AMD FX-6100 Throttling in most of games (getting around 30 fps or less)

[bimorx]

Hello everyone!

I made a thread here before but no one tried to help then i think maybe i posted it in wrong section... so i'm opening this one to see if any one can help me please...

I'm having this issue for months now, and it is driving me crazy. So this is the situation:

In most of the games (even 2d games like Terraria and Starbound) my CPU usage drops A LOT, and both the FPS and GPU Usage drops too, in these games i mentioned my gpu usage drops to 0%~10%, because they are low GPU Intensive games, thats ok, but, my CPU drops to 10~30% usage and no core are maximized, (the cores fluctuates between 30~60% each). I made A LOT of tests and tried many things, but nothing helps, i even bought a new motherboard as my old one was very low-end and couldnt handle my cpu properly.
Then i noticed that when my CPU is most needed, like in the game Insurgency, when i'm alone on the map my cpu usage increses to 50~60%, and the fps goes to around 120, but when players or even bots enter the maps with me the usage instantly drops to 28~35% and the fps drops to 17~40, and when i tried to overclock it the usage drops even more, and the fps as well.
So it is just like the most powerful my CPU is being, less it is used when running a game, but this "less usage" means a lot of fps drops leaving some games unplayable (below 30 fps in most of the games), and if my system can handle more performance why it is not doing so?
And in games that is GPU intensive my FPS goes at good values, like 120~200 (games like CS:GO, Dark Souls II, Dying Light, The Witcher 3, etc...), in those games my CPU usage keeps 30~40% but them use more GPU so i think the system make some balance and deliver better results.

Things that i tried:

- Disabling all power saving feature in BIOS (APM, C6State, CnQ, Turbo Core, etc..)
- Overclocking (to 4.0ghz), tried also downclocking (to 2.5ghz)
- Disabling 2 cores (leaving just 4 cores in case the board isnt providing enough power)
- Core Unpark
- Change afinity/priority of the games
- Change OS (from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and now i'm back to Windows 7)
- Bought a new motherboard (GA-990XA-UD3 R5)
- Different monitor (in case of video bottleneck)
- And another tweaks and fixes i've read on Google

And nothing helped me.

Can some one please help me? This is driving me nuts, i made a good mid-end build but cant play most of my games.

Specs:

CPU -> AMD FX-6100
PSU -> Corsair CX600
GPU -> AMD R9 270
Motherboard -> GA-990XA-UD3 R5 (rev.1)
RAM -> 4gb Corsair + 4gb Kingston (both 1333mhz)
SO -> Windows 7


(Sorry for my bad english, i hope you guys understand)

 

[miggtt699]

This might be a little stupid but, OS reinstall? That sounds very weird... Also another thing that could be causing this is the hard drive, check for that while you're gaming.

 

[bimorx]

Thanks for the quick reply friend!

But, unfortunately, i think its not simple as that, i reinstalled the os 4 times (2 times with Windows 10, 2 times with Windows 7), my HDD is new, the system boots very fast, and i've monitored its usage (write and read) and it is not being abnormaly used when playing... i think the HDD / OS is not the problem here 🙁

 

[miggtt699]

Thanks for the quick reply friend!

But, unfortunately, i think its not simple as that, i reinstalled the os 4 times (2 times with Windows 10, 2 times with Windows 7), my HDD is new, the system boots very fast, and i've monitored its usage (write and read) and it is not being abnormaly used when playing... i think the HDD / OS is not the problem here 🙁

Install MSI Afterburner and monitor the system stats to see if you're having any bottlenecks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xeqd-IBBnco

 

[bimorx]

Thanks for the quick reply friend!

But, unfortunately, i think its not simple as that, i reinstalled the os 4 times (2 times with Windows 10, 2 times with Windows 7), my HDD is new, the system boots very fast, and i've monitored its usage (write and read) and it is not being abnormaly used when playing... i think the HDD / OS is not the problem here 🙁

Install MSI Afterburner and monitor the system stats to see if you're having any bottlenecks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xeqd-IBBnco

Ok! I will follow the steps and reply soon, thank you!

