Low FPS for a EVGA GTX 1070 SC with an i5-4430

[serwynn]

I recently upgraded to a EVGA 1070 SC GPU. I'm running it with an old i5-4430, on a 1360x768 monitor. I did a fresh install of windows to ensure my PC would be running as fast as possible before installing the new GPU, and bought a new EVGA 600w bronze PSU.

To my suprise, I was getting significantly low FPS, especially for 1360x768 resolution.

On Destiny 2 for example, max settings I get 60 fps but it dips to as low as 38 at times.
My old GTX 1050ti was giving me about the same performance, with settings on High and no such fps dips.
Even on World of Warcraft I have on average 81 fps, on graphical settings 7, but it still dips to 50.
I tried performing a clean install of the nvidia driver, no change. I also tried performing a clean install of windows yet again, and no improvement.
I read about the i5-4430 bottlenecking a GTX 1070 but I was not expecting this.

Also something interresting to note, at times I've seen my CPU usage shoot up to 99% in task manager, caused by "System Interrupts". But as soon as Task Manager is opened for a few seconds, it goes back to normal.

My GPU usage is very low when running games, about 15% - 25%.

I've searched for a solution for the past week and cannot find anything to help.
I would be ever so grateful if someone could help me out! I don't have much money to spend on my rig and I'm quite sad that I cannot run many of my games anymore.

Thank you for reading

 

[whiteknighter]

Well it seems your CPU can't keep up anymore, you need at least core i3 8100 or Pentium G5400 to increase your gaming RIG performance.

 

[chickenballs]

did you do a fresh install of the driver when you upgraded the gpu?
if not use DDU to uninstall the driver and then install the latest nvidia driver
if the gtx 1050ti gave you more consistent fps then it can't be the cpu
and I assume your 768p monitor is only 60hz if thats the case you wont go higher than 60fps
maybe its time to get a 1080p monitor

 

[Satan-IR]

That CPU will bottleneck a 1070, then again dipping to near 40 fps is not good at that resolution. As chickenballs mentioned if the monitor is 60Hz you can not get higher frames per second displayed in reality.

CPU working at lower rates few seconds after you open task manager is because the game is virtually paused and the GPU no longer getting a lot of time from the CPU. But if you had better fps with a 1050Ti on same machine it can't all be the CPU's fault.

Also you said at max settings in Destiny 2 you get 60 with drops. See if changing one or two of the graphic settings to high or mid helps frame rates.

You can lower Ambient Occlusion and/or Shadow settings a little or set Detail Distance options all to Low. These will not have a large impact on your visual experience of the game. See if they improve fps. There are other options you can try at the expense of some impact on the visuals. You can set Shadow Quality to the Lowest setting and/or set Texture Anisotropy to Off.

What utility do you use to check frame rates?

 

[serwynn]

did you do a fresh install of the driver when you upgraded the gpu?
if not use DDU to uninstall the driver and then install the latest nvidia driver
if the gtx 1050ti gave you more consistent fps then it can't be the cpu
and I assume your 768p monitor is only 60hz if thats the case you wont go higher than 60fps
maybe its time to get a 1080p monitor

I was thinking about upgrading to a 1080p monitor but i'm worried my games will run even worse at 1080p resolution. I'm fine if I get atleast 60 fps constant, but with 1080p res i'm not sure If I will

 

[serwynn]

That CPU will bottleneck a 1070, then again dipping to near 40 fps is not good at that resolution. As chickenballs mentioned if the monitor is 60Hz you can not get higher frames per second displayed in reality.

CPU working at lower rates few seconds after you open task manager is because the game is virtually paused and the GPU no longer getting a lot of time from the CPU. But if you had better fps with a 1050Ti on same machine it can't all be the CPU's fault.

Also you said at max settings in Destiny 2 you get 60 with drops. See if changing one or two of the graphic settings to high or mid helps frame rates.

You can lower Ambient Occlusion and/or Shadow settings a little or set Detail Distance options all to Low. These will not have a large impact on your visual experience of the game. See if they improve fps. There are other options you can try at the expense of some impact on the visuals. You can set Shadow Quality to the Lowest setting and/or set Texture Anisotropy to Off.

What utility do you use to check frame rates?

I usually check my fps with the in game counter if there is one. Settings my graphics to low on Destiny 2 doesn't give me much of an fps boost.

Could it be a driver software malfunctionning? When I reset my computer it didn't get rid of all drivers in device manager, I would like to uninstall/repair some of them but I don't know which are critical for Windows to function properly.

 

[Satan-IR]

It's not easy to find out whether there is a driver/software conflict or malfunction going on. Drivers deal with machine code and OS at kernel level and of there are serious issues they would result in hangs and crashes or BSODs and such.

I don't recommend messing with drivers. You can use something like DDU to get rid of previous graphics drivers and do a clean install of new nvidia drivers. Also if Geforce Experience has been installed along with the graphics driver see how it has 'optimized' the game to run according to your hardware (if that is actually the case).

Also run GPU-Z minimize it and run the game for a while. After that check to see what the maximum GPU Core Clock, GPU Memory Clock and GPU Load are. Maybe that resolution is not demanding enough for the 1070 and it's not fully utilized, I guess this could happen depending on the game code and how it utilizes the graphics card via the driver. You mentioned that GPU usage is 15-25% and that might actually explain the low frame rates.

You have a pretty good VGA and your PSU has enough power. I really think, theoretically, you shouldn't be struggling to reach 60fps at that resolution with a GTX 1070. If possible maybe a clean install of Windows and drivers afresh might help.