FX 8350 Overloading while Gaming & Streaming

[Raikozen]

I've been using the 8350 for a few months now with no issues. But I mainly play games that don't require a lot out of the cpu.

Well Tom Clancy's: The Division Open Beta came up and I wanted to stream it. I played the game on Ultra settings, like I usually do. All the sudden, my game gets super laggy and my CPU is having a major issue with encoding the stream fast enough. I've read all around that I should not have this issue with the CPU.

I'll post my PC & OBS specs below.

PC Specs:

(Note: This cpu is not overclocked)

Also, my CPU is liquid cooled with the Cooler Master Seidon 120M

(Note: I hope it's not an issue with the CPU itself. But I'm starting to lean towards that. I'm on my 3rd cpu liquid cooler. Thinking it's the coolers and not the cpu. But my temps still stay awfully high no matter what I do as far as air flow, room temps, and new cooling units.)

OBS Specs:

Tom Clancy's: The Division is coming up and I want to be able to stream it. Can anyone help me get to the bottom of this before March 8th? I'll give you any additional info that you need, just ask. Thank you in advance!

 

[Eliasand]

What motherboard are you using? The 8350 is a power-hungry chip, and some motherboards struggle to give it enough power under heavy load, like you have now. Streaming a demanding game.

 

[Raikozen]

What motherboard are you using? The 8350 is a power-hungry chip, and some motherboards struggle to give it enough power under heavy load, like you have now. Streaming a demanding game.

ASRock 990FX Extreme9

 

[Eliasand]

What motherboard are you using? The 8350 is a power-hungry chip, and some motherboards struggle to give it enough power under heavy load, like you have now. Streaming a demanding game.

ASRock 990FX Extreme9

That board is very capable and it's not the root of your problems. What PSU do you have?

 

[Raikozen]

What motherboard are you using? The 8350 is a power-hungry chip, and some motherboards struggle to give it enough power under heavy load, like you have now. Streaming a demanding game.

ASRock 990FX Extreme9

That board is very capable and it's not the root of your problems. What PSU do you have?

Corsair HX1000i

 

[Rooster__]

What temperatures are you getting?

 

[Raikozen]

What temperatures are you getting?

Socket temps, 70c. But I never really got to test my Thermal Margin Temps under load. I can use AMD overdrive and see what I get if you'd like.

 

[Raikozen]

What temperatures are you getting?

Did a stability test at 100% load on all cores for 5 minutes. It was steady at 25c Margin Temp and it looked like the CPU never downclocked.

 

[Rooster__]

What temperatures are you getting?

Socket temps, 70c. But I never really got to test my Thermal Margin Temps under load. I can use AMD overdrive and see what I get if you'd like.

I assume that's under load, but those seem pretty good for that chip liquid cooled. If that is as high as it goes, I would assume it is something else causing the problem

 

[Raikozen]

What temperatures are you getting?

Socket temps, 70c. But I never really got to test my Thermal Margin Temps under load. I can use AMD overdrive and see what I get if you'd like.

I assume that's under load, but those seem pretty good for that chip liquid cooled. If that is as high as it goes, I would assume it is something else causing the problem

I just wish I knew what that "something else" was. I shouldn't be having issues with this it seems. But whenever I stream from OBS and play any cpu intensive game... My CPU shoots to 100% load and starts lagging and getting encoding errors... It's frustrating.

 

[Rooster__]

What temperatures are you getting?

Socket temps, 70c. But I never really got to test my Thermal Margin Temps under load. I can use AMD overdrive and see what I get if you'd like.

What temperatures are you getting?

Socket temps, 70c. But I never really got to test my Thermal Margin Temps under load. I can use AMD overdrive and see what I get if you'd like.

I assume that's under load, but those seem pretty good for that chip liquid cooled. If that is as high as it goes, I would assume it is something else causing the problem

I just wish I knew what that "something else" was. I shouldn't be having issues with this it seems. But whenever I stream from OBS and play any cpu intensive game... My CPU shoots to 100% load and starts lagging and getting encoding errors... It's frustrating.

All I would do in your situation is to try overclocking for the performance boost. It might just be that the 8350 is bottlenecking the 980 Ti too severely, and it is having to work extremely hard to get the framerates and obs is trying to share that, but it has 8 cores, so theoretically it shouldn't be a problem...

 

[Raikozen]

What temperatures are you getting?

Socket temps, 70c. But I never really got to test my Thermal Margin Temps under load. I can use AMD overdrive and see what I get if you'd like.

What temperatures are you getting?

Socket temps, 70c. But I never really got to test my Thermal Margin Temps under load. I can use AMD overdrive and see what I get if you'd like.

I assume that's under load, but those seem pretty good for that chip liquid cooled. If that is as high as it goes, I would assume it is something else causing the problem

I just wish I knew what that "something else" was. I shouldn't be having issues with this it seems. But whenever I stream from OBS and play any cpu intensive game... My CPU shoots to 100% load and starts lagging and getting encoding errors... It's frustrating.

