Getting worse performance than expected from System

[thecreeperdude]

Hi,

Around Christmas time I upgraded from a GTX 970 Graphics card to a GTX 1080ti, and I've found that my performance gain has been quite minor, with there being hitching and much lower fps than I was expecting in certain games.

For example, I recently bought Far Cry 5 and have been playing through it, and although the game has been using only 3-4GB (according to the game's menus) of the 1080ti's VRAM, the game sits around 40-50fps with occasional increases into the 60 area when inside a building.

I've also found this to be a similar case with other games, such as Elder Scrolls Online, The Witcher 3, Black Desert Online, Divinity: Original Sin 2,Battlefield 5 (Which had abnormally high CPU usage with it maxing out a lot) to name a few. In these games I can hit 60, but its only occassionally while in open spaces. As soon as I enter an area (such as a city) the fps plummets to 30-40 fps. This would be fine, if I could just lower the settings to account for this loss, but doing that does nothing.

I've looked online and attempted a couple of fixes, namely:

-Ensuring GPU Drivers are up to date,
-Changing settings in the NVIDIA Control Panel, i.e. Resolution Scaling, Max Pre-rendered frames, Power management.
-Switching Windows 10 to Gaming Mode
-Overclocking GPU, CPU
-Swapping RAM slots
-Moving GPU down to a different slot on the motherboard
-Antivirus checks

I'm not the most tech literate, so please bear with me if its something obvious! 😀

I've included my full spec list down below, but if anything else is needed, just ask and I'll do the best of my ability to give it to you!
My Specs:

GPU: GTX 1080Ti
CPU: i7-5820k @ 3.30
RAM: 16GB
Motherboard: MSI X99A Raider




I also have 2 1920x1080 monitors which are connected to my PC.

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[menlui]

So, did your remove your old drivers before changing the GPU? Are your power options set to high performance? Is vsync off? Have you checked Nvidia control panel to see if its overriding your settings? What Hz are your monitors?

 

[Karadjgne]

Fps is mostly on the cpu, details and resolution on the gpu. In most cases the cpu is stronger in ability than the gpu, so as the gpu goes up in ability, it raises the fps as it can do more. With a weak cpu, fps will be limited by its ability, and adding a gpu that's stronger will show little to no fps gains.

While the i7-5820k is a good cpu as far as multitasking or multiple threads go, for single thread IPC it's lacking, especially at 3.3GHz. Even an i5-8400 will beat it handily in most games, stronger single thread IPC and faster clock speeds.

Want higher fps? Get that clock speed up.

Max pre-rendered frames should be 1.

 

[thecreeperdude]

Fps is mostly on the cpu, details and resolution on the gpu. In most cases the cpu is stronger in ability than the gpu, so as the gpu goes up in ability, it raises the fps as it can do more. With a weak cpu, fps will be limited by its ability, and adding a gpu that's stronger will show little to no fps gains.

While the i7-5820k is a good cpu as far as multitasking or multiple threads go, for single thread IPC it's lacking, especially at 3.3GHz. Even an i5-8400 will beat it handily in most games, stronger single thread IPC and faster clock speeds.

Want higher fps? Get that clock speed up.

Max pre-rendered frames should be 1.

When I tried Overclocking the CPU to 3.8GHz, the performance didn't seem to change a lot, and I didn't notice any massive changes (However, its very possible that it DID in fact increase performance and I didn't realize). Do you think I should maybe try overclocking it to a slightly higher value? If so what value would you recommend?

I'm assuming by max pre-rendered frames you are referring to the option in the Nvidia Control Panel?

Thanks!

 

[thecreeperdude]

So, did your remove your old drivers before changing the GPU? Are your power options set to high performance? Is vsync off? Have you checked Nvidia control panel to see if its overriding your settings? What Hz are your monitors?

Yes I did, I used DDU to clean the old 970 drivers, however I did leave Geforce installed during this process, which thinking back probably wasn't the greatest idea as I guess this could have affected it. I'll do a quick wipe as I no longer have it installed, and see what affect that has.

V-Sync I always leave off, in both the game and in the Nvidia Control Panel.

Power Options are set to Max Performance, yep. In Both the Nvidia control panel and in the Windows 10 settings.

Both my monitors are 60 Hertz.

Regarding the control panel overriding the settings, do you know a way of easily checking for this?

Thanks!

 

[Karadjgne]

Many times performance isn't visible at all. With 60Hz monitors if your fps minimums are over 60, you'll see no performance gains in anything other than detail settings. Wouldn't matter if fps was 100 or 400, you see 60. So switching cards may or may not improve a lot of games because the 970 is right at the middle between a 1060/3 and a 1060/6, basically strong enough for ultra at 1080p in a good majority of games.

