My high-end build (weak, temp GPU) +question about lagging + performance?

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reeltape

n00b
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Apr 17, 2012
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Hi everyone, FIRST OFF - I DO NOT GAME. Purpose of system: graphics, music editing/composing, very heavy multi-tasking.

I built a "new" system about a few months ago (almost a year now!) and these are the specs:
ASUS Rampage IV extreme,
Intel i7 3930K; OC @3.9 (Heatsink+2 CPU fans, 9 fans total in Corsair box, no temp problems 37-50Cmax)
Crucial M4 SSD (OS and scratch disks)
32 GB Samsung RAM
WIN 7 64 ult
GPU...drumroll.... my old Quadro FX 1700. (NVIDIA 512MB 60Hz DDR2 SDRAM 128bit)

After you finish laughing, you might be asking: WHY on earth would I build a higher end system and slap that card in there? Well, I was on a budget, thought I would order a card sooner, things got busy and needed to get this thing built to do work...next thing ya know, almost a year goes by as it suited my purposes for work / graphics work and was too busy to get into trouble shooting. BUT I was/am very disappointed in the way my system responds when surfing (I often have 100s of tabs open at once, multiple adobe programs, music, 2 monitors, stock tickers, etc again - I DO NOT GAME).

PROBLEM:
The lagging issue is when I have a few browsers open 400 tabs, legal file sharing (before anyone freaks here, that uses, 8-10% CPU, 8GB RAM but my computer can run like it's got 256mb of ram on a PIII 500, ya I know what that's like AND I know how sexy a pIII was back in the day as I have been into this since the late 80s). That said, I want to say I know the answer to this, but, I would like some input from you guys. This is the 1st PC I have built since 2004 and it's a big upgrade. BUT, why is it lagging? When I switch apps, or refresh 20 tabs, or flip between a program and then the tabs, or go to save, it's lagging. Mostly when using the browsers. Opening a new prog when I have all this open (100 processes+) it's decently fast.

The bottom line and question regarding the cause of lagging:
I am currently looking to buy a new card or 2. BUT, let's say I wanted to build another PC for my dad of similar quality, CAN this older FX 1700 hold back the whole system? Would you agree that it's the weak-link? I don't want to say "bottleneck", as I realize how everyone loves that term on here, BUT - is it POSSIBLE that I will see the performace I expected when I upgrade the GPU?

What do you suggest for about $200 for a good photo-shopping and all-around GPU that I could bridge SLI/Crossfire later, but I'd try one card at first, that will run 2 monitors minimum. HDMI is not important. I have looked at the 7850, 7870, 7770, and the GTX 550ti, 660ti, Direct Cu II, etc - all those cards in that 150-225 range. You know, one review says one is better than the other and the next says the opposite.

I have to be honest, I know there are a million reviews out there, read 900k of them, but I trust your opinions here more than any other spot as I have read and chatted with a few of you over the years and I find your advice and insight to be 2nd to none. So, I have to ask on hardforum as it's driving me nuts - all of this GPU stuff...so, one of the newer versions I mentioned above has something in the chipset, or the Direct Cu II makes a difference (GTX line) ? Is this marketing or what is going to get me where I want to be? Are 2 650ti better than ONE $300 card that would give me moderately better specs, considering my purposes? Or is SLI/X FIRE more of a gamer's thing?

I do have a good system (less GPU) and ranked 7th out of 1000-ish on some ASUS OC contest a while back, right after I built it; so I am confident that the rest of it is not limiting me. I only run moderate OC profile, and often stock settings if I reboot and know I will not be working on anything intensive.

