[SOLVED] 6800 XT giving me problems. Low usage and not great performance. Any tips?

michael_705

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Jul 1, 2017
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I just got a 6800 XT XFX Merc 319 and replaced my 5700 XT. I uninstalled all my drivers turned the PC off put the new card in and installed drivers. I load up a couple games to see how it is and to my surprise about the same performance as my old card at 1440p. I have over clocked the 6800 XT and that helped a little bit but it still is getting beat out but 2060's and 2070s in most of the benchmarks ive ran. I can build a computer but when it comes to trouble shooting i am clueless. I have googled this and lots of others seem to have this issue but i havent found a solution. Any tips or advice would be amazing!
CPU : ryzen 7 3800x
GPU: 6800 XT
MOBO: x470-f gaming ASUS ROG STRIX
RAM: 32GB 3600MHz G.Skill tridentz
PSU: 850w EVGA 80+Platinum
 
Solution
even on 1440p it could still cause that bad of a bottleneck? i was under the impression 1080p is very cpu bound and 1440p and 4K were very heavy on GPU? do you think new gen ryzen CPUs would help a decent bit?

It is a commonly-repeated fallacy that there can be no CPU-related bottlenecks at 1440p. This is a misunderstanding of how the rendering pipeline works.

1440p results in lower CPU-related bottlenecks for most hardware combinations because with everything else being equal (the same game with the same quality settings) gaming at 1440p will result in a lower number of frames per second due to the higher load on the GPU that the extra resolution places. That's the only reason; the load on the GPU goes up, and the load on...
Let me guess:

  • Your 1440p monitor supports high refresh rates
  • You like to play games at high refresh rates
  • And to do so, you have turned down the settings in the games you play to hit high refresh rates, but now no matter how you adjust them you end up with your fps in the same place, not increasing the way you expected it too considering how powerful your new GPU is.

Am I correct?
 

michael_705

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Jul 1, 2017
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Let me guess:

  • Your 1440p monitor supports high refresh rates
  • You like to play games at high refresh rates
  • And to do so, you have turned down the settings in the games you play to hit high refresh rates, but now no matter how you adjust them you end up with your fps in the same place, not increasing the way you expected it too considering how powerful your new GPU is.
Am I correct?
not 100% correct but damn close. I have a 1440p with 144hz refresh rate. but I play on as high of graphics as my card lets me with it being playable. i have all my graphics on max.
 

jasonf2

Distinguished
Without exact fps in established benchmarks this one is really tough to call. However depending on the game the 2070 can pull ahead of the 6800-xt. My gut is though that your 3800x is probably your fps bottleneck. Best way to test it is to turn the settings all the way to the bottom and see what you get for fps. If it doesn't move very much you have found your issue. Reinstalling drivers is never a bad ideal either.
 

michael_705

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Jul 1, 2017
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Without exact fps in established benchmarks this one is really tough to call. However depending on the game the 2070 can pull ahead of the 6800-xt. My gut is though that your 3800x is probably your fps bottleneck. Best way to test it is to turn the settings all the way to the bottom and see what you get for fps. If it doesn't move very much you have found your issue. Reinstalling drivers is never a bad ideal either.
even on 1440p it could still cause that bad of a bottleneck? i was under the impression 1080p is very cpu bound and 1440p and 4K were very heavy on GPU? do you think new gen ryzen CPUs would help a decent bit?
 
even on 1440p it could still cause that bad of a bottleneck? i was under the impression 1080p is very cpu bound and 1440p and 4K were very heavy on GPU? do you think new gen ryzen CPUs would help a decent bit?

It is a commonly-repeated fallacy that there can be no CPU-related bottlenecks at 1440p. This is a misunderstanding of how the rendering pipeline works.

1440p results in lower CPU-related bottlenecks for most hardware combinations because with everything else being equal (the same game with the same quality settings) gaming at 1440p will result in a lower number of frames per second due to the higher load on the GPU that the extra resolution places. That's the only reason; the load on the GPU goes up, and the load on the CPU goes down, removing the bottleneck. With your system though, your GPU is so powerful that switching from 1080p to 1440p doesn't place enough load on the GPU to keep your CPU from bottlecking you. The faster that GPUs get, the faster CPUs need to be to pre-render the frames being requested by the GPU.