 

[Karadjgne]

Go back to the beginning. What exactly did you do when this all started? Was windows 10 the upgrade, didn't work then revert back to win7 or was it a fresh clean full OS install. Did you update gpu drivers, or have you done a driver cleaner that uninstall all the drivers and does a clean install. Check the last windows updates at the time that all this craziness started and uninstall those.

Fixing the problem is the easy part. It's knowing what the problem is in the first place that's the real pita.

http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html

 

[The Grox Empire]

You know the FX 6100 are "buldozer" which mean the Worst FX product ever. They (AMD) fire the Processor Designer. Your CPU is old and cant even compete with Pentium G3258. My advice change CPU

 

[miggtt699]

You know the FX 6100 are "buldozer" which mean the Worst FX product ever. They (AMD) fire the Processor Designer. Your CPU is old and cant even compete with Pentium G3258. My advice change CPU

Are you serious?

 

[bimorx]

Thanks for the quick reply friend!

But, unfortunately, i think its not simple as that, i reinstalled the os 4 times (2 times with Windows 10, 2 times with Windows 7), my HDD is new, the system boots very fast, and i've monitored its usage (write and read) and it is not being abnormaly used when playing... i think the HDD / OS is not the problem here 🙁

Install MSI Afterburner and monitor the system stats to see if you're having any bottlenecks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xeqd-IBBnco

So i monitored my gameplay for some minutes, and what i noticed is the same, my CPU is not being used properly on the game... so ive taken a screenshot:

Go back to the beginning. What exactly did you do when this all started? Was windows 10 the upgrade, didn't work then revert back to win7 or was it a fresh clean full OS install. Did you update gpu drivers, or have you done a driver cleaner that uninstall all the drivers and does a clean install. Check the last windows updates at the time that all this craziness started and uninstall those.

Fixing the problem is the easy part. It's knowing what the problem is in the first place that's the real pita.

http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-unin...

This was happening in some games before i installed Windows 10, but i thought it was game specific bad optimization or something... when i installed Windows 10, i got a new HDD and started as Insider, then i made dual boot to a Windows 7 to see if something changes, nothing chaged it, then i made a clean install of the Windows 10 again, and things keeps the same. So in the last week i fully formated the HDD and installed only Windows 7, and yesterday i made a Safe Clean (with DISKPART format methods that took hours to complete xD) and now i'm with a very clean installation of Windows 7, the issues stills here. I already tried different versions of the GPU Drivers, but nothing helped me, i also used DDU on my last windows 10 installation, and nothing, 🙁

You know the FX 6100 are "buldozer" which mean the Worst FX product ever. They (AMD) fire the Processor Designer. Your CPU is old and cant even compete with Pentium G3258. My advice change CPU

Yes my friend, i knew it. But before i spent money changing my CPU i need to assure that it is the problem, thats why i bought the new motherboard, because my old one is bad (ASUS M5A78L-M LX), and now i can get some FX8*** with the new one if i really need it, but as i said i posted it here to know if there is someway to detect this issue, even if it is going to point the CPU itself as problem

 

[miggtt699]

Thanks for the quick reply friend!

But, unfortunately, i think its not simple as that, i reinstalled the os 4 times (2 times with Windows 10, 2 times with Windows 7), my HDD is new, the system boots very fast, and i've monitored its usage (write and read) and it is not being abnormaly used when playing... i think the HDD / OS is not the problem here 🙁

Install MSI Afterburner and monitor the system stats to see if you're having any bottlenecks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xeqd-IBBnco

So i monitored my gameplay for some minutes, and what i noticed is the same, my CPU is not being used properly on the game... so ive taken a screenshot:

Go back to the beginning. What exactly did you do when this all started? Was windows 10 the upgrade, didn't work then revert back to win7 or was it a fresh clean full OS install. Did you update gpu drivers, or have you done a driver cleaner that uninstall all the drivers and does a clean install. Check the last windows updates at the time that all this craziness started and uninstall those.

Fixing the problem is the easy part. It's knowing what the problem is in the first place that's the real pita.

http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-unin...