I came here to ask simply: can you PLEASE HELP me to understand if the FX 1700 (this is probable ? What are 2-3 cards you can suggest for the NON-gamer who's more of a massive multi-tasker who wants smooth transitions between the programs, reduce the lag/stutter between FF tabs etc and who wants to have his 400 tabs open, just because I do; (while you may suggest that I am weird, (aren't we all?) and to just limit my use, please don't tell me I have too many tabs open or how I need to compute...that is not going to solve this...it's too late to change, as much as some of you think that may be the answer, I have my reasons for how I work and built this PC for this reason in mind). I have all of this open now (see screenshot of my resource monitor) and my RAM and CPU are barely breathing when I do in fact (right now I have 700 tabs open in FF, 20 in Chrome, P Shop, T Bird, Word, Utor +), so WHAT is it that's YOU think is holding me back as I navigate or refresh pages/tabs/graphics and preventing near instant access?? If YOU were me, what would you think of trying/ what would you feel the problem was? I know the simple thing is to buy a new card and see, but I am also curious about the tech limitations here (perceived or real) and if I should be looking at a particular card/cards in particular. One more thing, that may be useful, it's typically pages, apps, that have anything animated (even the activity animation on the firefox tabs) that seem to stutter/lag. (Temp files are all on the SSD, I have also tried a RAMDISK for FFox which did help a little, but very little vs the SSD). Thanks so very much in advance and for reading my long-winded plea; I have been meaning to write for months but am swamped with work and appreciate any input. I am truly not that much of a newb, probably sound like one, but am frustrated and just finding this build a bit disappointing and would like advice with the GPU shopping before I buy. Or, if you do not see the card as potentially limiting, am I delusional in thinking that 32gb, SSD and a cool 3930K (37-50C max) should be able to deliver?
thanks so much!!
 
Don't think I've ever seen a system more skewed XD

Anyways, Something tells me it's not your Quadro that's creating the bottleneck. What size is your SSD and how full is it? has it been optimized? what do you mean by scratchdisks?

Your $200 SLI/Crossfire card selection is limited. the GTX 750 Ti cannot be bridged. Your options are the R9 265 or the R9 270. This one is the value sweet spot, but it's currently sold out: Sapphire DualX 2GB 265

You are actually better off going with a single higher end card like the GTX 770 to save yourself potential driver issues with SLI.
 
400 tabs? I thought I was indulgent with 40-60. The first thing to do is to check your memory usage. If you're using over 32 GB then your PC will be paging and that's where you'll see a slowdown. Speaking of paging, you haven't disabled the page file, have you?

Unless it's somehow imposing a memory limit on your system, I very much doubt that the FX 1700 is having any sort of negative effect.
 
I highly doubt it's a GPU issue, even weak GPUs and iGPUs have no such problems with such basic 2D tasks. I mean I've used HD5000 with an ultrabook on multiple x1600p screens with no UI issues ever in terms of responsiveness, and I do multitask quite a bit as well. As far as photoshop goes, the choices are literally endless there. For the average photoshop use you still don't need anything ridiculously high end. You can make do with 150$ or less, easily.

He certainly does not need SLI or crossfire, or even 200$ for a card. He can make do with far less than that. I don't know what the issue is, unless there's an underlying software, BIOS, or driver issue. Up to date drivers? What OS? I'd look more into the software and BIOS side of things because that does not sound right. If you do decide to upgrade the card, you really don't need to look past the 150$ mark if you are not gaming.

Wish I had a better answer, but I don't know. What kind of "lag" are you getting? UI lag? Draw lag? What? Can you see the screen redrawing when you do various things? Can you clarify further on that? Did you install all of your MOTHERBOARD drivers? If you do not install all of your motherboard and chipset drivers from your motherboard CD, strange shit like that can happen. Ensure that you have all of your motherboard and intel chipset drivers installed. Aside from that - when you do upgrade your GPU look at the GTX 660, 750ti, or on the AMD side there's the 270X, 270 etc. You don't need to spend a ton of cash here, all of these cards are basically overkill for photoshop (thinking "average" user type of stuff here) and 2D responsiveness.
 
rastaban said:
Don't think I've ever seen a system more skewed XD

Anyways, Something tells me it's not your Quadro that's creating the bottleneck. What size is your SSD and how full is it? has it been optimized? what do you mean by scratchdisks?

Your $200 SLI/Crossfire card selection is limited. the GTX 750 Ti cannot be bridged. Your options are the R9 265 or the R9 270. This one is the value sweet spot, but it's currently sold out: Sapphire DualX 2GB 265

You are actually better off going with a single higher end card like the GTX 770 to save yourself potential driver issues with SLI.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the fast reply! The SSD is on the smaller size (120gb). I have optimized it but have read different things about that for SSDs; some say that they do not need it and others say they do. I am talking about defrags and file location etc. I will give that another go but it was like this from the start.

