bottlenecking my cpu?

[17mrolfe]

okay so i just got in my second r9 270x and set up x-fire and in all my games i am only gaining about 10 more frames than i had if that in bf4 i am only getting 60 frames in farcry 3 only 40 frames. my processor is at 4.0 ghz it is an fx-6300 i have 8gb ram and my mobo is an asrock 990fx extreme 3 i am thinking if its my cpu i should get an fx-8350 or 8320 and would that fix it? if it isnt the cpu i am not sure what it is i am using the latest drivers and x-fire is enable in ccc. oh and idk if this has anything to do but gpu 2-sapphire toxic r9 270x and gpu 1-gigabyte r9270x oc edit: could it be a driver issue im useing ccc 14.1

 

[mrmez]

A 270x is not a powerful GPU, so I'd guess your CPU is not the limiting factor. You can try over clocking to make sure.
Unfortunately when you sli/crossfire a card, you are never doubling performance. I've also never heard of people using different brands, so Im not sure if that has anything to do with it.
Using two cards is always complicated and risky, which is why so few people do it.

 

[17mrolfe]

A 270x is not a powerful GPU, so I'd guess your CPU is not the limiting factor. You can try over clocking to make sure.
Unfortunately when you sli/crossfire a card, you are never doubling performance. I've also never heard of people using different brands, so Im not sure if that has anything to do with it.
Using two cards is always complicated and risky, which is why so few people do it.

i see what ur saying but i should get more than a 5 to 10 fps increase

 

[Swordkd]

It's not a problem that they are two different brands. Like was said earlier, you don't get double the performance. Usually +80% percent at best.

The fx6300 should be just fine running those cards in xfire too. The fx8320(50) would offer slightly better performance though, but probably not worth the cost. I'd run a benchmark program to gauge the effect that adding a 2nd card actually gives you. Run once solo card, and once xfire and compare.

:edit: What resolution are you playing at, and what settings? I'd guess that you can up the graphics settings and still get good performance beyond what your one card could push, which would really show the advantage to xfire.

 

[Rationale]

A 270x is not a powerful GPU, so I'd guess your CPU is not the limiting factor. You can try over clocking to make sure.
Unfortunately when you sli/crossfire a card, you are never doubling performance. I've also never heard of people using different brands, so Im not sure if that has anything to do with it.
Using two cards is always complicated and risky, which is why so few people do it.

i see what ur saying but i should get more than a 5 to 10 fps increase

It depends on the game. Some games get almost double fps from crossfire, but some only really increase 5-10 fps.
If I was you, I'd check crossfire benchmarks of FC3 to see if it's known to scale well, or badly from crossfire.

I sort of doubt the FX-6300 is the limiting factor. FC3 does tax the CPU heavily, but it distributes the load pretty evenly across 4-6 cores and the FX-6300 should be at its best in those circumstances.

 

[Rationale]

It's not a problem that they are two different brands. Like was said earlier, you don't get double the performance. Usually +80% percent at best.

The fx6300 should be just fine running those cards in xfire too. The fx8320(50) would offer slightly better performance though, but probably not worth the cost. I'd run a benchmark program to gauge the effect that adding a 2nd card actually gives you. Run once solo card, and once xfire and compare.

More than 6 cores is wasted in FC3. Far Cry 3 would likely perform better on an FX-6350 than an FX-8320.

 

[17mrolfe]

It's not a problem that they are two different brands. Like was said earlier, you don't get double the performance. Usually +80% percent at best.

The fx6300 should be just fine running those cards in xfire too. The fx8320(50) would offer slightly better performance though, but probably not worth the cost. I'd run a benchmark program to gauge the effect that adding a 2nd card actually gives you. Run once solo card, and once xfire and compare.

okay thanks i will try that tomorrow and reply back
and 1920x1080p and ultra setting on both

 

[17mrolfe]

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/5984/sapphire-radeon-r9-270x-2gb-toxic-video-cards-in-crossfire/index18.html i know they have an i7 in there setup but i should be getting around 80fps with my setup on bf4

 

[Rationale]

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/5984/sapphire-radeon-r9-270x-2gb-toxic-video-cards-in-crossfire/index18.html i know they have an i7 in there setup but i should be getting around 80fps with my setup on bf4

How hot does your 6300 get? If CPUs heat up (usually to around 80c) they slow themselves down to cool off.

Edit: Also, what's your power supply?

 

[17mrolfe]

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/5984/sapphire-radeon-r9-270x-2gb-toxic-video-cards-in-crossfire/index18.html i know they have an i7 in there setup but i should be getting around 80fps with my setup on bf4

How hot does your 6300 get? If CPUs heat up (usually to around 80c) they slow themselves down to cool off.

Edit: Also, what's your power supply?

my cpu get to around 70c and my psu is lsp 650w

 

[Rationale]

The LSP650 isn't terrible, but not really good either. At 38A on the 12V rail it can really only supply about 500w under load. Fine for single cards, not fine for crossfire.
You may be experiencing a power shortage.