Witcher 3 for example is hard on a gpu, it's a graphics intensive game, but it's even harder on the cpu, upto 8 thread demands based around an i5-8400 level of IPC. Without some decent horsepower on the cpu, the gpu is helpless to get the fps any higher.

Oc is a hobby, pure and simple. It's not a necessity. Unless your personal tastes make it so. The games as is are easily playable with your system. You are the one demanding more, so OC is a probability for a easy fix. How much OC? As much as your cooling can handle, as much as your knowledge of OC that cpu on that motherboard, as much as the limits of the hardware can do.

 

[thecreeperdude]

Many times performance isn't visible at all. With 60Hz monitors if your fps minimums are over 60, you'll see no performance gains in anything other than detail settings. Wouldn't matter if fps was 100 or 400, you see 60. So switching cards may or may not improve a lot of games because the 970 is right at the middle between a 1060/3 and a 1060/6, basically strong enough for ultra at 1080p in a good majority of games.

Witcher 3 for example is hard on a gpu, it's a graphics intensive game, but it's even harder on the cpu, upto 8 thread demands based around an i5-8400 level of IPC. Without some decent horsepower on the cpu, the gpu is helpless to get the fps any higher.

Oc is a hobby, pure and simple. It's not a necessity. Unless your personal tastes make it so. The games as is are easily playable with your system. You are the one demanding more, so OC is a probability for a easy fix. How much OC? As much as your cooling can handle, as much as your knowledge of OC that cpu on that motherboard, as much as the limits of the hardware can do.

I'll have a play around with the OC and see if I'm able to push the games up to a consistent 60. It just seems weird that the problem would solely be the CPU as when I was checking around for potential fixes, everyone who had a same CPU/GPU combo as I did, all were having good performances at 1080p and were easily hitting 4K 60fps, and I don't believe any of those had overclocked it.

 

[Karadjgne]

That's resolution. All gpu. If you are getting 100fps at 1080p, with that 1080ti you'll get @90-100fps at 1440p or damn close to 60fps at 4k. That's the limits of the gpu, the cpu being able to supply 100fps. With the 970, at 1080p you'd get 100fps, at 1440p closer to 60fps and 4k would be 20fps. Again the gpu being the limiter as the cpu does not care at all about resolution, that's all gpu.

When the cpu deals with the game engine, it translates and assigns 1 code. There's not different codes for the resolutions, it's all just 1. It'll send the revised code to the gpu, which paints the picture according to resolution and detail settings. If the gpu can do this only 20x a second and get full pictures painted, you see 20fps, and thats easy for the cpu, be it 4k or 720p, it just ships the same code only 20x. At 1080p the cpu might be limited to being only able to ship that code 100x a second, so you have an effective cap of 100fps. With a 750ti, it can't paint that picture 100x a second, only 30, so you get 30fps even though the potential is 100. With a 970 it can paint the picture 100x a second and more, but the cpu is stuck at 100 so even though the gpu is capable of 150fps, you get 100. Move upto a 1080ti, capable of painting that picture 300x a second, you are still stuck at 100fps, limited by the cpu. Change the monitor to 4k and the cpu is still capable of 100fps, but the gpu is now working 4x as hard to paint that picture, so instead of being capable of 300 pictures, it's now capable of 75 instead. So you get 75fps.

YouTube may show a certain amount of fps, but you have to take other things into consideration. Everything from game tweaks, nvidia tweaks, AV, ram size, ram timings and speed, power settings, OC, core enhancements, monitor input lag, ssd or hdd transmission speeds, BCLK, and a whole host of other differences that may or may not affect performance. Even just a 1% performance boost can translate to 6fps, and at 4k 6fps is substantial.

So take YouTube and other sites with a grain of salt, you are good as long as you are on the ball park, figuring some of these results are done specifically to dredge up every last fps they can in that specific instance vrs your pc which has settings to cover a whole lot more compatability.

 

[thecreeperdude]

That's resolution. All gpu. If you are getting 100fps at 1080p, with that 1080ti you'll get @90-100fps at 1440p or damn close to 60fps at 4k. That's the limits of the gpu, the cpu being able to supply 100fps. With the 970, at 1080p you'd get 100fps, at 1440p closer to 60fps and 4k would be 20fps. Again the gpu being the limiter as the cpu does not care at all about resolution, that's all gpu.