All I would do in your situation is to try overclocking for the performance boost. It might just be that the 8350 is bottlenecking the 980 Ti too severely, and it is having to work extremely hard to get the framerates and obs is trying to share that, but it has 8 cores, so theoretically it shouldn't be a problem...

I would, if I knew how to overclock. x3 I'm trying to learn, but it looks daunting.

 

[Rooster__]

Overclocking is quite simple when you know how, it's litterally increasing the multiplier until you can't boot/ are unstable in benchmarks, then increasing the voltage by a few mv, then increasing the multiplier, then increasing the voltage if it is still unstable, until you reach a voltage you are comfortable with, but there are plenty of guides. It is unlikely you will break your chip, so have a play around with it, it is not something you can fully learn if you don't have a go.

 

[Raikozen]

Overclocking is quite simple when you know how, it's litterally increasing the multiplier until you can't boot/ are unstable in benchmarks, then increasing the voltage by a few mv, then increasing the multiplier, then increasing the voltage if it is still unstable, until you reach a voltage you are comfortable with, but there are plenty of guides. It is unlikely you will break your chip, so have a play around with it, it is not something you can fully learn if you don't have a go.

I'll give it a go later tonight, and I'll reply here if I have any success. Thank for your help!

 

[Rooster__]

Overclocking is quite simple when you know how, it's litterally increasing the multiplier until you can't boot/ are unstable in benchmarks, then increasing the voltage by a few mv, then increasing the multiplier, then increasing the voltage if it is still unstable, until you reach a voltage you are comfortable with, but there are plenty of guides. It is unlikely you will break your chip, so have a play around with it, it is not something you can fully learn if you don't have a go.

I'll give it a go later tonight, and I'll reply here if I have any success. Thank for your help!

I hope it goes well

 

[Redneck5439]

Overclocking always helps your performance and you have capable equipment to overclock on. Keep in mind that the Division is only in BETA now and is not a completed game. A lot of games, in fact most games after release have performance patches as they work out the bugs. I would say not to worry too much if you have problems running the Beta version of any game as it is un-optimized and would more than likely have problems even on a high end Intel system. Really Beta versions of games should be avoided or looked at as a true work in progress and expect performance problems.

 

[Raikozen]

I guess I should of clarified that other gpu/cpu intensive games gave me issues while streaming as well. I can play the game on ultra settings. It would only be unplayable when I was streaming on top of that.

So I looked around at a few threads. Tried a suggestion and now everything runs like a dream.

Played AC Syndicate on Ultra Settings 45fps and streamed at 720p 25fps at the same time with zero issues.

Something to do with AMD Turbo Core Technology throttling your resources to the point that it will make whatever is heavily taxing your cpu not get what it needs to run smoothly and so it starts stuttering. So I turned that off.

I also reset my ghz back to default settings of 4.0ghz. (I had it Auto-Oc'd to 4.1ghz for some reason) I'm thinking now that I have my main issue sorted out, overclocking will be my next venture so I can squeeze out a bit more performance.

What do you guys suggest? I'm thinking 4.4ghz - 4.5ghz.

 

[Redneck5439]

Overclocking your FX 8350 to 4.4 - 4.5Ghz is usually no problem. You have sufficient cooling and psu to hit your goal however you never listed what motherboard you are on. An FX 8 core processor works best when it has 8+2 power phase and 8+2 power phase and VRM cooling is a must when overclocking. If you can list the make and model of you motherboard I can tell you more realistically what overclock you can get on your computer. I have an FX 8370 (tweaked version of the FX 8350 with better binning) and have an every day overclock of 5.05Ghz and a maximum overclock of 5.5Ghz on a Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 motherboard.

I'm going to link a couple of really good resources to familiarize you with overclocking Piledriver CPUs and once you list your motherboard we can nail down what your targeted max overclock for now would be.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1348623/amd-bulldozer-and-piledriver-overclocking-guide-asus-motherboard

and a good video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MckeAmnDeTk

and a video from a master overclocker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnM07DAyqZI

 

[Eliasand]

Overclocking your FX 8350 to 4.4 - 4.5Ghz is usually no problem. You have sufficient cooling and psu to hit your goal however you never listed what motherboard you are on. An FX 8 core processor works best when it has 8+2 power phase and 8+2 power phase and VRM cooling is a must when overclocking. If you can list the make and model of you motherboard I can tell you more realistically what overclock you can get on your computer. I have an FX 8370 (tweaked version of the FX 8350 with better binning) and have an every day overclock of 5.05Ghz and a maximum overclock of 5.5Ghz on a Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 motherboard.

