Why was my 7950 to GTX 780 a downgrade?

C

Citizen _insane

Gawd
Joined
May 2, 2006
Messages
565
By all estimates, the 780 should kick the shit out of the 7950. Granted, the 7950 was overclocked and was pretty damn fast, but probably only got to ~7970 performance.

In benchmarks, the 780 destroys my old card. It's benching 40-60% better than my old card in both Heaven 4.0 and Valley 1.0. However, in games the performance is noticeably worse.

The two games I play most are Day Z Standalone and Battlefield 4 multiplayer. Now I realize both of those games are mainly CPU driven, but why would my overall performance go DOWN not up? In BF4 my frame rates are constantly dropping down into the 30's and 40's even though I'm running LOWER settings than with my 7950. Yes the game is better optimized for AMD, but this is ridiculous.

I've reinstalled drivers using Display Driver Uninstaller in safe mode twice now and it has not solved the problem. Did I get a bunk card? Does the 780 just suck (I highly doubt this)?

From everything I've read I should be getting smoother frame performance with NVIDIA but that is definitely not the case. It feels like a driver issue, but nothing I've tried has been able to solve it. Does this mean I absolutely need to upgrade to Win 8.1?
 
BF4 runs better on AMD hardware. When I tested my single 290X @ 1150/1300 clocks, it was getting only marginally worse performance than my GTX680 SLI setup (@ 1300MHz core no less).

Test other games.
 
Citizen _insane said:
I've reinstalled drivers using Display Driver Uninstaller in safe mode twice now and it has not solved the problem.
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Naturally. The uninstall/clean/reinstall dance doesn't really do anything in modern versions of Windows.

With regard to DayZ, the game is almost entirely CPU-bound at the moment, and that's unlikely to change in any significant way in the future. You can try heavily overclocking your CPU if you haven't already.
 
I've played BF4 on both 290CF and 780SLI and they were literally exactly the same, both with a nice overclock. Go into your Nvidia control panel and make sure the games are set to "prefer maximum performance" under the power management drop down. It will prevent the card from dropping clock speed when the usage drops down during games. Also, the 331 series drivers seem to be kind of shit at the moment but BF4 requires them.
 
Something is wrong. I went from a 7950 at 7970 speeds to a GTX 780 and there was a BIG improvement in BF4 @1080p.
 
I went from a 7970 to a 780 sc, and I have a huge measurable increase in frames in both games. Something is wrong with your setup or settings.
 
Citizen _insane said:
By all estimates, the 780 should kick the shit out of the 7950. Granted, the 7950 was overclocked and was pretty damn fast, but probably only got to ~7970 performance.

In benchmarks, the 780 destroys my old card. It's benching 40-60% better than my old card in both Heaven 4.0 and Valley 1.0. However, in games the performance is noticeably worse.

The two games I play most are Day Z Standalone and Battlefield 4 multiplayer. Now I realize both of those games are mainly CPU driven, but why would my overall performance go DOWN not up? In BF4 my frame rates are constantly dropping down into the 30's and 40's even though I'm running LOWER settings than with my 7950. Yes the game is better optimized for AMD, but this is ridiculous.

I've reinstalled drivers using Display Driver Uninstaller in safe mode twice now and it has not solved the problem. Did I get a bunk card? Does the 780 just suck (I highly doubt this)?

From everything I've read I should be getting smoother frame performance with NVIDIA but that is definitely not the case. It feels like a driver issue, but nothing I've tried has been able to solve it. Does this mean I absolutely need to upgrade to Win 8.1?
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Benchmarks doesn't translate game performance, Specially Unigine benchmarks. Those favors Nvidia cards a lot.


Don't base your video card purchase off synthetic benchmarks, look for the in-game FPS benchmarks itself.


As for the performance, I would expect 780 to perform better than a 7950.. but it's weird you're getting worst performance compared to your 7950.
 
7950 faster than a 780. Oh. Okay. Yeah.

Perhaps there are lingering AMD driver files still around that are causing issues. A 7950 won't be faster than a 780 in any of those games. From what I remember, AMD's driver uninstall program doesn't actually uninstall things completely. That was in 2012, though, not sure if that changed; back then it was more or less required to use stupid stuff like driver sweeper and things along those lines. I did hear of AMD trying to create a better uninstaller, but i'm not sure if that happened in the past year. In any case, it's a software issue somewhere.
 
