7970 low FPS? Running at only 50%

[jcarbelbide]

Hello!

A while ago I upgraded from a 570 to a 7970 to go triple monitors. I have been playing for a while and noticed (not recently) that I'm having pretty low FPS. My 570 before was getting higher FPS than I am now for some games like BF3 on max settings (one monitor) and ArmA 2. So I'm wondering what the problem is.

I just downloaded GPU-Z and ran ArmA 2 on one monitor. I was getting around 40-50% GPU power while playing, except at the title screen, where I was getting 100% (an animation plays at the title screen). I know for a fact that my old 570 was getting higher framerates. I was dropping down to like 20 sometimes.


Here are my system specs:

ASRock Z67 Extreme3 Gen3

Corsair 600 Watt PSU

i5-2500K 3.3 GHz

Sapphire Vapor-X 7970 GHz Edition

I have tried Driver Fusion and Driver Sweeper to get rid of old Nvidia drivers. Neither have helped. So I was wondering if you guys knew what else I could do.

Thanks!

 

[jcarbelbide]

I am playing at 1920 x 1080 and yes, I just updated to 13.1

 

[HaZa_2012]

Just to add my details in I have a i5-2500k 3.3ghz and the amd 7970 on stocks. With one monitor at 1080p with normal settings on arma 2 I get less than 30fps. On bf3 on ultra 1080p I get 70-180 fps. So why is it arma 2 gives me such low fps? My bios does not allow me to OC my CPU. My CPU can't be bottlenecking because of my bf3 fps. I have the latest drivers also 12.11. Thanks

 

[jcarbelbide]

I think it is because ArmA 2 is more CPU intensive. I just reinstalled windows and that didn't help much. It's strange. Maybe the 570 is just better. I wish I did not switch from Nvidia.

 

[lostgamer_03]

Might be a PSU bottleneck. Radeon 7970 is VERY power hungry.

 

[jcarbelbide]

I was wondering that. But it's weird cause sometimes it runs at 100%. But then most of the time, it drops to 50%. Is 600 Watts not enough?

 

[trogdor796]

Eh, even though the builder series are kinda meh, I somewhat doubt that is the problem, especially seeing as your CPU is running at stock.

Arma2, I'm really not that surprised to be honest. The game is garbage, horribly optimized. The game has a mind of it's own, and often runs better on sh!t specs then on high end rigs, although 30fps seems a bit low. Is the 30fps in like towns? If so, doesn't surprise me. MY 2500k @ 4.4Ghz and GTX 680 often drops to 30 in towns playing Dayz(same horrible game engine).

BF3 though, you should be running it better, like close to 60fps most of the time. What does CPU usage look like during BF3 gameplay?

 

[jcarbelbide]

Ok this is nice to hear. BF3 works fine. It's ArmA 2 that worked better on the 570 mostly. However, some games, like Fallout, still run horribly on the 7970. At least mine

 

[HaZa_2012]

Ive returned Haza_2012, and got a new processor i7-3770k did a new windows re-install 8 cores 3.5ghz and still 30fps - 17fps when recording. Im sorry but ive paid so much to try make my fps better and its letting me down

 

[trogdor796]

Are you recording to the same hard drive that you are playing the game off of?

 

[Eliposin]

Get an AMD processor. Ok jk, i7 is actually a good processor, just way expensive (btw also I'm almost positive it's only a hex core, not octa). Have you tried a different PCI slot? Reinstalled drivers. Connection speed. There are a lot of things that could be wrong.

 

[smeezekitty]

Using the same settings are before?
Can you bench it with 3d mark?

 

[timnswede]

Arma 2 is known to run like crap for some people for no apparent reason. I have the same cpu and gpu as you and my FPS is based completely on the server I'm in, in some I'll get FPS in the 20s, in others I will get a completely smooth 60 FPS, so I don't think it's your system's fault. I'm not sure why Fallout 3 runs horribly for you though, do you mean low FPS or are you crashing a lot or something?

 

[gloo69]

I have an I7 3770k @4.2 and a 7970 and I get the same results as you in armaII well Dayz, the game runs smooth on some parts and other times its not even using more than 50% of the gpu. Look up arma II problems and I bet you'll find so many people in the same situation. I don't really know anything about fallout3 though only played it on console(I know what a shame!) but I don't know why you would get low performance.

 

[Blazeman330]

Hello!

A while ago I upgraded from a 570 to a 7970 to go triple monitors. I have been playing for a while and noticed (not recently) that I'm having pretty low FPS. My 570 before was getting higher FPS than I am now for some games like BF3 on max settings (one monitor) and ArmA 2. So I'm wondering what the problem is.

I just downloaded GPU-Z and ran ArmA 2 on one monitor. I was getting around 40-50% GPU power while playing, except at the title screen, where I was getting 100% (an animation plays at the title screen). I know for a fact that my old 570 was getting higher framerates. I was dropping down to like 20 sometimes.


Here are my system specs:

ASRock Z67 Extreme3 Gen3

Corsair 600 Watt PSU

i5-2500K 3.3 GHz

Sapphire Vapor-X 7970 GHz Edition

I have tried Driver Fusion and Driver Sweeper to get rid of old Nvidia drivers. Neither have helped. So I was wondering if you guys knew what else I could do.

Thanks!

This helped someone else try moving your graphics card to another slot. I know it sounds stupid but it helped this other guy alot