 

[17mrolfe]

The LSP650 isn't terrible, but not really good either. At 38A on the 12V rail it can really only supply about 500w under load. Fine for single cards, not fine for crossfire.
You may be experiencing a power shortage.

wouldnt the system just shutdown from power shortage or would it actually just suck frames and btw i am only gaining frames in metro 2033 and i am getting around 100 now

oh and for the power to the second card i am using molex to 6pin connectors

 

[Rationale]

The LSP650 isn't terrible, but not really good either. At 38A on the 12V rail it can really only supply about 500w under load. Fine for single cards, not fine for crossfire.
You may be experiencing a power shortage.

wouldnt the system just shutdown from power shortage or would it actually just suck frames and btw i am only gaining frames in metro 2033 and i am getting around 100 now

oh and for the power to the second card i am using molex to 6pin connectors

Depends on whether the PSU is failing or simply failing to keep up with the power draw. Generally it's failing PSUs that shut the PC down, at least in my experience.
Ofc, it might not be so serious.

 

[17mrolfe]

The LSP650 isn't terrible, but not really good either. At 38A on the 12V rail it can really only supply about 500w under load. Fine for single cards, not fine for crossfire.
You may be experiencing a power shortage.

wouldnt the system just shutdown from power shortage or would it actually just suck frames and btw i am only gaining frames in metro 2033 and i am getting around 100 now

oh and for the power to the second card i am using molex to 6pin connectors

Depends on whether the PSU is failing or simply failing to keep up with the power draw. Generally it's failing PSUs that shut the PC down, at least in my experience.
Ofc, it might not be so serious.

What should I have for amp draw on the 12v rail for 2way 270x I cant find anything on that

 

[adriank83]

load up bf4, use the console to get up the performance graph, use msi afterburner or something like that to log gpu utilization and software to measure cpu utilization such as hardware monitor or something like that, throw all that together and you've got yourself a good analysis of whether there's a bottleneck in your system, I wouldn't be surprised if your CPU is bottlenecking you a bit, give it a try and see what you get. With the performance graph, you ideally want the gpu and cpu latencies around the same with no huge spikes, and with cpu and gpu usage, you don't want one to be maxed out while the other is not, anything like that will indicate a bottleneck being created for one reason or another, so if your cpu is at 100% and your gpus are at say 70%, then there's a good chance there is a bottleneck happening, also check the heat on the gpu's, make sure one is not blowing heat onto another, making it too hot and causing it to throttle down, amd gpu's do run pretty warm.

 

[17mrolfe]

load up bf4, use the console to get up the performance graph, use msi afterburner or something like that to log gpu utilization and software to measure cpu utilization such as hardware monitor or something like that, throw all that together and you've got yourself a good analysis of whether there's a bottleneck in your system, I wouldn't be surprised if your CPU is bottlenecking you a bit, give it a try and see what you get. With the performance graph, you ideally want the gpu and cpu latencies around the same with no huge spikes, and with cpu and gpu usage, you don't want one to be maxed out while the other is not, anything like that will indicate a bottleneck being created for one reason or another, so if your cpu is at 100% and your gpus are at say 70%, then there's a good chance there is a bottleneck happening, also check the heat on the gpu's, make sure one is not blowing heat onto another, making it too hot and causing it to throttle down, amd gpu's do run pretty warm.

my gpus are maxing at like 55-60c and mycpu usage is about 60% during game and gpu1usage-max 68 and gpu2 is 100% idk why but thats what afterburner says

 

[adriank83]

Rationale is probably right about the psu not being able to supply all the systems power demands, if you happen to have a wattage meter you can easily check that way, they're pretty cheap to get a decent one anyway, when I had crossfire hd6970's my system power draw for the case was 550w with bf4

 

[Swordkd]

No, the Psu is supplying enough power. If it wasn't, it wouldn't degrade performance in-game, it would just blue screen or kill the proggy, or otherwise shut down.

 

[Rationale]

No, the Psu is supplying enough power. If it wasn't, it wouldn't degrade performance in-game, it would just blue screen or kill the proggy, or otherwise shut down.

Not true. My brother had a crappy 700w PSU with 20A on the first 12v rail that couldn't power a single GTX 670. His framerate hovered around 20-40 fps in everything, even low impact games that it should have been destroying at 200+ fps. It never shut down or had at BSoD at first, and by the time it finally did start to shut the PC down randomly, the PSU blew in a few days. Initially it had just degraded his performance severely.

 

[17mrolfe]

No, the Psu is supplying enough power. If it wasn't, it wouldn't degrade performance in-game, it would just blue screen or kill the proggy, or otherwise shut down.

Not true. My brother had a crappy 700w PSU with 20A on the first 12v rail that couldn't power a single GTX 670. His framerate hovered around 20-40 fps in everything, even low impact games that it should have been destroying at 200+ fps. It never shut down or had at BSoD at first, and by the time it finally did start to shut the PC down randomly, the PSU blew in a few days. Initially it had just degraded his performance severely.

what psu should i get im thinking about 700w+ i have a budget of 80 or less

 

[Swordkd]

Sales on Psu's are sub-par right now. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005ILWYT6/?tag=pcpapi-20 About the best one I see for that price range. The Ultra Psu you have now isn't bad though, so you'll have to spend all of that 80 dollars to get something significantly better as an upgrade.

The Rosewill Hive 750w I linked is Bronze certified, and semi-modular. It's also a quality built unit in your price range.

 

[adriank83]

I've seen systems where the psu handled it for a while, then eventually blew up and others where it shut down, depends on the load and the psu. You might want to throw a little more down and get a decent quality corsair or the one sword linked looks like it would do the trick too.

 

[17mrolfe]

these cards r for sale