Is my cpu holding me back

rwhite025

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Aug 10, 2015
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Hello, recently I bought the game overwatch and It is a great, I get fps drops constantly though with a gtx 960 4gb but I was wondering if my cpu or ram is holding me back I have a AMD a10 7700k and 8gb of Crucial Ballistics sport I think that is enough to run this at high settings but I get drops from 60-45 randomly on low settings and if I turn v-sync off I get about 80 frames but it still drops on low settings.

Thanks- R

EDIT: I am upgrading my mobo and cpu (and Ram) soon! Going for a Intel 6500 but I don't know a motherboard I should get (Matx only).
 
Solution
Your framerates are normal and expected with that CPU. If you want more performance, you'll need to move to an Intel i3 or better.

CPU_01.png



usually I have the Battle.net client and skype and maybe 1-2 tabs on chrome, and I get random fps drops as well as big explosions to mei using the ice wall

EDIT: going to buy 16 gbs of ddr4 and a 6500 and new mobo anyway
 
Those upgrades that you gave me will help. When i play games when i walk through smoke and have big explosions in front of me i get frame drops. What I think is the smoke and explosions are causing the frame drops so you dont necessarily have to get new hardware.
 
guys. he is asking random FPS drop not low FPS. they are 2 things. if he is getting low fps. than yes the CPU is holding it back. but Random FPS drop is most likely cost by something else.
so plz stop sayings stuff like yer it the cpu. and telling him to get a new build. which is an easy answer but will cost him 600+ USD.

that is like. walking into a dealer telling the mechanic my car engine light is on. and the guy just tell you to get a new car and that will fix all your problem.
 


FPS dips are to be expected with an A10 in this game. Techspot's benchmarks suggest that under normal gameplay, an A10 or FM2+ Athlon will have averages around 70fps, with dips into the 40's due to the CPU's limited single-threaded performance.

Techspot said:
Folks using a low-end CPU such as a Pentium or AMD APU will be sacrificing quite a bit of performance in Overwatch.
 

thank you I also am upgrading to a 6500 do you think I would get better performance with 16 gbs of ram and the same gpu and a new future proof psu

 
In some games, performance will be very little different, if they aren't overly taxing your A10. In CPU-heavy games (which almost all Blizzard titles are), you'll see an improvement with the i5.

Food for thought - the i5 also draws a lot less power than the A10, so you can probably get away with a smaller (but still high quality) power supply. My i5 3570K and HD7850 together draw only about 150w under load, so a high quality 300-450w unit would be appropriate.
 


TDP is not necessarily reflective of real-world power consumption.

power_gaming.png



^ The 6500 will draw a fair bit less than the 6600K by virtue of being clocked lower. Admittedly, there's not a ton of difference between ~45w and ~75w, but motherboard/chipset power consumption is also higher on the AMD system, and it adds up.

Regarding my own chip, my testing shows that my total system power consumption at the stock 4-core turbo clock of 3.6ghz, when under Prime95 AVX torture testing, is 81.8w at the wall, measured with a Kill-A-Watt.

mMBmP2A.png


At the wall:
Total system power draw at idle: 37.5w
Video card power draw at idle: ~12w

The CPU + motherboard + fans + hard drives + other accessories together, minus the video card, draw about 25w at the wall. This is after conversion losses, which are probably in the range of 40% at this low load.

My testing shows that running Furmark increases total system power consumption by very close to 100w, putting me at ~180w at the wall with Prime95 AVX + Furmark running. With a 90% efficient power supply, that comes out to ~162w power consumption of the entire system under the heaviest load I can place on it.

So, no, they don't pull a fair whack more than 150w when both are highly loaded. I appreciate your feedback, but these are actual, measured, real-world numbers.
 


Unfortunately the AMD APUs are not great for gaming in CPU intensive games which Blizzard titles tend to be. Going to an i5 will definitely help it really helped me when I went to an i5. A MATX motherboard will be fine especially if you have no plans to go multi-GPU there are many good models to choose from. 8GB to 16GBs should be plenty for the game you mentioned. Since you are not going with the K version CPU you can use H110, B150, or H170 models which are normally less the the Z170 thou they have less features. The top 3 brand names are ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI, with ASRock a close 4th. Enjoy your new gaming system.