When the cpu deals with the game engine, it translates and assigns 1 code. There's not different codes for the resolutions, it's all just 1. It'll send the revised code to the gpu, which paints the picture according to resolution and detail settings. If the gpu can do this only 20x a second and get full pictures painted, you see 20fps, and thats easy for the cpu, be it 4k or 720p, it just ships the same code only 20x. At 1080p the cpu might be limited to being only able to ship that code 100x a second, so you have an effective cap of 100fps. With a 750ti, it can't paint that picture 100x a second, only 30, so you get 30fps even though the potential is 100. With a 970 it can paint the picture 100x a second and more, but the cpu is stuck at 100 so even though the gpu is capable of 150fps, you get 100. Move upto a 1080ti, capable of painting that picture 300x a second, you are still stuck at 100fps, limited by the cpu. Change the monitor to 4k and the cpu is still capable of 100fps, but the gpu is now working 4x as hard to paint that picture, so instead of being capable of 300 pictures, it's now capable of 75 instead. So you get 75fps.

YouTube may show a certain amount of fps, but you have to take other things into consideration. Everything from game tweaks, nvidia tweaks, AV, ram size, ram timings and speed, power settings, OC, core enhancements, monitor input lag, ssd or hdd transmission speeds, BCLK, and a whole host of other differences that may or may not affect performance. Even just a 1% performance boost can translate to 6fps, and at 4k 6fps is substantial.

So take YouTube and other sites with a grain of salt, you are good as long as you are on the ball park, figuring some of these results are done specifically to dredge up every last fps they can in that specific instance vrs your pc which has settings to cover a whole lot more compatability.

I understand all that, but what I'm saying is that other people's builds with the same combo are all getting the performance that you'd expect from it, but mine is struggling to hit 60 in most games at 1080p, whereas everyone else is getting upwards of 100fps. I'm fairly sure none of them had overclocked their 5820k so I'm not entirely sure thats going make my performance match theirs. I'll still try it, as you never know I could be wrong.

 

[Karadjgne]

I honestly can't think I've ever run across a stock 2011 or 2011-3 to be truthful. Ppl who bought those systems, even when they weren't exactly brand new releases, gave them as much OC as they could with the biggest coolers they could fit in their case usually the older NH-D15 or H105/H110 or in many cases if they had the cash, full custom loops. The budget oriented ppl stuck to lga1155/lga1150. So it'd not surprise me in the least to see most, if not all of those systems under a good amount of OC, just to get the clock speeds high enough to keep up with the lga i7's.

You should be getting far more than 60fps at 1080p. I get 60fps minimums in everything I play with a i7-3770k and gtx970 so there's something afoot.

Have you run Afterburner in-game and watched the core/gpu usage? Taskmaster is unreliable, it lumps all the cores into 1 equation, but AB will show what the separate cores are doing. I could see getting 60fps if just 1-2 cores were hitting close to 100% but in a spread of 4 cores you shouldn't be much higher than 50% or so. Might want to also look at the temps in game too, it's also possible either the gpu or cpu is getting thermally throttled, wouldn't be the first time only one fan on the gpu is actually spinning, causing the VRM's/vram to overheat as well, so visually check that.

If your game is vanilla, might want to hunt around for some mods, you've got the cpu and gpu power for them easily, and some will actually improve game play and/or fps with performance enhancements and bug fixes which could also be slowing that game down.
https://www.nexusmods.com/farcry5/mods/
It'd not surprise me if those other guys running the higher fps haven't also tweaked the game or supplied bug fixes/patches. There's a lot that's unknown and more to the story than just same cpu/gpu combo.

 

[thecreeperdude]

I honestly can't think I've ever run across a stock 2011 or 2011-3 to be truthful. Ppl who bought those systems, even when they weren't exactly brand new releases, gave them as much OC as they could with the biggest coolers they could fit in their case usually the older NH-D15 or H105/H110 or in many cases if they had the cash, full custom loops. The budget oriented ppl stuck to lga1155/lga1150. So it'd not surprise me in the least to see most, if not all of those systems under a good amount of OC, just to get the clock speeds high enough to keep up with the lga i7's.

You should be getting far more than 60fps at 1080p. I get 60fps minimums in everything I play with a i7-3770k and gtx970 so there's something afoot.

Have you run Afterburner in-game and watched the core/gpu usage? Taskmaster is unreliable, it lumps all the cores into 1 equation, but AB will show what the separate cores are doing. I could see getting 60fps if just 1-2 cores were hitting close to 100% but in a spread of 4 cores you shouldn't be much higher than 50% or so. Might want to also look at the temps in game too, it's also possible either the gpu or cpu is getting thermally throttled, wouldn't be the first time only one fan on the gpu is actually spinning, causing the VRM's/vram to overheat as well, so visually check that.

