Low performance (£2,000 PC)

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mchugh

Honorable
Apr 2, 2012
8
0
10,510
Greetings all!

I'm pretty new here, in fact I'm just new hello! =) So I'm not even sure if this is the correct place but I'm going to post it here and see how it goes.

I did a pretty stupid move by going for an PC from Alienware, I've got a couple of friends who just love them and they'd always speak so well of them, I decided I'd do for the 2,000 PC because hey, I wanted the best I had the money and yeah... what a stupid move. For 2,000 I got:

MEMORY : 6GB (3X2GB)1600MHZ TRI CHANNEL
HARD DRIVE : 1.5TB (2X750GB) SERIAL ATA
OPTICAL DRIVE : 16X DVD+/-RW DRIVE
GRAPHICS : DUAL 1GB ATI RADEON HD 5770 (Is now replaced with a GTX470)
I7-920 OC'ed to 3.20
Stock PSU 870 watz (I think)

This was back in 2010, when my knowledge for PC's was at an all time low, I have no idea what makes the system cost 2k, Is it the Tri Channel? Whatever that's not my point, from day one I've been having low performance and I've done pretty much everything in attempts to solve this. I can't run next gen games at recommended settings, and my score on benchmarks is far far to low. I've taken massive steps, so much so I could build my self a PC now.

So I've taken apart my Alienware, I did a little clean with some Air around all the components, replaced thermal paste, changed the liquid in the CPU cooler and made sure nothing was amiss around the mother bored its self, nothing appears to be wrong so I connected everything back as it was, made 100% sure all connectors where tight fired up the PC. Still have the same issues, High FPS in games, but lots of stuttering and that almost as if I have 30fps. At this point I contacted Dell, they took over my PC, had a look over it via an tool that lets them take over my PC, and they say nothing is wrong with it.

I've did everything in the books in an attempt to solve my issues, yet I can;t find the source, Drivers are okay, everything up to its current versions. So I've pretty much come to the conclusion that it is either three of my components: ALX Motherbored, Slow Hard Drive's, Or faulty PSU. I don't know how to actually test any of the three but if ran some tests and the Hard Drive shows as fine and going as its suppose to. Now the strange think is, at night time, my PC performance goes up, I have no idea why, or how this even happens, but perhaps it might not have anything to do with my PC at all, perhaps to much power is being used in the house, and the PC is not getting what it needs? Can that happen at all? And because night time is when everything is off, my PC ends up getting the power it needs? Any thoughts on that one guys?

Do any of you guys have tips to help in pin pointing? Anything I've not looked at?

Do you guys think it would be a better Idea, if I get a PC case, a new motherboard, CPU and PSU, and then dump everything else in? Would that be a good way to do things, and perhaps some new HDD or an SD? I mean my RAM is fine :S. And so is GTX470.

All the help would be great, I'd love to be PC gaming right now but I kist can't because the issue annoys me so much, and I'm pretty ill at the moment so I'd just love to sit down and relax with some games like Trine 2, with out the annoying jumps, fps drops, slow frame rate and the likes :/.





 
Damn, even two years ago, that was a rip.....
First thing I'd suggest is a smaller Hdd for the Operating system, preferably an Ssd,
An upgrade on the Gfx card and probably the psu, prebuild companies skimp on Psu's at the best of times
Moto
 
Some things to check:
1. HDD monitoring software (SMART)
2. IDE emulation and transfer speeds (especially on DVD drive)
3. background SW
4. I see you have dual GPUs.....this also increases stutter (I know, it's not advertised)

When checking 1st 2 problems, a good indication is that the stutter is always associated with HDD light.
 
@The first poster: Is it even possible to change the PSU in a pre-build junkship ^^?

@2nd: Funny you say that, my HDD light goes crazy when I start games, sometimes the thing stays light up, ill try what you have said.
 
What games are you playing? If they're online it could potentially be your internet connection causing problems.

If you wanted to check that not enough power is being supplied from the plug socket turn everything off in your house and change the socket you use (preferably in a different room, although you may still be on the same mains circuit. If you have a circuit breaker look what rooms are on each circuit and move to one that is on a different breaker).
 
what do you mean about performance going up at night? Games? Do you play online games mostly? Some ISP's throttle heavily during peak hours (virgin esp.) If you try to play online you will get lag. In the later evening you would get lots of bandwidth freed up and it would look better.

I think that you probably just expected more from the PC than it actually delivers.

Some real numbers for your benchmark results would be useful to judge if it is just that you can't believe how ripped off you were. That X-fire 5770 setup is NAFF! (horrendously bad for the price).

The stuttering is common when X-firing (or SLI'ing) 2 medium-low power GPU's. It should disappear with you current single GPU setup (which isn't really all that powerful these days).

You should try OCing your CPU further to extract more performance, esp as you have a liquid cooling solution. It should go 4GHz + unless you have a lemon CPU.

As others have siad getting an SSD will improve the feel and responsiveness a lot.