The issue with all Ryzen 3000 series CPUs is their low boost clocks, their relatively low IPC (instuctions per clock/cycle), their higher internal latencies, and their overall weak single core performance. These are basically all the things that the Ryzen 5000 series set out to fix and fixing them has catapulted AMD to the top of most CPU benchmark sheets. This is why they are significantly better for gaming.

Ryzen 3000 series CPUs were always popular due to their value (more cores and threads per $ than Intel), upgradeability (the AM4 socket has stuck around for approximately 5 years) and good performance in productivity applications. They have always played second fiddle to Intel's CPUs when it came to gaming performance however. Moving up the product stack only helps a little bit; there isn't a single Ryzen 3000 series processor that can approach the gaming performance of the Ryzen 5600x.

The issue with upgrading for you is that you're on a 400 series motherboard; the Ryzen 5000 series requires a 500 series motherboard. You could upgrade to a B550 or X570 motherboard as well as to a Ryzen 5000 series CPU, but both AMD and Intel have stated their intention to switch to a new chipset and motherboard socket for their next CPUs (LGA 1700 for Intel and AM5 for AMD) so no matter what you upgrade your CPU to right now, if you ever want to upgrade to a newer generation you'll need a new motherboard (and DDR5 RAM; both Intel and AMD plan to switch to DDR5 RAM for their next generations as well). Thus, keep in mind that whatever you upgrade too now will need to be completely redone again for your next upgrade regardless of whether you go with AMD or Intel.
 
Solution

michael_705

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Jul 1, 2017
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10,530
It is a commonly-repeated fallacy that there can be no CPU-related bottlenecks at 1440p. This is a misunderstanding of how the rendering pipeline works.

1440p results in lower CPU-related bottlenecks for most hardware combinations because with everything else being equal (the same game with the same quality settings) gaming at 1440p will result in a lower number of frames per second due to the higher load on the GPU that the extra resolution places. That's the only reason; the load on the GPU goes up, and the load on the CPU goes down, removing the bottleneck. With your system though, your GPU is so powerful that switching from 1080p to 1440p doesn't place enough load on the GPU to keep your CPU from bottlecking you. The faster that GPUs get, the faster CPUs need to be to pre-render the frames being requested by the GPU.

The issue with all Ryzen 3000 series CPUs is their low boost clocks, their relatively low IPC (instuctions per clock/cycle), their higher internal latencies, and their overall weak single core performance. These are basically all the things that the Ryzen 5000 series set out to fix and fixing them has catapulted AMD to the top of most CPU benchmark sheets. This is why they are significantly better for gaming.

Ryzen 3000 series CPUs were always popular due to their value (more cores and threads per $ than Intel), upgradeability (the AM4 socket has stuck around for approximately 5 years) and good performance in productivity applications. They have always played second fiddle to Intel's CPUs when it came to gaming performance however. Moving up the product stack only helps a little bit; there isn't a single Ryzen 3000 series processor that can approach the gaming performance of the Ryzen 5600x.

The issue with upgrading for you is that you're on a 400 series motherboard; the Ryzen 5000 series requires a 500 series motherboard. You could upgrade to a B550 or X570 motherboard as well as to a Ryzen 5000 series CPU, but both AMD and Intel have stated their intention to switch to a new chipset and motherboard socket for their next CPUs (LGA 1700 for Intel and AM5 for AMD) so no matter what you upgrade your CPU to right now, if you ever want to upgrade to a newer generation you'll need a new motherboard (and DDR5 RAM; both Intel and AMD plan to switch to DDR5 RAM for their next generations as well). Thus, keep in mind that whatever you upgrade too now will need to be completely redone again for your next upgrade regardless of whether you go with AMD or Intel.
I really appreciate you teaching me that information. I will probably wait for the newer AMD CPUs to upgrade and stuff. Since you seem like a genius to me one last question. Ive seen people talk about the power connectors for new GPUs. I believe i have 2 8 pins going in but im not sure each one connects to the power supply separately. (i had no idea how to explain it so you could imagine it so i hope you understood that) Do you think this could be an issue?
 