Do you by chance have a frame limiter or adaptive vsync enabled?

edit: nm saw that the fps drops into the 30s and 40s. Do you have regular vsync enabled? Are you forcing any other settings through the NV control panel that might be conflicting? Do you have the resolution scale cranked up in BF4?

Something isn't right. A single 780 in BF4 should never hit that low.
 
Thanks for the replies guys, here's some clarification:

My settings are as follows:
Resolution: 2560x1440

Textures : Ultra
Tex Filter: Ultra
Lighting: Med
Effects: Med
Post Process: Low
Mesh: Ultra
Terrain: Ultra
Terrain Dec: Med
AA deferred: off
AA post : off
AO: off

Res Scale = 100%
Motion blur = off
DOF = off
Vsync = off

Frames are wildly inconsistant from 100fps when looking out to sea, to 55-60 when looking at the play area. Often there will times when for 30sec or more I have frame rates in the 30-40 range. Not just 1 frame, like 1000 frames. CPU and GPU utilization are not at 100%, they're more like 75%. The only other thing running when playing is Firefox and TS3 (client + server). Shadowplay is on.

With my 7950 I was able to run 2x Post AA, 120% resolution scale and High lighting all while hitting a steady 60-70fps without any stuttering or random choking like is happening now.

nightanole said:
http://www.battlefield.com/battlefield-4/features/frostbite-3

http://www.techpowerup.com/185884/all-frostbite-3-titles-will-be-optimized-for-amd-only.html


Saying they are AMD fan boys is an understatement. This game was meant for amd/ati. I would look into shadow detail and ambient occlusion for frame eaters.

If it makes you feel better the unreal engine (borderlands series) runs much better on nvidia than amd.
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Like I said, I understand that BF4 is better on AMD, but the difference shouldn't be this drastic, at least not without mantle. Too bad I don't play any games that use the Unreal engine :(


wonderfield said:
Naturally. The uninstall/clean/reinstall dance doesn't really do anything in modern versions of Windows.

With regard to DayZ, the game is almost entirely CPU-bound at the moment, and that's unlikely to change in any significant way in the future. You can try heavily overclocking your CPU if you haven't already.
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Like I mentioned in my original post, I realize both games are heavily CPU dependent, but that doesn't account for why performance went down when I installed the new card. If you look at my sig you'll see I have a 2500k at 4.5Ghz on air. That should be netting pretty much the maximum CPU performance when compared to most consumer processors.

LigTasm said:
I've played BF4 on both 290CF and 780SLI and they were literally exactly the same, both with a nice overclock. Go into your Nvidia control panel and make sure the games are set to "prefer maximum performance" under the power management drop down. It will prevent the card from dropping clock speed when the usage drops down during games. Also, the 331 series drivers seem to be kind of shit at the moment but BF4 requires them.
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I already tried that setting and it unfortunately did not help.

xoleras said:
7950 faster than a 780. Oh. Okay. Yeah.

Perhaps there are lingering AMD driver files still around that are causing issues. A 7950 won't be faster than a 780 in any of those games. From what I remember, AMD's driver uninstall program doesn't actually uninstall things completely. That was in 2012, though, not sure if that changed; back then it was more or less required to use stupid stuff like driver sweeper and things along those lines. I did hear of AMD trying to create a better uninstaller, but i'm not sure if that happened in the past year. In any case, it's a software issue somewhere.
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Like I mentioned in the OP, I used Display Driver Uninstaller to remove all remnants of the old drivers. I'm not sure if there's something else I should do?

Rizen said:
Do you by chance have a frame limiter or adaptive vsync enabled?

edit: nm saw that the fps drops into the 30s and 40s. Do you have regular vsync enabled? Are you forcing any other settings through the NV control panel that might be conflicting? Do you have the resolution scale cranked up in BF4?

Something isn't right. A single 780 in BF4 should never hit that low.
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Not running any vsync or forcing any settings through NV control panel. Resolution scale was originally on 115% (What I was running w/ my 7950) and I dropped it down to 100%. Same deal. Super inconsistent frame rates. I have noticed that disabling Windows Aero helps the frame rate a bit.
 