If your game is vanilla, might want to hunt around for some mods, you've got the cpu and gpu power for them easily, and some will actually improve game play and/or fps with performance enhancements and bug fixes which could also be slowing that game down.
https://www.nexusmods.com/farcry5/mods/
It'd not surprise me if those other guys running the higher fps haven't also tweaked the game or supplied bug fixes/patches. There's a lot that's unknown and more to the story than just same cpu/gpu combo.

Okay so I tried running the "Time Spy" demo on 3D Mark, while having AB running on a second monitor to look at temps, along with usages too.

Temperature wise I'm assuming I'm okay, CPU was around 40-50, and GPU went up to 70-80. I thought maybe that could be a sign of thermal throttling, so I checked that both fans of the GPU were running like you said, which they were. I then noticed on AB that the fan speed was down at like 32%. I increased this to 80% (the extra noise doesn't bother me) and re-ran the benchmark. I noticed no differences between the score 3D Mark gave me, and the usages of the CPU and GPU, so I'm guessing thermal throttling isn't playing a part.

The core usages for the CPU and GPU seemed to be fairly equal across all the cores, there were variations but the variations were only by 5% at most.

While on the subject of usages, as this could potentially help; I did notice that the GPU and CPU usages weren't very high, for example there was times where the fps dropped to around 50, and I noticed the usages of the CPU and GPU were around maybe 50%. However I don't know if that's what you're meant to expect, but to me I would've thought that the usages would've increased to handle the extra workload. (However, I'll let you be the judge of that as I'm not really sure about that).

If it's also any help, I'll post my 3D Mark scores.

This was before an OC, so the CPU was still on 3.3GHz, I did try OCing to 4.5GHz and it said in my Bios that I had, but when I double checked it against CPU-Z, it didn't show up that I had OCed it. (I probably forgot to click save knowing me). When I get some extra free time later, I'm planning on trying again at OCing to 4.5Ghz, or maybe 4.3Ghz to play it a bit more safe.

 

[Karadjgne]

If you are pulling 70-80°C on the gpu, fans should be considerably higher than 30%.

I'm not sure exactly how much of a load those tests are putting on the gpu, so try gpu temps while running FarCry. If they are high, like 80ish and the gpu is still running 30% fans, 80% fans might drop the temps. I know when I run any gpu test like the obiquitous "fuzzy donut", my fans ony 970 hit 100% quick.

 

[thecreeperdude]

If you are pulling 70-80°C on the gpu, fans should be considerably higher than 30%.

I'm not sure exactly how much of a load those tests are putting on the gpu, so try gpu temps while running FarCry. If they are high, like 80ish and the gpu is still running 30% fans, 80% fans might drop the temps. I know when I run any gpu test like the obiquitous "fuzzy donut", my fans ony 970 hit 100% quick.

Just tried FC5 with the fans turned up to 100%, max GPU temp was 51. The usage was at around 50%, with the CPU usage being around the same. The CPU temp was around 40-50 too.

FPS wise in game, was the same as what I was getting before, 40-50 fps, with occasional increases to 60 when indoors.

 

[Karadjgne]

Much better temps, so your curve needs adjusting and tailoring to what's acceptable.

For 4k, those fps is fine,about normal. For 1080p I'd say there's an issue, but having gone through everything, I'm at a loss, it's got to be a setting or some software / driver conflict, cuz there's nothing wrong with usage or temps or hardware.

 

[thecreeperdude]

Much better temps, so your curve needs adjusting and tailoring to what's acceptable.

For 4k, those fps is fine,about normal. For 1080p I'd say there's an issue, but having gone through everything, I'm at a loss, it's got to be a setting or some software / driver conflict, cuz there's nothing wrong with usage or temps or hardware.

Do you know of anything I could do too see if its a software / driver conflict?

I did have another potential idea but I don't really know how to check it. Do you think it could be a problem with the motherboard? I haven't updated the BIOS since I got the Motherboard (which was when the 970 was in it), and didn't touch anything within the BIOS when I swapped the 970 out to the 1080Ti. Is it possible that updating the BIOS could fix it?

 

[Karadjgne]

Possibly. With every new bios revision there's always some sorta bug fix in it or optimization or workaround. That's the reason for the revision in the first place. If the bios was perfect, there'd be no need for update.

 

[thecreeperdude]

Possibly. With every new bios revision there's always some sorta bug fix in it or optimization or workaround. That's the reason for the revision in the first place. If the bios was perfect, there'd be no need for update.

I tried updating the BIOS, it hasn't seemed to change anything which is a shame.