I'm going to link a couple of really good resources to familiarize you with overclocking Piledriver CPUs and once you list your motherboard we can nail down what your targeted max overclock for now would be.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1348623/amd-bulldozer-and-piledriver-overclocking-guide-asus-motherboard

and a good video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MckeAmnDeTk

and a video from a master overclocker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnM07DAyqZI

He said 'asrock 990FX Extreme9' earlier

 

[Redneck5439]

Overclocking your FX 8350 to 4.4 - 4.5Ghz is usually no problem. You have sufficient cooling and psu to hit your goal however you never listed what motherboard you are on. An FX 8 core processor works best when it has 8+2 power phase and 8+2 power phase and VRM cooling is a must when overclocking. If you can list the make and model of you motherboard I can tell you more realistically what overclock you can get on your computer. I have an FX 8370 (tweaked version of the FX 8350 with better binning) and have an every day overclock of 5.05Ghz and a maximum overclock of 5.5Ghz on a Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 motherboard.

I'm going to link a couple of really good resources to familiarize you with overclocking Piledriver CPUs and once you list your motherboard we can nail down what your targeted max overclock for now would be.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1348623/amd-bulldozer-and-piledriver-overclocking-guide-asus-motherboard

and a good video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MckeAmnDeTk

and a video from a master overclocker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnM07DAyqZI

He said 'asrock 990FX Extreme9' earlier

Thanks, missed that

 

[Redneck5439]

To OP: Asrock 990FX Extreme9 - 12+2 power phase, total VRM cooling, you are set for overclocking my friend. The only "limiting" factor is going to be your cooling. You have one of the smallest water coolers on the market and to be honest there are many air coolers that are actually better. With your setup (aside from cooling) you should have no problem hitting 5Ghz+ (depending on your luck with the "chip lottery"). With you current cooling I think you should be able to hit 4.5Ghz, maybe 4.6 but that is going to be tops with that water cooler. To hit higher overclocks you are going to need to get a better aftermarket cooler. I personally endorse the NH-D15 (if it will fit in your case). You get the same cooling capabilities as the H100i GTX with no pumps to fail or hazards of coolant leaks frying your system. I personally have the NH-D15S with a 3 fan configuration (stock fan in the center and 2 Delta 3400rpm fans on either end all in a push pull configuration). With that cooling setup I get better cooling than the H100i GTX and am able to hit monster overclocks.

Follow the guides I posted, they are really good, set your overclock goal at 4.5Ghz for now and if you have any questions on overclocking just ask. Best of luck with your overclock.

 

[Raikozen]

So I'm struggling to see any significant increase in performance when I overclock to 4.4ghz I have taken off my turboclock. and I upped my voltage to 1.35v and ran prime95 for an hour with no issues. I am still seeing too much fluctuation in clock speeds tho. IDK if it's my bios settings but... When I use prime95, it will stay at 4400mhz for a few seconds, then it will drop down to 3400mhz for a second or two and go back up. Could that be power saving features doing that? or something else?

 

[Eliasand]

So I'm struggling to see any significant increase in performance when I overclock to 4.4ghz I have taken off my turboclock. and I upped my voltage to 1.35v and ran prime95 for an hour with no issues. I am still seeing too much fluctuation in clock speeds tho. IDK if it's my bios settings but... When I use prime95, it will stay at 4400mhz for a few seconds, then it will drop down to 3400mhz for a second or two and go back up. Could that be power saving features doing that? or something else?

You should disable all Power Saving, CPB, C6, Cool&Quiet modes when overclocking, as they can interfere with voltages and such. Make sure you don't have Turbo core, cool&quiet, Power saving enabled in bios.

 

[Raikozen]

So I'm struggling to see any significant increase in performance when I overclock to 4.4ghz I have taken off my turboclock. and I upped my voltage to 1.35v and ran prime95 for an hour with no issues. I am still seeing too much fluctuation in clock speeds tho. IDK if it's my bios settings but... When I use prime95, it will stay at 4400mhz for a few seconds, then it will drop down to 3400mhz for a second or two and go back up. Could that be power saving features doing that? or something else?

You should disable all Power Saving, CPB, C6, Cool&Quiet modes when overclocking, as they can interfere with voltages and such. Make sure you don't have Turbo core, cool&quiet, Power saving enabled in bios.

Will do, thank you for your speedy reply I'll do that right now and let you know if anything changes.

 

[Raikozen]

Hooray! Finally I'm seeing the performance I need. Thank you all so much for your help. I'm gonna try to push for 4.5Ghz since my temps are still really low at 4.4Ghz. I've never really had the issue except with CPU intensive games (Mainly Ubisoft) but now I found the fix. I also learned that If I Set OBS on High Priority and the game to Above Normal in Task Manager I got an even bigger increase in performance. It did however take a hit on my in-game FPS, as it wasn't a steady 60FPS any more. But it stayed well over 30FPS so that's perfectly fine by me.