AMD FX-8350 FPS drops on all games.

[porterjonny53]

I have A decent build thats keeps steady frames for a couple seconds in games then will drop 10-20 and return to the stable fps. In GTA V on high and ultra, settings I will have 70- 80 fps then drop to 50 for a few seconds and go back up. Same for battlefield 4. Hell, even Far Cry 3 does this. GPU usage is usually 60-70 percent in these games and cpu usage at around 80. Could it be a bottleneck because of my recent GPU upgrade from a GTX 960 to a GTX 970?

My rig:

Mobo - MSI 970 gaming

CPU - AMD FX-8350

CPU cooler - Hyper evo 212

case - Fractal design R4 Blackout

PSU - rosewill stallion series 700w modular

GPU - EVGA GTX 970 SSC

HDD - Western Digital Blue WD5000

RAM - 8GB (4 x 2gb) Corsair Vengance Red 1333 mhz

 

[utroz]

When you say 80% cpu usage you mean the average for all the cores is 80% right? It is probably caused by one or more cores being loaded to 100% and the threads on the other cores have to wait for that thread to get done before being able to do more. Have you tried overclocking you cpu to see if this helps. Another thing to check out is your ram and vram usage.

 

[rwayne]

At 1080P a GTX960 will pretty much perform at the same level regardless of the CPU. When you get a card stronger than that then the CPU begins to become a factor. That sounds like what may be happening with your system.

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Systems/Quad-Core-Gaming-Roundup-How-Much-CPU-Do-You-Really-Need

Either that or you are exceeding 3.5 GB of Vram on your GTX970 and it is stalling out. Monitor your VRAM usage in games and see if you exceed 3GB of ram. If so then you may be pushing the 3.5GB threshold occasionally. You are aware of the memory architecture issue with the GTX970 correct?

If you are exceeding 3.5GB of VRAM then you may want to see if you can get a refund and go with something like an R9 390 which has 8GB of Ram at roughly the same price.

 

[porterjonny53]

At 1080P a GTX960 will pretty much perform at the same level regardless of the CPU. When you get a card stronger than that then the CPU begins to become a factor. That sounds like what may be happening with your system.

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Systems/Quad-Core-Gaming-Roundup-How-Much-CPU-Do-You-Really-Need

Either that or you are exceeding 3.5 GB of Vram on your GTX970 and it is stalling out. Monitor your VRAM usage in games and see if you exceed 3GB of ram. If so then you may be pushing the 3.5GB threshold occasionally. You are aware of the memory architecture issue with the GTX970 correct?

If you are exceeding 3.5GB of VRAM then you may want to see if you can get a refund and go with something like an R9 390 which has 8GB of Ram at roughly the same price.

Yes I took this into account. NO GAME will go over the 3.5gb. GTA V is at 2.4 gb.

 

[porterjonny53]

When you say 80% cpu usage you mean the average for all the cores is 80% right? It is probably caused by one or more cores being loaded to 100% and the threads on the other cores have to wait for that thread to get done before being able to do more. Have you tried overclocking you cpu to see if this helps. Another thing to check out is your ram and vram usage.

Ram usage is at 6.8 gb in gta 5 but every other game there is 3gb left.

 

[utroz]

What version of windows are you running?

 

[ZENprime]

Seems cpu is going into power state or turbo core in a wrong way .

Try to disable "AMD turbo core" in OC panel in bios :

Also disable Cool N quite, C1E, SVM, Core C6 state, HPC mode inside CPU features option in OC panel in bios :

This will force all 8 cores to run at full 4 GHz speed at any given time .

useless side note : GTA V should load 8350 at around 77% on first core and 50-65 % on all other cores levels not 80 % on all cores or even overall load .

 

[porterjonny53]

The cpu runs at a constant 4.6GHZ with these settings off, allready.

 

[ZENprime]

temperature during the game play please ?

 

[Creme]

Your CPU is throttling, check the temperatures using CoreTemp. If it reaches 60º-62º celsius and suddenly drops, the CPU cooling is insufficient.

If the temperatures are normal, it's most likely the motherboard voltage regulators throttling because of heat. Adding a fan over them should help.

4.6Ghz is on the high side for a FX overclock. Dropping to 4.5Ghz or 4.4Ghz should use much less voltage than 4.6Ghz, and the performance is practically the same. After 4.2Ghz, those CPUs take much voltage for small steps in speed.