I like your suggestions, and had looked at those recently actually. When you say 'driver issue' what are you referring to? Are there known issues with the SLI configs on the Rampage? I will look at that for sure, thanks for reminding me about potential issues there. But, I can't see myself using SLI at the moment. The reason I got the board was for flexibility, PCI-e slots, how many USB ports it had, the expansion capabilities basically and the 8 slots supporting 64GB RAM was unique along with the other features.

I will post back after tidying up the drive a bit.
By "scratch" I mean working drives for photoshop, where all the temp files are stored and accessed.
 
Quartz-1 said:
400 tabs? I thought I was indulgent with 40-60. The first thing to do is to check your memory usage. If you're using over 32 GB then your PC will be paging and that's where you'll see a slowdown. Speaking of paging, you haven't disabled the page file, have you?

Unless it's somehow imposing a memory limit on your system, I very much doubt that the FX 1700 is having any sort of negative effect.
Click to expand...

Hey, thanks for your reply! I know, 40-60 Tabs is a gateway-dose to deeper and darker things my friend. Basically, I have this addon for FF that I drag around any links I want to open up and read and it makes it way too easy to do so rather than right-clicking/open in new tab. I also keep about 100ish tabs open that I visit regularly. Funny how it can add up. So, that is what I was afraid of - it not being the FX 1700.
No I have not deleted the paging file, but I did move it to a mechanical drive to free up some room. I would say that I only max out at 8-10GB of RAM in use, never close to 32GB. The mechanical drive is a Seagate Barracuda 64mb cache SATAIII. I am thinking that I may be in need of a new SSD (larger). What would you try? You think I should/could put the paging file back on the SSD when I can? Trying to recall, but I do not think that the difference was notable between the SSD and the Seagate in terms of where the paging file was residing. When I moved it, I tried it in both places and do not recall there being a difference in speed (although I imagine a bench test would say otherwise). I am more about perceived speed in real life tasks than milliseconds on a benchmark and if there is nothing significant, I could not see using 1/4 of my SSD on a page file. Thoughts? Thanks for your 1st reply as well.
 
I just bought a Quadro K600 (1gb GDDR3) for a light duty cad workstaion that works the balls for cad and it only cost $150. If you want to upgrade the SSD, the Samsung Evo's really give you the most bang for your dollar. $277 for the 500gb unit on amazon and the 1TB is on $510
 
xoleras said:
I highly doubt it's a GPU issue, even weak GPUs and iGPUs have no such problems with such basic 2D tasks. I mean I've used HD5000 with an ultrabook on multiple x1600p screens with no UI issues ever in terms of responsiveness, and I do multitask quite a bit as well. As far as photoshop goes, the choices are literally endless there. For the average photoshop use you still don't need anything ridiculously high end. You can make do with 150$ or less, easily.

He certainly does not need SLI or crossfire, or even 200$ for a card. He can make do with far less than that. I don't know what the issue is, unless there's an underlying software, BIOS, or driver issue. Up to date drivers? What OS? I'd look more into the software and BIOS side of things because that does not sound right. If you do decide to upgrade the card, you really don't need to look past the 150$ mark if you are not gaming.

Wish I had a better answer, but I don't know. What kind of "lag" are you getting? UI lag? Draw lag? What? Can you see the screen redrawing when you do various things? Can you clarify further on that? Did you install all of your MOTHERBOARD drivers? If you do not install all of your motherboard and chipset drivers from your motherboard CD, strange shit like that can happen. Ensure that you have all of your motherboard and intel chipset drivers installed. Aside from that - when you do upgrade your GPU look at the GTX 660, 750ti, or on the AMD side there's the 270X, 270 etc. You don't need to spend a ton of cash here, all of these cards are basically overkill for photoshop (thinking "average" user type of stuff here) and 2D responsiveness.
Click to expand...
Hi, thanks kindly for that info. You know, this is what I was thinking, or my "logic" when I decided to build the system I did and put off buying a high-end card. I figured if that Quadro was doing the job in 2002, how bad could it be when I complemented it with all the other higher end hardware. I tend to think you, and the other people on the board here, support my initial logic. No, my card isn't ideal but, it shouldn't be making me feel like I barely upgraded from a p4 2.4GHz and 2GB RAM.