This was happening in some games before i installed Windows 10, but i thought it was game specific bad optimization or something... when i installed Windows 10, i got a new HDD and started as Insider, then i made dual boot to a Windows 7 to see if something changes, nothing chaged it, then i made a clean install of the Windows 10 again, and things keeps the same. So in the last week i fully formated the HDD and installed only Windows 7, and yesterday i made a Safe Clean (with DISKPART format methods that took hours to complete xD) and now i'm with a very clean installation of Windows 7, the issues stills here. I already tried different versions of the GPU Drivers, but nothing helped me, i also used DDU on my last windows 10 installation, and nothing, 🙁

You know the FX 6100 are "buldozer" which mean the Worst FX product ever. They (AMD) fire the Processor Designer. Your CPU is old and cant even compete with Pentium G3258. My advice change CPU

Yes my friend, i knew it. But before i spent money changing my CPU i need to assure that it is the problem, thats why i bought the new motherboard, because my old one is bad (ASUS M5A78L-M LX), and now i can get some FX8*** with the new one if i really need it, but as i said i posted it here to know if there is someway to detect this issue, even if it is going to point the CPU itself as problem

It's a CPU bottleneck, but all games have this? This is very weird, games like terraria shouldn't be hitting that hard on your CPU I don't think.

 

[Karadjgne]

The cpu isn't the problem. Yes it's an old design, yes it's slightly worse performance than the 6300, but cpus don't suddenly develope low usage issues. That'll be a software/driver/windows setting problem. If the cpu showed 99% usage paired with low gpu usage, then yes, the cpu would definitely be a bottleneck, but with both showing @30% usage, this simply isn't the case here.

Cores unparked: yes
C&Q on : yes
Turbo on: yes or OC to @ 4.2GHz or better.
Memtest ram, check for incompatibility issues : yes
New cpu: the 6100 is paired with a r9 270, cpu is fine.

 

[Karadjgne]

@grox

The pentium g3258 is a dual core Intel cpu that is overclockable. At stock speeds the fx6100 will compete with it just fine. When the g3258 is overclocked to @4.2+, no the 6100 won't compete. In games that are single thread heavy such as vanilla skyrim. The reverse is also true. When the 6100 is OC to 4.2+ in MMO's, GTA-V, WoW, BF4 multi-player etc that are multiple core optimized the g3258 suffers horribly by comparison, not having the core count to use its single thread advantage..

 

[miggtt699]

@grox

The pentium g3258 is a dual core Intel cpu that is overclockable. At stock speeds the fx6100 will compete with it just fine. When the g3258 is overclocked to @4.2+, no the 6100 won't compete. In games that are single thread heavy such as vanilla skyrim. The reverse is also true. When the 6100 is OC to 4.2+ in MMO's, GTA-V, WoW, BF4 multi-player etc that are multiple core optimized the g3258 suffers horribly by comparison, not having the core count to use its single thread advantage..

I know this, why are you telling me this?

 

[Karadjgne]

On my phone, read the post wrong and fixed it. Sorry for the confusion

 

[bimorx]

It's a CPU bottleneck, but all games have this? This is very weird, games like terraria shouldn't be hitting that hard on your CPU I don't think.

All games that demands more cpu than gpu, in gpu demanding games my fps is around 120, or at least 60. For example, in Dying Light my fps fluctuates between 50~70, but it stays mostly in 60's.

The cpu isn't the problem. Yes it's an old design, yes it's slightly worse performance than the 6300, but cpus don't suddenly develope low usage issues. That'll be a software/driver/windows setting problem. If the cpu showed 99% usage paired with low gpu usage, then yes, the cpu would definitely be a bottleneck, but with both showing @30% usage, this simply isn't the case here.

Cores unparked: yes
C&Q on : yes
Turbo on: yes or OC to @ 4.2GHz or better.
Memtest ram, check for incompatibility issues : yes
New cpu: the 6100 is paired with a r9 270, cpu is fine.

Hmm... i hope i dont need to change my cpu.. but what software can cause this? I'm now running a fresh install of Windows 7, only with Steam (to run Insurgency) and MSI Afterburner and RivaTSS installed.

 

[miggtt699]

It's a CPU bottleneck, but all games have this? This is very weird, games like terraria shouldn't be hitting that hard on your CPU I don't think.