David0ne86

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Mar 11, 2021
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Have you updated your motherboard bios to the last revision? You are DEFINITELY not bottlenecking. I mean, bottleneck would happen with the 5950x too, otherwise we'd all get unlimited performances. It's ludicrous and wrong to say a 3800x would bottleneck a 6800xt to worsen it performances to that degree. Also the 5000 series works on the b450 too, not only the 5xx chipset. Definitely update your bios if you didn't do so already. https://rog.asus.com/motherboards/rog-strix/rog-strix-x470-f-gaming-model/helpdesk_bios
Also update your chipset drivers for the 3800x in case you didn't do in a while.

EDIT: I just looked at your motherboard compability, and it supports the 5000 series. With that i don't mean to upgrade, im just saying since the person above me stated that ryzen 5000 worked on 5xx chipsets only. A 3800x is more than capable to run a 6800xt to its full potential, especially at 1440p.
 
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michael_705

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Jul 1, 2017
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Have you updated your motherboard bios to the last revision? You are DEFINITELY not bottlenecking. I mean, bottleneck would happen with the 5950x too, otherwise we'd all get unlimited performances. It's ludicrous and wrong to say a 3800x would bottleneck a 6800xt to worsen it performances to that degree. Also the 5000 series works on the b450 too, not only the 5xx chipset. Definitely update your bios if you didn't do so already. https://rog.asus.com/motherboards/rog-strix/rog-strix-x470-f-gaming-model/helpdesk_bios
Also update your chipset drivers for the 3800x in case you didn't do in a while.

EDIT: I just looked at your motherboard compability, and it supports the 5000 series. With that i don't mean to upgrade, im just saying since the person above me stated that ryzen 5000 worked on 5xx chipsets only. A 3800x is more than capable to run a 6800xt to its full potential, especially at 1440p.
thank you for your input sir. I will definitely try it and let you know how it goes!
 
EDIT: I just looked at your motherboard compability, and it supports the 5000 series. With that i don't mean to upgrade, im just saying since the person above me stated that ryzen 5000 worked on 5xx chipsets only. A 3800x is more than capable to run a 6800xt to its full potential, especially at 1440p.

If it's compatible, then good, he doesn't need a new motherboard. I mistakenly saw something on AMD's website that gave me that impression.
 
I really appreciate you teaching me that information. I will probably wait for the newer AMD CPUs to upgrade and stuff. Since you seem like a genius to me one last question. Ive seen people talk about the power connectors for new GPUs. I believe i have 2 8 pins going in but im not sure each one connects to the power supply separately. (i had no idea how to explain it so you could imagine it so i hope you understood that) Do you think this could be an issue?

Yeah, I bet the next generation of AMD CPUs will be badass - a new socket means more opportunities for adding different features, they might shrink the process node from 7 nm to 5 nm which would be great, and I'm very interested to see what industry-wide platform adoption of DDR5 memory will do for PC gaming in general. However, if as pointed out by the other poster, your motherboard is actually compatible with a Ryzen 5000 series CPU, you'd benefit a lot by doing an upgrade now as a stop-gap solution until you upgrade your whole system down the road. Heck, I read an article a day or two ago that the Ryzen 5800x is on sale for $399 on amazon.com.

As far as your question is concerned, I know what you are talking about: 2 separate cables each with their own 8 pin connector and a single cable with two 8 pin connectors on it.

There are two different views on this:
  1. 1 cable with two 8 pin connectors is a bad idea. Each cable is supposed to carry 150 watts on its own rather than 300 watts. Doing this can cause system instability or overload your PSU.
  2. If a PSU ships with cables that end with two 8 pin connections on the end, then the PSU manufacturer must have faith in the PSU's ability to deliver up to 300 watts from a single PSU connection and over a single cable, otherwise they wouldn't have included the cable in the box and shipped the PSU with a warranty.
I generally fall in the latter camp. I'm not an electrical engineer nor doesn't my experience dictate what everyone else should be doing, but I don't see the need to run separate cables for ever connection, nor do I want the clutter of two wires running to the GPU with the auxilary 8 pin connectors hanging off the cables and cluttering things up visially. I really don't see the need.

But its up to you. If you sleep a bit better at night knowing you have separate cables for each 8 pin connector, be my guest. If you use the daisy chained cables and have no regrets or performance issues I wont judge you either. Some computer issues have 100% right/wrong answers, but this one is more of a "do what works best for you" kind of thing.