And don't blindly buy branded pre-builds next time, now you know how to put PC's together build it yourself and watch your £XXX custom rig run rings around pre-builds double the price.

 
I want to help you here mchugh, but I think a little more information is needed. If you wouldn't mind just answering a few questions, I think we can get down to the meat of the problem.

1. What resolution monitor are you using and do you have multiple monitors?
2. What games are you playing that you're experiencing problems with and what settings?
3. Are you using V-sync in the games?
4. Have you run any benchmark utilities (3dmark, PCmark, Unigine Heaven) and if so, can you post the scores?
5. Does the case have enough room to pull cool air in through it's vents and have you used any hardware monitors to see if components are getting too hot?

Obviously you don't have to answer every single question, but the more of this info we have, the better advice we can give you!

In regards to your computer running better at night, this could be to lower ambient temperatures or perhaps due to having "tired eyes" where you don't necessarily catch as many of the glitches. Anyway, looking forward to your response.
 
I looked online and Trine 2 is an online game. if your wifi router is open then your going to have leaches. you can log into your router and see who been logging on in the log files. if your router is fine and you have slow downs try switching to ggogle or open dns to see if the dns server in your area in overloaded. do a little house cleaning check for malware using malware bytes and run ccleaner. also check your hard drive if it too full windows and games will slow down. use msconfig and turn off stuff that not needed at start up..ie itunes or java update...more stuff that running in the back ground the less ram the game has. if you have comcast or a cable modem log into the modem and check the power lev and signal noise..sometimes an older tv or cable box when turned on will add to much line noise causing your cable modem to slow down or lose packets. if your in a condo or have a lot of tv look at how many slitters you have and how old they are the older splitters are know for causing low signal to cable modems. also check outside connection are tight and clean.
 

 
Hi, Seems all your hardware is good but your performance seems poor combined with a hard drive that seems to be overactive suggests a software problem.Have you tried a fresh install of Windows ? This would eliminate any kind of corruption in the OS.
 
Personally, I'd be looking in the Bios first. Whilst the CPU may be O/C'd , it does not mean for certain that optimum settings have been initiated generally.

Plus, you are running a 64 bit O/S , of course?
 


Alright, A lot of comments to reply to so I'll go by first saying that I run on a FTTP, Witch is Fiber Optic, my ping is 5-20 so nothing is wrong with my internet connections, As also suggested I've ran clean installs of Windows yes, and also I now run an GTX470, as I dislike the 5770's in crossfire, as many others have said, this caused issues of its own, The max Resolution for my monitor is 1920x1280, that single. That being said I don't run games at this res, I run them at 1680x 1050.

Now for the questions in my quote ^.^.

1) Single, 1680x1050 is what I have it set at but its a 1920x1280 monitor

2) Every game that I've tried :S Borderlands 2, World Of Warcraft, Trine 2 demo, Skyrim, The Darkness 2 demo. Skyrim runs great outdoors but when its in doors it is an whole new story. The newer drivers have helped someone for my GTX470.

3) Sadly yes, I'm useing V-sync, games become far to jumpy when its not on, for the likes of World Of Warcraft, I'd be sitting at 160 - 200fps, yet it would lag around like crazy no matter what, I understand that it was 5fps it would be an more serious issue.

4) I'll post some benchmarks in an moment! I'll reinstall 3d mark as it stopped working and run the tests.

5) Everything is fine with the temp's, GPU-Z never logs anythig above 45 for my GTX470 because I turn up the fans, my overall temp inside my PC is 20c, and my CPU sits from 40 to a max of 54, depending on its load.
 
Okay dokey, 3D mark did not want to work so here is the heaven benchmark:


FPS:
57.7
Scores:
1454
Min FPS:
30.3
Max FPS:
116.9


Settings

Render:
direct3d11
Mode:
1680x1050 fullscreen
Shaders:
high
Textures:
high
Filter:
trilinear
Anisotropy:
4x
Occlusion:
enabled
Refraction:
enabled
Volumetric:
enabled
Tessellation: disabled
 
i know this may be a stab in the dark as you have said that the CPU is water cooled, but how are the temperatures? my friend has an Acer predator (similar OEM gaming PC) and when running a stress testing program (prime95) his CPU hits 80 degrees in a matter of seconds, which is by most standards too hot, so maybe due to the airflow of the case or something the CPU or GPU could be throttling itself due to overheating (this may explain the works better at night, due to lower ambient temps)
 
Nothing is overheating sadly =( I use core temp and the temp is 100% fine when attempting to play games, its never going over 54c it mostly stays at about 40
 
Issue has been solved. It seems like that multi plug socket I was using was made by my dad, perhaps a low AMP in the sockets was the cause, switching to a newer one, it appears to have resulted to a much higher performance, from the looks of things Skyrim no longer lags in rooms, and all the other issues have fixed themselfs. Its funny how litttle things like this matters! Thanks all for the great help anyway! <3 you all in a friendly way =)
 
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