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I had (still have my 7970 laying around) a heavily overclocked 7970 and went to a heavily overclocked 780, my fps almost doubled in the min, avg range.

There is definitely something wrong.
 
naticus said:
I had (still have my 7970 laying around) a heavily overclocked 7970 and went to a heavily overclocked 780, my fps almost doubled in the min, avg range.

There is definitely something wrong.
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Thanks, I felt like something had to be fucked up, there's no way a card as powerful as the 780 should have this significant a performance drop. Now at least I know I'm not going insane. Do you have any idea what's going on?

Tonight after work, I may try installing windows 7 on another SSD and starting from scratch just to test and see if I need to do a total reinstall.
 
Turn off Shadowplay entirely. Since a few version of GeForce Experience it has a pretty big impact on overall fps. I have mine turned off and fps back to normal.
 
LigTasm said:
I've played BF4 on both 290CF and 780SLI and they were literally exactly the same, both with a nice overclock. Go into your Nvidia control panel and make sure the games are set to "prefer maximum performance" under the power management drop down. It will prevent the card from dropping clock speed when the usage drops down during games. Also, the 331 series drivers seem to be kind of shit at the moment but BF4 requires them.
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Why does this exist to begin with?
 
Venomous said:
Why does this exist to begin with?
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To save power and keep your computer running cooler. If a game is CPU bound and it can't get frames fast enough to the GPU the GPU is just wasting power running at full speed but doing nothing.


For OP, try checking your FOV setting. The default is 70, if you increased it to a normal widescreen FOV like 120 it is a HUGE hit on performance. Maybe you increased it and forgot about it?
 
Venomous said:
Why does this exist to begin with?
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Because some games will run at literally hundreds of fps for no reason if you run the cards at max power 100%. If you are using Adaptive Vsync, the drivers will run the cards at whatever speed is required to get a 60fps lock and not scale higher. Makes sense, really.
 
Rizen said:
Because some games will run at literally hundreds of fps for no reason if you run the cards at max power 100%. If you are using Adaptive Vsync, the drivers will run the cards at whatever speed is required to get a 60fps lock and not scale higher. Makes sense, really.
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Yeah. This. It only affects older titles, and you can change power management for any desktop applications that use the GPU (ie, photoshop, 3ds max, etc). Also, that setting does not affect demanding titles in any way - if you set adaptive power management, it won't affect performance in any game that is pushing your GPU to the limit. It mainly affects titles that are many years old such as Darksiders or Half life 2 - it allows those games to run with lower clockspeeds and lower power consumption while still maintaining 60 fps.

Anyway, OP: I feel that a Windows re-installation would be called for in this situation. There is no way that a 7950 should ever outperform a 780 in any of those titles, there has to be a legacy driver entry somewhere that is causing issues.
 
I would suggest you reinstall BF4 by itself first, or use the Origin repair tool just to see if that makes any difference. Beyond that I'm kind of stumped - there really is no reason for that type of performance loss.

Maybe a stupid suggestion but are you sure you are not throttling due to temperatures or anything like that. What temperatures are you seeing in-game?
 
Didn't DICE and AMD/ATI get together and optimized BF4 for ATI cards? I'm seeing a whole lot of problems from nvidia users all over the interwebz playing bf4.
 
Well, I updated my drivers to the new beta and so far the game is playable. The settings are the same as with my 7950 but at least I'm not getting massive frame drop. Maybe later this week/weekend I'll go through the pain of reinstalling windows completely (maybe even upgrade to 8.1).
 
Windows 7 and even Vista is not so fragile like XP. I doubt a reinstall will fix much.

On this very Win 7 install I went from a GTX560ti, to a GTX 260, to an HD7950 without uninstalling any drivers. I simply installed the AMD ones. I did have an issue uninstalling the AMD drivers (did not show up in Uninstall list), though I think that was an issue on AMD's end.

I uninstalled/deleted the folder with Crap Cleaner, cleaned my registry like usual, and plugged my Nvidia cards back in. Zero issues since.
 
