7970CF Low Usage, Low FPS.

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wadawada55

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Nov 12, 2012
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So, i used to own 2 6970's which used to run bf3 fine, but had to give them away to a friend.
So i decided to buy 2 Gigabyte 7970's thinking these would last me a few years.

ran Bf3 for a few days running perfectly over 100FPS, but now cant seem to get more than 60 unless scoped in with sniper. I ran MSI afterburner to check if CF was working properly, which it was but cards were running from 55-70% which i'm wondering if that is the issue? Running metro 2033 runs superb, averaging the performance it should be and running at 90%+usage..
Boarderlands two seems to be having the same issue as BF3.. The campaign on the other hand runs 90%+ like it should also.


Specs:
Asus Rampage Extreme III
i7 960 3.2Ghz
12gb G.skill Sniper 1600hz Ram
2x Gigabyte 7970 GV-R7970OC-3GB
TX-850
Corsair GT 120gb
12.11 Beta Drivers (I've tried others, with no change)
Samsung S27A750 120Hz

Reformatted to Windows8 hoping for Better performance but Nothing. (Reason for the two cards on 1 screen, is to get the 120fps+ on gaming to look nice at 120hz..)
 
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The thing is during the stress test with those clock levels it didnt go above 80 degrees and didnt crash at all, as soon as i started a game it would crash with all games every time.

the voltage in Afterburner is locked..
 
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Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 3081

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 117
BCP1: FFFFFA800C9A1010
BCP2: FFFFF880044092B0
BCP3: 0000000000000000
BCP4: 0000000000000000
OS Version: 6_1_7601
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 256_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\010613-11684-01.dmp
C:\Windows\Temp\WER-13587-0.sysdata.xml

that was my BS just now trying again the clock without power to 20+ and fan speed at 85% which once again didnt crash in Kombuster but did during a game.
 
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Ok looks like your voltage is too low for that clock. Do 1075 clock and 1450 memory. If that still locks bring your clock down by 10 at a time until it doesn't lock.

Did you already try to unlock the voltage in afterburner? Can't remember.
 
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Do you guys think it could be something simple as BF3 being the culprit? Perhaps a patch made our performance drop down?
It's hard to know whether or not its normal unless we can find out other players GPU usage
 
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Bf3 is optimized quite well. It is rather demanding on the cpu when playing multiplayer but it does take full advantage of the GPUs. I run a trifire 7970 and almost always get atleast 80% usage.

I think your best option for now is to go back to the 12.10 drivers, redo the -xcl, disable the ulps on both cards, then get your heat issue on your CPU fixed...once that is fixed bump your CPU to 4.2 and memory to 1600. Hopefully you will be good to go after that
 
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okay thats fine, but the only thing is im not too sure on which how to OC manually.

are you able to give me a good setup in my bios to try and test, voltages + BLK frequencies ETC. I followed someone else's bios setup on the 920 i used to own and managed to get it to 4.5stable with this same cooler. but i cannot find 1 for the 960 i am running.
 
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Yeah I'll get you a good guide...but a bit worried about your CPU hitting 90 at 3.8. So before you do overclocking, can you go make sure your thermal paste is good? Also check to make sure that bios is ramping up your fan properly...figure out which port your CPU fan is plugged into, then go into bios and check to see how bios has the fan control setup for that port.
 
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Huey, I see that you mentioned that you tried different drivers...but did you also ensure that AMD CAPs installed? If it is installed, make sure that you only have the most current version installed...shouldn't hurt to have more than one, but it's worth deleting the older versions.
 
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the CPU when i say hit 90degrees was when i was stressing it, but non-stressed stayed about 40 degress. Thats why i was thinking it was due to the voltages, the OC profile that was there didnt change the voltages.
 
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Yeah mate only got the latest cap installed. I haven't tried any drivers before the 12.11 beta so I've never had 100% gpu usage. think it's worth a revert to see if they give me 100?
 
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My OC is stable in 3d mark and all games apart from team fortress 2 of all games haha it locks my pc up hard.

You say you really used to get get 100% gpu usage on bf3. Perhaps we should revert to earlier drivers to try and obtain better fps?
 
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i Thought i did but not 100% sure, its the fact i had lag is when i thought and tried to figure it out if it was utilized then found they wernt. problem for me is, its not just Bf3, Its alot of games. the only game ive found that worked 100% was Metro2033 and Bf3 Singleplayer. Is urs all games or just Bf?
 
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Every other game apart from BF3 runs great, I'm not too sure on GPU usage but Id have to be getting 90 fps + in most of them.
Far cry 3 is an exception because the drivers suck for that, and skyrim because I've modded the hell outa it so battlefield 3 is the only real trouble maker for me.
 
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Update: Just bought myself a new 3820 CPU, Gigabyte X79-UP4 MOBO and Corsair Vengence 16g 1600 kit ram. with the same results as before..
whata bummer. The only thing that i can think of now making it like it is, is the cables im using for the bridge. before when i changed them over, i only changed over to one single cable.
 
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Dude496, this is a statement from another Forum someone added. "You don't probably have a CPU bottleneck. You definitely have one. In intense scenes, your CPU has more work to do, and the GPU's are being starved of material to work with.

This will be obvious if you monitor your CPU usage as well. If you have HT enabled, a load level of 50%, as reported by Task Manager, means you're tapped out. Using something like Core Temp, 50% on any given core means that core is fully loaded. With HT disabled, it's 100% in each case.

And even apart from CPU-taxing episodes, two 7970's with a 1920x1080 resolution will be CPU-bound in the vast majority of games. That will be true of a substantial number of games no matter how much your overclock your CPU, too."

Would this statement be correct?
 
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