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Is my terrible PSU the root of my poor performance

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boofstien

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Jan 12, 2015
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4,520
Hi all,

At Christmas I re-caught the PC gaming bug and decided to build myself a (relatively low budget) gaming PC.

SORRY FOR TEXT WALL:

I picked up various bits and pieces over a couple of weeks based on what I could find reasonably priced and heres what I ended up with:

CASE Corsair Carbide Spec 1
PSU: HEC Compucase G7 Modular Power Extreme 850W Power Supply: http://
Mobo: 970A-UD3P
CPU: AMD 8320 OC'd to 4.4 (Stable primed and dined)
Ram: 2 x 8 GB Hyperx Fury Ram (1600)
GPU: MSI HD 7990
CPU Cooling: H55 with 2x Sp120s in push pull. 9-12c on idle tops out at 50c under load - (Ive modded to put the radiator on the outside)
Boot drive: Samsung 1TB 7200rpm HDD
Games drives: 2 x Kingston Technology 120GB Solid State Drive 2.5-inch V300 SATA 3

My CPU overclock was appropriately stress tested I used prime 95 and OCCT for several hours and there was no dip in frequency etc and it topped out at 50 c (once I repositioned my radiator outside my case)

I only game in 1920 x 1080 and I have been suffering from very poor performance on pretty much everything I play.

An example would be planetside 2 where I have turned everything down to low shadows and vegetation off and all features off like AO and AA etc. It struggles to get stable frames above 40 and goes below 30 in battles. crashes unrecoverable and I have to power off

ESO online I have to set most things down to medium to have a steady 50+ frames.

Skyrim I have to turn down to medium to get anywhere near 60 frames.

Heaven and Valley show 60 fps on ultra benchmarks for the first few scenes but wont complete and crashes unrecoverable and I have to power off

I cant play Arma 3 or dayz even on lowest settings with all features off. The frame rate is just unplayable.

Rust I can get to 60 frames if I turn everything down / off.

I used to play all of the above games on my previous system which had much less power and get much better performance (but I had a corsair PSU!)

8320 clock at 4ghz max
hd 7850
8gb 1333 ram.

I have tried forcing crossfire on and off for each game and notice nothing in terms of performance etc I have the setting enable where crossfire logo appears when it is active.

on the 7990 I have tried both Bios settings on the card switch. Latest and beta drivers. Allowing addtional voltage etc.

Im sure my new pc should perform better!

Now this may be an important point: when I was first overclocking on turning the pc on it would start then turn off then start then turn off then finally boot up this stopped once I enable cool and quiet and c6 state. Can my power supply be to blame for my terrible performance / reliability? here it is again: http://

Ive just ordered a new one anyway after reading some poor power supply horror stories (ordered a EVGA Super NOVA 850W PC Power Supply - Gold). Even if it doesnt improve my performance at least I can have some faith in it.

Sorry again for the text wall, appreciate your input and welcome discussions. (try to avoid intel vs amd argument for now)


 
My EVGA arrived, will let you know tonight if there is any improvement. I hope so, I dont want to have to pay £300 for and Intel chip / Mobo and another £200 for a gpu just to get reasonable performance.
 


The problem may lie in your CPU.

Lets take ArmA 3, a game you play (so do I). ArmA 3 does not utilize AMD's extensive amount of CPU cores. In fact the game only uses 2 cores, and you know AMD has generally weaker performance per core than Intel, but to compensate for that AMD has a lot of cores to match Intel's speed.

The fact that the game uses only 2 cores, and each core is weaker than its Intel counterpart explains why you are getting poor frame rates in ArmA 3, as well as other games. Unfortunately games these days don't seem to bother utilizing AMD's AND Intel's cores well...

EDIT: Planetside 2 and ArmA 3 are CPU dependent, so regardless of the graphics settings you choose, the frame rate will stay the same.
 
Thank you all for taking the time with the response.

Heres my plan of action:

1.) Swap psu
2.) test again on current settings etc - see if improves.
3.) If 2 fails, reset CPU to stock - test again see if improves.
4.) If 3 fails, sell AMD gear and upgrade to i5, and 970 :)
5.) if 4 fails, cry

Thanks again
 
"The problem may lie in your CPU.

Lets take ArmA 3, a game you play (so do I). ArmA 3 does not utilize AMD's extensive amount of CPU cores. In fact the game only uses 2 cores, and you know AMD has generally weaker performance per core than Intel, but to compensate for that AMD has a lot of cores to match Intel's speed.

The fact that the game uses only 2 cores, and each core is weaker than its Intel counterpart explains why you are getting poor frame rates in ArmA 3, as well as other games. Unfortunately games these days don't seem to bother utilizing AMD's AND Intel's cores well...

EDIT: Planetside 2 and ArmA 3 are CPU dependent, so regardless of the graphics settings you choose, the frame rate will stay the same"

As I stated earlier I was using the same chip on a previous build and had much better performance. I know my CPU is not the best, but this setup should exceed my previous one (8320 @ ~4.1, HD 7850, 8gb 1333)

 
My new PSU completely fixed all my Issues! Thanks to everyone for their input.

Does anyone want a HEC Compucase G7 Modular Power Extreme 850W Power Supply by any chance?
 
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