Matthew Kane said:
Didn't DICE and AMD/ATI get together and optimized BF4 for ATI cards? I'm seeing a whole lot of problems from nvidia users all over the interwebz playing bf4.
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Sorry but that's just not true. I ran BF4 on my 680s for 70+ hours on different sets of drivers and never had a problem. Yeah, it tends to run better on AMD hardware versus comparable NVIDIA hardware, but it's not broken by any means on NVIDIA.
 
Disable shadowplay. Re-test. I uninstalled gforce experience completely.

Also make sure cores are unparked if on 7. You should be getting consistent 120+ with those settings on a 780.
 
Bf4 love win 8, check the forums you'll see a lot of people want fps all over the place in win 7,but much more stable in win8

I run the at ultra, with 2xmsaa at the same resolution and I get60+ fps
 
david_ said:
Disable shadowplay. Re-test. I uninstalled gforce experience completely.

Also make sure cores are unparked if on 7. You should be getting consistent 120+ with those settings on a 780.
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I tried this after installing the new drivers and I didn't see any difference in performance with shadowplay on or off. I was getting a steady 60-80 fps, but it was still fluctuating quite a bit, it just wasn't dropping down as low as it was before. I'm thinking the new driver improved performance but didn't fix the problem all together yet.

I did notice that even after the new driver, my average GPU utilization according to MSI Afterburner was somewhere around 65%. That's pretty damn low. It really seems like there must be something else going on.
 
Ryoohki360 said:
Bf4 love win 8, check the forums you'll see a lot of people want fps all over the place in win 7,but much more stable in win8

I run the at ultra, with 2xmsaa at the same resolution and I get60+ fps
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I've already got my cores unparked which is the main difference between win7 and win8 for BF4 performance from what I've heard. I know the game likes 8 more, but I'd rather stick win 7 if I can.

What video card are you using?
 
I dont know about Day z being so cpu intensive. I run it on very high, usually no AA, but on 2560x1440 and its smooth as butter with the 780ti. The only time I encounter any lag is if I turn fraps on or go into a major city, then I scale down to 1080 and Im ok. I could be wrong though.
 
And my major city im talking about that city north of balota. I think it's because of all those apartment buildings, they just have so many textures or something inside of them. Probably an issue that needs to be addressed. It's still playable, but when you can die so easily in a game like that you need zero fps drop.
 
nightanole said:
If it makes you feel better the unreal engine (borderlands series) runs much better on nvidia than amd.
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Just saying Borderlands is a huge understatement. There's closer to 300 Unreal Engine titles, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Thief, Batman: Arkham Origins, Antichamber, BioShock Infinite, Remember Me, Hawken, Spec Ops: The Line, Mass Effect, Mirror's Edge, etc, etc.
 
Here's a screen grab from playing BF4 a few minutes ago. I don't think this is normal.

bDadNZX.png
 
I'm pegged at 99% at all times, so yeah, that isn't normal. I'd just bite the bullet and reinstall windows. I think you have AMD drivers that haven't completely uninstalled or something along those lines.
 
I had to do a few sweeps with driver fusion to clear out all of the AMD stuff, when I got my 780s (had 6950s in xfire before). Before that I was having a few strange issues in some games. Everything has been pretty solid since. I would like to do a fresh install one day, but I have so much software installed I'd hate to have to go through and set it all up again. :)
 
DraginDime said:
I had to do a few sweeps with driver fusion to clear out all of the AMD stuff, when I got my 780s (had 6950s in xfire before). Before that I was having a few strange issues in some games. Everything has been pretty solid since. I would like to do a fresh install one day, but I have so much software installed I'd hate to have to go through and set it all up again. :)
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I installed Driver Fusion and it looks like it found some lingering AMD driver remnants that were not detected by Display Driver Uninstaller. I'll check my frame rates again after work and hopefully the issue is solved. Otherwise it looks like I get to reinstall windows. Yay...
 
HOODedDutchman said:
If you have vsync on or frame cap this is completely normal otherwise you should be pegged 99% most of the time.
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No Vsync. Running the 7950 my utilization was like this during Beta but once release came I got pretty steady 90-100% utilization.

edit:

Looks like Driver Sweeper helped. Getting consistent 60fps with higher settings. Utilization is still hovering around 70%, which seems low, but I"m guessing I would have to try reinstalling windows to get it any higher. I shouldn't be CPU limited with a 2500K at 4.5.
 
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