. And the longer you wait between upgrades, the more dramatic it is. I'll never forget upgrading from an original Geforce 256 32MB to a Radeon 8500 128MB, the increase in performance was mind blowing. I've never seen such a big difference since.
SonDa5
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Last I read last month it was going to be 6 months time before NVIDIA release it if at all.
anubis44
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Any 7850 I've read about so far can adjust voltage using the Asus GPU tweak tool. Here are some 7850 overclocking threads I've found helpful here:
http://91.151.218.11/showthread.php?t=18389760
and here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/gamingpc/comments/twcrh/7850_overclocking_guide/
I have subsequently RMA'd one Asus 7850 (my first one, actually), as it was mysteriously crashing whenever I adjusted the core or memory clock speed at all, beyond just enabling the GPU voltage and Overclock Range Enhancement. My replacement card Asus 7850 Direct CUII is running perfectly.
I just want to add how incredibly quiet the Asus 7850 cards are. I had gotten used to hearing fans over the last few years, and finally, my case fans are louder than my GPU!
CleanSlate
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1080p with a 7850?
Hate to say it but with an x4 2.7 ghz and a 7850 you will need to drop the resolution quite a bit.
The real and only way to run all games in 1080p without issue:
The x6 6100 is available for like $160 these days or maybe find a x6 1xxx used on the fs/t forum. Then return the 7850 and grab a gtx 670. 1080p is not a resolution you should be joking with at all.
The cheap route: overclock and lower the resolution down quite a bit.
Hate to say it but with an x4 2.7 ghz and a 7850 you will need to drop the resolution quite a bit.
The real and only way to run all games in 1080p without issue:
The x6 6100 is available for like $160 these days or maybe find a x6 1xxx used on the fs/t forum. Then return the 7850 and grab a gtx 670. 1080p is not a resolution you should be joking with at all.
The cheap route: overclock and lower the resolution down quite a bit.
There's no reason why a 7850 or an overclocked 7850 won't run 1080p with no issues. A 670 is serious overkill for 1080p unless you insist on the highest graphic details and 4x MSAA or 8xMSAA enabled. I have a 7850 and a 670 in two different machines at my house, both running 1080p resolutions, the only real difference is that on the 670 machine, I can play games like Metro 2033, Crysis 2, Battlefield 3 which are the most demanding titles with the highest detail settings and AA enabled. On my 7850 machine, it will run those games too but I would have to drop the AA. However it runs just about any other game at the highest details even with AA enabled just fine.
Well I was able to go past the CCC limit of 1050 by enabling the unofficial overlocking in MSI afterburner but the slider still tops out at 1170MHz and I have no voltage adjustment. Maybe it will come in a future release. I can try the Asus tool when I get home today to see if it allows voltage adjustment. I feel pretty confident my card will do over 1200 with a very small bump in voltage.
What do you mean by not working well? Without it, my limits were 1050MHz, when I enabled unofficial OC, it went up to 1170MHz and I'm using Cat 12.4.
rhansen5_99
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Hey I don't think any one has mentioned this before but you may want to take a look at your motherboard settings and make sure that your ram is configured properly. I am not sure the mode you want either ganged or unganged. I ran a similar system before and was seeing similar weird bottle necks and it turns out that the ram settings were bottle necking the benchmarks. Maybe run some synthetic benchmarks on your system and make sure you are getting the proper results.
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Ive played counter strike source on a lot of different hardware, and im really shocked your setup has any problems maxing the settings.
Grand Theft auto is a CPU hog, you will need a serious overclock. My AMD systems get much smoother in FPS around 3.6ghz for these types of games. With a better heatsink you would be close, but if i were you id probably take back the 7850, get thuban six core (960t, 1045, 1090t, etc) and overclock that to 3.6ghz , with the money you save from the video card try for a 6870 for $150.
I got my 1045T + motherboard from microcenter for $99 after $10 mail in rebate and very happy with it.
Grand Theft auto is a CPU hog, you will need a serious overclock. My AMD systems get much smoother in FPS around 3.6ghz for these types of games. With a better heatsink you would be close, but if i were you id probably take back the 7850, get thuban six core (960t, 1045, 1090t, etc) and overclock that to 3.6ghz , with the money you save from the video card try for a 6870 for $150.
I got my 1045T + motherboard from microcenter for $99 after $10 mail in rebate and very happy with it.