AMD A10 7870K Diagnostic

[Anonymousfox]

Hey, so as you could gather by the title, I am here to talk about this APU, I happen to own this, but I am curious as to weather this is performing at it's best, I suspect severe bottlenecking with my setup as a GPU I have a GTX 970 4GB Frozer, And I cannot even run Skyrim on ultra, that's a biggie for me and something tells me something in my computer is destroying the rest, I suspect theres an issue with the APU, but it isn't the APU itself, maybe the RAM? so I was wondering if someone could help me, just to make it easier, i'll use dxdiag to show you my system specs,

Processor: AMD A10-7870K Radeon R7, 12 Compute Cores 4C+8G (4 CPUs), ~3.9GHz
Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64-bit (10.0, Build 10586) (10586.th2_release.160104-1513)
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970
Motherboard: A88X-PRO
RAM: Zeppelin 8x2 (16GB) 1333hz, this is the majority of the problem as I see it, it's old, and there site is on a bloody wordpress site, and took me a long time to track down, I got this when I first got my custom PC, then I realize that it was bad, got into computering and built my own, but the only part I never changed was this, so I think it's reasonable to pin it on this, but I want to know what you guys think.

 

[Gingerbread]

The option would always be to try different ram first before making a conclusion. Also what about hard disk? If you are using a really old one, then it might be a problem as well.

 

[Wisecracker]

Experiment with tweaking your settings and see how she runs. There is an 'art' to managing Skyrim --- especially if you 'mod'

My understanding is *Ultra* shadows slam the processor --- you could try an OC and see if that helps.

Otherwise, it does have its ups and downs. You could run 120 FPS across some parts, 70 FPS on others . . . and still get slammed down to 30-35 FPS in some parts.

 

[Anonymousfox]

The option would always be to try different ram first before making a conclusion. Also what about hard disk? If you are using a really old one, then it might be a problem as well.

My HDD isn't that old, it seems to suffice in speed and is pretty fast when it needs to be, I use Steam a lot for gaming and it's write speed is always much faster than the download, which means that the download is not interrupted, I've had it for about 1 and a half years i'd say, and i'm familiar with how Hard Drives work and that the power efficiency. goes down as the years go on as the moving parts get worn. I think i'll try new RAM but in order to do so I must buy it, I will get back when I have a friend that is able to lend me some or I buy some new, I've already been recommended on what to get.

 

[Anonymousfox]

Experiment with tweaking your settings and see how she runs. There is an 'art' to managing Skyrim --- especially if you 'mod'

My understanding is *Ultra* shadows slam the processor --- you could try an OC and see if that helps.

Otherwise, it does have its ups and downs. You could run 120 FPS across some parts, 70 FPS on others . . . and still get slammed down to 30-35 FPS in some parts.

Yeah, it is interesting, it's clear that the APU is in the spotlight, but I want to see if another component is killing it instead of it generally being classed as weak.

 

[Gingerbread]

Just for reference, when your game is performing poorly, what is your CPU and GPU load %? Anything hitting the 100% mark or?

 

[Anonymousfox]

Just for reference, when your game is performing poorly, what is your CPU and GPU load %? Anything hitting the 100% mark or?

I have never checked, is there any software you'd recommend that won't interrupt my game, however would display a small dialog or something? I know EVGA precision has one but that just displays the amount used, the temp, etc.

 

[Gingerbread]

Just for reference, when your game is performing poorly, what is your CPU and GPU load %? Anything hitting the 100% mark or?

I have never checked, is there any software you'd recommend that won't interrupt my game, however would display a small dialog or something? I know EVGA precision has one but that just displays the amount used, the temp, etc.

MSI Afterburner. Shows you CPU/GPU/RAM usage/temps. All you need. If possible give them a check under high load when your PC underperforms and report here

 

[Anonymousfox]

Just for reference, when your game is performing poorly, what is your CPU and GPU load %? Anything hitting the 100% mark or?

I have never checked, is there any software you'd recommend that won't interrupt my game, however would display a small dialog or something? I know EVGA precision has one but that just displays the amount used, the temp, etc.

MSI Afterburner. Shows you CPU/GPU/RAM usage/temps. All you need. If possible give them a check under high load when your PC underperforms and report here

Well the CPU seems to idle around 20-30%, It never used to until I pulled out one of my 8x1GB RAM Sticks, so before I carry out any other tests, i'm going to buy some new RAM.

 

[Wisecracker]

With Cool&Quiet enabled, 20% CPU utilization would not be a surprise.

If you open the Windows Task Manager, under the Performance tab there is a button called 'Resource Monitor' --- it will show you the processes which are pushing your CPU utilization.

 

[Anonymousfox]

A little update, I brought some Gskill Ripjaws 2133hz 4x2GB, they'll be coming within 5 days, will update after they're delivered, I do know however that my PC crashed 3 times today and that it is a RAM Issue, although I don't know the symtoms of RAM issues my computer completely freezed and logically you can sense that that is a RAM issue as if it wasn't it would have the available memory to display a bluescreen.

 

[Gingerbread]

Yeah usually that would be the case and since you have already ordered the ram, hopefully that is the case.

 

[Anonymousfox]

Yeah usually that would be the case and since you have already ordered the ram, hopefully that is the case.

I think I can confirm it wasn't the RAM, however the RAM is atleast renewed, that one was a fail.

Uhh, I don't know, I ran rust today, I used to be able to run it fine on my A8, which is why I don't understand I'm now having these issues with an A10, is there anything else it can be? I can sense there is something bottlenecking the computer, a 970 is capable of more than 30-40 fps constant on rust, and I know its a bottleneck because its the same fps even if you turn your settings down.

 

[Anonymousfox]

Its starting to kind of upset me because I spent a lot on this computer, and playing games put me off the horrible things that go on around me, and I practically cannot enjoy a game anymore.