All games that demands more cpu than gpu, in gpu demanding games my fps is around 120, or at least 60. For example, in Dying Light my fps fluctuates between 50~70, but it stays mostly in 60's.

The cpu isn't the problem. Yes it's an old design, yes it's slightly worse performance than the 6300, but cpus don't suddenly develope low usage issues. That'll be a software/driver/windows setting problem. If the cpu showed 99% usage paired with low gpu usage, then yes, the cpu would definitely be a bottleneck, but with both showing @30% usage, this simply isn't the case here.

Cores unparked: yes
C&Q on : yes
Turbo on: yes or OC to @ 4.2GHz or better.
Memtest ram, check for incompatibility issues : yes
New cpu: the 6100 is paired with a r9 270, cpu is fine.

Hmm... i hope i dont need to change my cpu.. but what software can cause this? I'm now running a fresh install of Windows 7, only with Steam (to run Insurgency) and MSI Afterburner and RivaTSS installed.

So you're not having poor performance on all games, you're only having poor performance on CPU heavy games, then there's your answer, and even though the FX-6100 isn't a bad CPU, these games you're struggling with either have their settings a little bit bumped up too much? Or are badly optimized, that game you showed here, "insurgency", is only really pushing 1 out of 6 cores available from your CPU, this is why it's running slow.

If you definitely can't play it like this even after lowering some of the settings like draw distance and the likes, I can only recommend a CPU upgrade if those games are really critical to you.

 

[bimorx]

So you're not having poor performance on all games, you're only having poor performance on CPU heavy games, then there's your answer, and even though the FX-6100 isn't a bad CPU, these games you're struggling with either have their settings a little bit bumped up too much? Or are badly optimized, that game you showed here, "insurgency", is only really pushing 1 out of 6 cores available from your CPU, this is why it's running slow.

If you definitely can't play it like this even after lowering some of the settings like draw distance and the likes, I can only recommend a CPU upgrade if those games are really critical to you.

Well, i tried, with every game having this issue, lowering all settings, including setting resolution to 800x600, but what i dont understand is, the Insrugency in particular, have a init command called "threads", which i can set to "threads=6" to split its tasks to my 6 cores, but when i set this command, the usage stills 30%, the difference is that now each one of the cores are lower loaded, the same happens in the game Starbound, it uses 2 or 4 cores i think, but the total usage is splitted and no core gets above 60%, and the fps drops to 13 in some areas, specially in outposts which are areas with a lot of npcs.

[EDIT] I also tested the game H1Z1, in forest areas the fps is at greatly values, like 60~80 and most of time stable, BUT when i get near ANY town, where is a lot of objects and players, my fps drops drastically to 11~14 (really, i have stopped walking in these places and been there for minutes, the fps was stable at 14) and the CPU usage drops slightly compared to the usage in the forests areas, but the gpu usage drops to below 20%.

 

[miggtt699]

So you're not having poor performance on all games, you're only having poor performance on CPU heavy games, then there's your answer, and even though the FX-6100 isn't a bad CPU, these games you're struggling with either have their settings a little bit bumped up too much? Or are badly optimized, that game you showed here, "insurgency", is only really pushing 1 out of 6 cores available from your CPU, this is why it's running slow.

If you definitely can't play it like this even after lowering some of the settings like draw distance and the likes, I can only recommend a CPU upgrade if those games are really critical to you.

Well, i tried, with every game having this issue, lowering all settings, including setting resolution to 800x600, but what i dont understand is, the Insrugency in particular, have a init command called "threads", which i can set to "threads=6" to split its tasks to my 6 cores, but when i set this command, the usage stills 30%, the difference is that now each one of the cores are lower loaded, the same happens in the game Starbound, it uses 2 or 4 cores i think, but the total usage is splitted and no core gets above 60%, and the fps drops to 13 in some areas, specially in outposts which are areas with a lot of npcs.

[EDIT] I also tested the game H1Z1, in forest areas the fps is at greatly values, like 60~80 and most of time stable, BUT when i get near ANY town, where is a lot of objects and players, my fps drops drastically to 11~14 (really, i have stopped walking in these places and been there for minutes, the fps was stable at 14) and the CPU usage drops slightly compared to the usage in the forests areas, but the gpu usage drops to below 20%.