So, by "lag" I mean when I switch from say Photo Shop to a music editing program, the program takes a few seconds or so to 'appear' or come to the front/take focus when I click on it's window. Also, just clicking around the toolbars in PShop, there is a delay, a delay when navigating between tabs in FF, scrolling down things pause / lag, also, when using Illustrator or PShop when I use a brush sometimes it's like I am going to fast for the hard drive/ GPU to catch up and it will pause, stutter/lag sometimes...same thing when typing. I liken it to back in the day, if you had 'auto-save' on Microsoft Word and you were typing along, and the hourglass would come up as you were typing and you couldn't d anything buy pray that you would not crash. It's almost like that. It seems like it could be a hard drive problem in that regard, but the reason that I felt / hoped it was as simple as the GPU is that if I refreshed say, 40 tabs in the background which were mostly text and basic low-res images (i.e. maybe 10mb actual data which is largely cached) it seemed that the activity bars were stuttering rather than the actual page content loading (I have a good high-speed connection and understand that it's still a lot of connections through the LAN / NIC, but....). So, your input along with the others tend to make me think I should be checking the BIOS, maybe flash that, update all the drivers if needed and then get a bigger SSD. Do any of you use RAM disks? Or, how about "portable" versions of Firefox? Throw it all on a good USB or a 32gb SSD all on its own maybe. It just annoys the crap outta me that I built this system and I have issues once I hit the 8gb of RAM marker. This is supposedly decent RAM too and I did my homework on all these parts..... but yes, to summarize what I am thinking after hearing all of your input, it sounds more like a hard drive/paging issue and I will dig into that a bit and I will try and get to the BIOS and update all the drivers if needed this weekend after I FIRST optimize the SSD as that is easiest (although I do not think that is the issue). Then go from there. I will report back and won't leave this thread hanging as I need to get to the bottom of this. Anyone else, please feel free to chime in your suggestions too! (and yes @rastaban This Sapphire card looks like a perfect fit for me! thanks!)
 
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That really sounds like page-file lag. With as much RAM as you have you should probably disable it. Do you have most of your software installed on the SSD with your OS? I wouldn't worry about filling up the SSD since they don't lose performance the way HDDs when you get them close to maximum capacity.
 
What are you doing with 400 tabs?

Like Citizen_insane said, disable Virtual Memory as paging gigs of data from memory to/from storage does take a few seconds as even with a fast SSD as SSDs only have 500MB/s I/O speed at best.

If your OS is a fresh install to the SSD, then there shouldn't be an alignment issue.
 
reeltape said:
Thanks for the fast reply! The SSD is on the smaller size (120gb). I have optimized it but have read different things about that for SSDs; some say that they do not need it and others say they do. I am talking about defrags and file location etc. I will give that another go but it was like this from the start.
Click to expand...

Ah, but the big question remains...how full is the 120GB drive? I ask because consumer SSD's WILL lag when upwards of 75% is full AND it experiences high I/O loads for extended periods (note this is different from gen 1 SSD stutter but still inherent to SSDs).

As others have mentioned, your first course of action is definitely to disable the page file (virtual memory). Not only can a page file on an HDD become a bottleneck, but you have the luxury of all that RAM for the system to default paging tasks to.

Your usage level seems to be much higher than the average consumer's so a relatively low endurance part like the 120GB M500 would be the first piece of hardware I'd upgrade. The Samsung Evo has TLC NAND so is a poor choice for you, and I'd suggest the Intel DC S3500 (240GB) or the Intel SSD 730 (240 GB). Both are $240 on Newegg. The former is a datacenter drive with high endurance NAND (but not as high as the very expensive S3700) and the latter is a new SSD based on the same Intel controller as the S3500/S3700 but about 65% the endurance of the S3500. However, it is clocked slightly higher than the S3500 and should outperform it at the cost of heat and power.

Anandtech has reviews for the S3500/S3700 and the 730.
 
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