All games go too fast after switching an i7 920 for a Xeon X5650

[Blas]

I have recently changed the CPU from a core i7 920 to a Xeon X5650. Since then, all games appear to be accelerated: characters move too fast (both player and non-player), dialogs in cut-scenes are also accelerated (a speaker starts its line when the previous speaker hasn't yet finished), etc. It's sort of a Benny Hill situation, not funny at all to see it all move around very fast. I detected the issue with Assassin's Creed Unity, then launched The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot and, to discard a problem with Ubisoft games, i also tried The Talos Principle: all three games have the same problem, whereas before the CPU change they all ran fine at normal speeds.

Does anyone know about this problem and its possible solution?

My specs are:

Mobo: ASUS P6X58D-E
CPU: Xeon X5650 @ 4.18 GHz (previous CPU: i7 920 @ 4.00 GHz)
GPU: GTX 1070
RAM: 6 x Mushkin 2GB DDR3-1600 (12 GB total)
SSD: Samsung 830 512 GB

Thanks in advance!

 

[lucas_7_94]

More cores, more Threads. Better performance using all cores and using each one.

 

[boju]

Was curious and googled a similar search phrase and theres another from couple yrs back: http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1674959/games-running-fast.html

The curse of too much cpu for retro has returned is what it is

Driver probably related, sound/graphics - If using Win10 turn off automatic driver updates for starters and reinstall your graphics and sound. http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2763685/stop-windows-automatically-updating-device-drivers.html Perhaps Microsoft has a an issue lately? and you're one of the first to report.

Youtube has speed play now so maybe set that back to normal, it might be impacting the system someway ;P wild guess.

 

[Blas]

Thanks for the answers so far. But it's not a matter of performance, lucas: it's not that i get too many frames per second, it's just that some timer somewhere ticks too fast. It's as if you played a movie at x1.5 its normal speed. Thanks though!

And as you indicate, boju, i thought it could be a problem as in those really old games, where the pace of the game depends on some system clock. But this happens with modern games (all three games i tried - i don't have others installed right now - are modern, 2-3 years old tops). That first thread you point to is exactly what i'm seeing, thanks for linking it. I suspect the problem is related to Windows (yes, i have windows 10 home, version 1511), there's probably some CPU related driver that's been messed up by the switch from Core to Xeon. I will try with MS support. Not really sure what Youtube might have to do here though, youtube videos play fine, at their normal speed Thanks boju for your help!

 

[wysir]

Are you sure the motherboard supports the Xeon processor? Just because it fits the socket doesn't mean there is CMOS instructions for the chipset on how to control it.

 

[RaidHobbit]

The problem here is you're using a Xeon for gaming instead of for a server. Of course your games are going to run too fast.

 

[synphul]

I would start with driver issues and possibly a reinstall of the game itself. Some sort of software conflict probably.

@RaidHobbit that's completely false. No such thing as using a cpu that's 'too fast' and making the game out of control due to cpu speed. Nor is it true that that's what happens when you use a xeon for gaming instead of a server. I have no idea where you got that idea from but it's 100% wrong. There were anomalies from really old games running out of sync on modern hardware but we're not talking dos box games coded to run off cpu cycles.

The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot was released in early 2015 and ac unity in late 2014. Not brand new but recent releases and ac unity is a AAA title designed to run on top end hardware. If being too fast were an issue then it wouldn't be a problem with the xeon 5650.

Yes it's a 6 core cpu but it's 6yrs old running at 2.66-3.06ghz with a bus speed of 6.4 gt/s. It will get smoked by a 6yr newer i7 6700k running 4-4.2ghz with a bus speed of 8 gt/s on dmi3 and several generations worth of ipc improvements on top of the raw speed difference. That means all games just a year or two old would have this issue on modern i7's and they don't.

 

[Blas]

Thanks everybody, again, especially to synphul for clarifying things

The motherboard supports that processor, there's quite many people with that mobo+cpu combo and apparently they don't have this issue. I've checked the Asus web for my mobo, and there's only an audio driver, no other drivers for the most recent OS (Windows 8.1 64b). I did update the BIOS before installing the Xeon.

I will try re-installing the games, and if that doesn't solve it, i will raise a ticket to Microsoft support, i think it has to be OS related, there might be a CPU driver somewhere that needs changing.

Thanks again!

 

[synphul]

Let us know how it goes, hopefully a reinstall helps fix things.

 

[Blas]

Synphul, you were right: reinstalling the games was all that was needed to solve the problem Thanks a lot for the suggestion!