Well after a little bit of research, Insurgency apparently has a bad patch (april 2015) that makes it run worse on all systems and H1Z1 apparently only uses about 2 cores of the processor, so there you go, you basically picked two games that are very badly optimized/coded for multicore processors.

 

[bimorx]

Well after a little bit of research, Insurgency apparently has a bad patch (april 2015) that makes it run worse on all systems and H1Z1 apparently only uses about 2 cores of the processor, so there you go, you basically picked two games that are very badly optimized/coded for multicore processors.

Then well, the overall advice to get better performance in this case is upgrading the CPU?

If thats it, i will stick with my FX6100 overclocked to 4.2ghz, i think it can handle until i can get a FX8***...
But just to clarify, i exemplified these two games, because is what i have now, but the cpu drops happens in other cpu-intensive games... So then, in conclusion, the only way to get better fps in this case is getting better CPU?

 

[Karadjgne]

What cpu cooler and what temps is it seeing at 4.2? It's also a good possibility that you are over driving the cpu with the settings, putting it into thermal throttling, would explain the forest/city difference in fps

 

[bimorx]

What cpu cooler and what temps is it seeing at 4.2? It's also a good possibility that you are over driving the cpu with the settings, putting it into thermal throttling, would explain the forest/city difference in fps

Well, my water cooler is at technical assistance, so currently i'm running the cpu at stock settins, but when a made the overclock the temps were 30-50c rarely reaches 60c, when i get the water cooler back i will post back here to tell you guys if i had some improvements..
The water cooler is a Cooler Master Seidon 120
And for the Case i have a Corsair Spec 03 Red with 2 case fans

 

[miggtt699]

Well after a little bit of research, Insurgency apparently has a bad patch (april 2015) that makes it run worse on all systems and H1Z1 apparently only uses about 2 cores of the processor, so there you go, you basically picked two games that are very badly optimized/coded for multicore processors.

Then well, the overall advice to get better performance in this case is upgrading the CPU?

If thats it, i will stick with my FX6100 overclocked to 4.2ghz, i think it can handle until i can get a FX8***...
But just to clarify, i exemplified these two games, because is what i have now, but the cpu drops happens in other cpu-intensive games... So then, in conclusion, the only way to get better fps in this case is getting better CPU?

I think you should wait a little more for newer AMD processors if you don't want to go the Intel route, their current processors are around the same when it comes to single core performance. Don't drop your money on an FX-8xxx because it won't be worth it over the 6100 at this point.

 

[bimorx]

I think you should wait a little more for newer AMD processors if you don't want to go the Intel route, their current processors are around the same when it comes to single core performance. Don't drop your money on an FX-8xxx because it won't be worth it over the 6100 at this point.

Yes, i wont buy a new processor for, at least, the end of this year, but then i will overclock it in my new board, i made some little tests yesterday and the board shown good results for the amount i've overclocked, then when my water cooler come back to me i will read guides and some tutos to do the best oc i can do safely...


Well.. Then i think it is done, i would like to thank everyone who helped me, really, thanks so much guys for spending your times to help me!!

When i make the overclock i will post here again if i get good results.

Again, much thanks everyone!

 

[Karadjgne]

I've seen ppl here take a 4100 up to 5.1GHz, a 6100 to 5GHz and many 6300's at 4.8/4.9GHz. For some odd reason, even with better performance, Intel doest OC as well or well as often as AMD fx Cpus. So I'm pretty optimistic that with decent cooling there shouldn't be too many obstacles to you reaching 4.6-4.8 OC with good temps.

 

[bimorx]

I've seen ppl here take a 4100 up to 5.1GHz, a 6100 to 5GHz and many 6300's at 4.8/4.9GHz. For some odd reason, even with better performance, Intel doest OC as well or well as often as AMD fx Cpus. So I'm pretty optimistic that with decent cooling there shouldn't be too many obstacles to you reaching 4.6-4.8 OC with good temps.

Nice, i will be overclocking a step each time and see how long i can push it, if i can get at least 4.2ghz i would be happy xD. But i think my rig can handle the temp at good values.. I hope so haha..
Thanks for the advice!